Ask
The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy...Create a Mass of Raving Fans...and Take Any Business to the Next Level
Book Edition Details
Summary
In the bustling digital marketplace, a groundbreaking guide emerges that shatters conventional wisdom about consumer insight. Ryan Levesque's "Ask" flips the script on customer engagement by revealing the art of inquiry that delves beyond surface desires into the core of true demand. By harnessing the transformative power of strategic questioning, businesses are not just thriving but flourishing with unparalleled success. Levesque’s method has propelled enterprises across 23 industries to amass over $100 million in sales, proving its prowess. This book is your portal to understanding the nuanced language of your audience, revolutionizing your approach to online business. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned pro, prepare to discover how the right questions can unlock a treasure trove of customer loyalty and skyrocketing sales. Dive into a realm where businesses don’t just serve but enchant their customers, creating a legion of devoted fans.
Introduction
In the noise of today's marketplace, where thousands of marketing messages compete for attention daily, most entrepreneurs make a critical mistake: they assume they know what their customers want. They create products, craft messages, and launch campaigns based on hunches rather than hard data. But what if there was a way to cut through the guesswork entirely? What if you could systematically discover exactly what your customers desperately want to buy, using their own words to create irresistible offers? The revolutionary approach you're about to discover has generated over $100 million in sales across 23 different industries by doing something surprisingly simple: asking the right questions in the right way. This isn't about complex market research or expensive focus groups. It's about creating a systematic process that transforms casual website visitors into eager customers by understanding their deepest needs and speaking directly to their desires. The entrepreneurs who master this approach don't just build successful businesses; they create movements that customers can't wait to join.
Discover What Your Customers Really Want
The foundation of extraordinary business success lies in truly understanding your market, yet most entrepreneurs operate on dangerous assumptions about what their customers actually want. The Deep Dive Survey represents the cornerstone methodology that separates successful businesses from those that struggle in obscurity. Consider the remarkable discovery made by Ryan Levesque when working with a sports instruction client. The business owner was absolutely certain his typical customer was 55 years old, having operated under this assumption for years. However, when the Deep Dive Survey data was analyzed, it revealed something shocking: their most responsive customers were actually 9.4 years older than expected, averaging 64 years old instead of 55. This wasn't just a minor detail; it was a business-transforming revelation that changed everything from their advertising imagery to their email references about music and cars from the right era. Armed with this accurate customer profile, they completely revamped their marketing approach. Instead of using aspirational images of people in their mid-fifties, they featured vibrant individuals in their mid-sixties. Their Google AdWords and Facebook advertising was precisely targeted to reach 64-year-old prospects. Most powerfully, their email campaigns began referencing The Rolling Stones and Ford Mustangs, creating nostalgic connections that resonated deeply with their true audience. The results were immediate and dramatic: email open rates soared, click-through rates doubled, and sales from email campaigns skyrocketed. This transformation happened because they stopped guessing and started asking the right questions. The Deep Dive Survey isn't just another customer survey; it's a systematic approach to uncovering the hidden motivations, fears, and desires that drive purchasing decisions. Rather than asking people directly what they want (which often produces unreliable answers), this methodology focuses on understanding what people don't want and what they've experienced in the past. To implement this approach, start by crafting open-ended questions that reveal true challenges rather than forcing predetermined answers. Focus on gathering responses from your most engaged prospects and customers, then analyze the data to identify patterns and themes. Look for the top 20% of responses that show the highest engagement, as these represent your most valuable market segments. Most importantly, let the data guide your decisions rather than trying to confirm your existing assumptions. When you truly understand your customers at this deep level, creating irresistible offers becomes almost effortless because you're speaking directly to their most pressing needs in their own language.
Create Personalized Marketing That Converts
The era of one-size-fits-all marketing is dead, replaced by the powerful strategy of segmentation that treats different customer groups as the unique individuals they are. The Micro-Commitment Bucket Survey creates a bridge between anonymous website visitors and personalized customer experiences that feel almost magical in their relevance. The genius of this approach became evident when Ryan worked with a client in the alkaline health space selling a $2,000 water ionizer system. Initially, Ross Bridgeford believed his customers were primarily motivated by wanting to alkalize their water and make it healthier. This assumption shaped every aspect of his marketing message and sales approach. However, when they conducted their Deep Dive Survey, the results revealed a startling truth: customers weren't primarily excited about alkalizing their water at all. Instead, the survey data showed that prospects were driven by fear - specifically, fear of what was already in their tap water. This revelation completely transformed their entire funnel strategy and messaging approach. Rather than leading with the benefits of alkaline water, they restructured their sales process to begin with a shocking "what's really in your water" video that addressed these underlying fears first. The transformation was remarkable. By speaking to customers' actual motivations rather than assumed interests, they created a connection that felt personally relevant to each prospect. The new approach acknowledged their real concerns, provided education about the problems they truly cared about, and then positioned the water ionizer as the logical solution. This single shift in understanding and messaging contributed to a launch that generated $750,000 in just five days, completely selling out the manufacturer's worldwide inventory. To implement personalized marketing that converts, begin by designing micro-commitment questions that feel natural and non-threatening, gradually building trust as prospects share information about themselves. Use demographic and behavioral data to create distinct customer segments, then craft messaging that speaks directly to each group's specific situation and concerns. Implement conditional logic in your surveys so that questions adapt based on previous answers, making the experience feel truly personalized. Create separate follow-up sequences for each segment, ensuring that every communication feels relevant and valuable. Remember that personalization isn't just about inserting someone's name into an email; it's about demonstrating that you understand their unique situation and have solutions designed specifically for people like them.
Build Profitable Survey Funnels That Scale
The ultimate goal of any business system is scalability - the ability to generate consistent, predictable results without requiring constant manual intervention. Survey funnels create this scalability by automating the process of customer discovery, segmentation, and personalized sales in a way that actually improves over time through continuous feedback loops. The power of scalable survey funnels was demonstrated when Will Hamilton's tennis instruction business, Fuzzy Yellow Balls, had reached a frustrating plateau. Despite having excellent content featuring tennis legends like Pat Rafter and the Bryan Brothers, their ServeKillers product had stopped growing. They were successful with warm affiliate traffic but couldn't make cold traffic convert profitably, which meant they couldn't scale beyond their existing network. Working with the complete Survey Funnel Strategy, Will implemented every component from the Deep Dive Survey through the automated email sequences. The survey data revealed four distinct segments within his tennis market, each with different challenges and learning styles. Instead of sending everyone to the same generic sales page, the new funnel asked a series of engaging questions and then directed each prospect to a customized video that addressed their specific situation and concerns. The results exceeded all expectations. In the first week after launch, ServeKillers generated $25,000 in revenue from the single product - more than they had been making in entire months previously. The success was so dramatic that they immediately created a second Survey Funnel for their DoublesKillers product, which generated an additional $250,000 in the first six months while bringing in 3,500 new customers. Most importantly, they could now profitably drive cold paid traffic to their funnels, giving them unlimited growth potential. To build your own profitable survey funnel that scales, start by mapping out the complete customer journey from initial contact through multiple purchases and referrals. Design your surveys to collect not just segmentation data but also the specific language and terminology your customers use when describing their problems. Create automated email sequences that continue the conversation based on survey responses, providing value while gently moving prospects toward purchase decisions. Implement feedback loops that capture data from non-buyers to continuously improve your messaging and offers. Build in upsell and cross-sell opportunities that feel natural and helpful rather than pushy. Most crucially, treat your survey funnel as a living system that evolves based on real customer feedback, ensuring that it becomes more effective over time rather than less. When done correctly, your survey funnel becomes a profit-generating machine that works around the clock to understand prospects, build relationships, and create customers who feel truly understood and valued.
Summary
The revolutionary approach outlined in this methodology transforms the traditional guessing game of marketing into a systematic science of customer understanding and personalized communication. As demonstrated through countless success stories, from tennis instruction to water ionization systems, the power lies not in creating more marketing messages, but in creating the right messages for the right people at the right time. "The secret to spectacular sales was all about asking the right questions, in the right way, at the right time." This isn't merely a tactical shift; it's a fundamental reimagining of how businesses can serve their customers while building sustainable, scalable enterprises. Your next step is clear and immediate: stop assuming you know what your customers want and start asking them directly through carefully crafted surveys that reveal their deepest needs, then use their own words to create offers they can't resist. The tools and strategies are now in your hands - the only question remaining is whether you'll take action today to transform your business forever.
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By Ryan Levesque
