What if starting a successful business, or launching a new product, was so straightforward and predictable that it became a simple science? And imagine if you got your hands on that scientific formula, you’d be rich. Well as it turns out, a neuroscientist has created the formula, and he’s not keeping it to himself — he’s telling the world about it.
Ryan Levesque's neuroscience background and interest in consumer psychology helped him create a... [+]
Ryan Levesque doesn’t have your typical business story. He went to ivy-league Brown University, but he didn’t study business — he studied neuroscience and East Asian studies. It was this exposure to studying the brain which has helped him master consumer psychology for business — and find an almost foolproof way to guarantee your business’s success.
It’s called the Ask Method, and Ryan covers it in his book, Ask, which has quickly become a must-read for entrepreneurs. It reached the #1 best-selling book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and several national best seller lists including LA Times, USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly.
I recently had the pleasure to talk with Ryan about the Ask Method. Here are some of the highlights from our conversation:
Garrett Gunderson: So how did your science background turn into a new, revolutionary way to start a business?
Ryan Levesque: My background in neuroscience is what led me to have such an interest in consumer psychology. At Brown University, I became fascinated with the neuroscience of fear, which led me to the work of Dr. Robert Mauer. He's one of the leading researchers in the psychology of fear.
He teaches that whenever you ask someone to make any sort of change in their life, their brain perceives that as a threat. In the world of websites and online marketing, whenever you ask someone who lands on your website to do anything, like provide their name and email address, their brain perceives that as a threat.
The beautiful thing is that if you understand our psychology of fear, you can actually hack that fear response. You can fly below the radar of that fight-or-flight response by breaking down the steps you're asking someone to take into a step that's so small, it's impossible to fail.
Gunderson: I think you call those small steps a micro-commitment, which is a brilliant concept. Tell me what you mean exactly by a “micro-commitment.”
Levesque: Micro-commitments are, instead of asking someone for their name and email address when they first land on your website, as counterintuitive as this may sound, start by asking them a simple multiple choice question. Even though you are adding in an additional step to the process, that actually radically increases your email opt-in conversion rate.
So if you teach people how to lose weight, instead of saying, "Please enter your name and email address to get a free copy of my ultimate weight loss guide.” You would start by asking a relevant multiple choice question like, "Can you tell me: are you a man or a woman? The reason we're asking is because men and women tend to have different weight loss challenges." And then after they answer, they're presented with the name and email question.
This can increase your email opt-in rate by up to 50% or more. Why? Because you hacked that fight or flight response in their amygdala — which is a part of their brain that is in the limbic system.
Gunderson: The cover of your book promises to show people how to discover exactly what your customers want to buy. How does the Ask Method help you do that?
Levesque: I came across the work of Dr. Glenn Livingston. What he would do is test the demand of a market with about $500, and he would be able to tell if something was a winner or a loser by running surveys. I became extremely intrigued with his methodology, and it’s what I consider to be the foundation of the Ask Method.
It starts with what is commonly known in the Ask Method as the single most important question. It’s an open-ended question designed to help you figure out how much money you need to spend in advertising to get someone to fill out a survey.
What I found was that, for example, the scrapbooking market cost me anywhere from $50 to $75 in Google Adwords advertising just to convince someone to fill out that survey. But in the orchid care market, it cost me about $2.50.
If someone fills out a survey, maybe I can get 10% of those people to buy. So for the scrapbooking market, if I get 10% of people to buy and I spend $50 to fill out a survey, that means it's going to cost me $500 — $50 divided by 10% — $500 to acquire a customer in that market.
Then I needed to ask myself, "Can I sell people in the scrapbooking market something that's worth more than $500 in profit?" And the answer was no. I could not figure out a way to sell more than $500, so I knew that that market was a no-go.
But in the orchid care market, when I assume 10% of those who filled out a survey will buy something from me, that means it's going to cost me $25 to acquire a customer. Can I sell more than $25 worth of something to people who care about orchid care? And the answer is yes. I can sell them a book, I can sell them a DVD series, I can sell them an online course, I can sell them potting equipment, I can sell them orchids themselves. There's a lot I can sell that would be more than $25 in profit.
That's a process that anybody can use to evaluate whether a new market, or a new product, or a new project is something that will be profitable before you actually go out and build anything. In other words, it's a way to really minimize your risk before starting anything new.
Gunderson: Because you’re finding people who are ready to buy?
Levesque: Right. And the second benefit of the Ask Method is that it helps you figure out exactly what people want to buy before they even know what they want to buy themselves. The way you do that is by asking a series of questions like the one we just talked about.
Because the secret to business is simple: find out what people want to buy and give it to them. The problem is, people don't know what they want.
Gunderson: Right, because didn’t Henry Ford say, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would've said faster horses.”
Levesque: And then Steve Jobs is famous for saying, "People don't know what they want until you show it to them." The reason why those quotes ring so true is because they are true. People don't know what they want. But there is something that people do know, people know what they don't want.
The third big benefit is that once you've figured out exactly what people want to buy, the Ask Method is the single-most effective way to give people exactly what they want. The way you do that is not with a survey but with a quiz or an assessment.
The quiz or assessment, unlike the survey, is a series of multiple choice questions that lead people down one of several potential paths. It's the alternative to the way most websites sell online which is to give people a one-size-fits-all solution. The quiz or assessment is designed to ask just enough information about a website visitor so that you can diagnose their situation and then prescribe the appropriate solution for them.
Since the beginning of time, as long as humans have roamed the earth, we have wanted and will continue to want a solution that is specifically geared to us. I want something that specifically addresses my situation, not a general one size fits all solution. So I truly believe that the Ask Method is the future of online marketing.
Gunderson: People can get your book at GetAskBook.com. And you’ve also invested in and co-founded a new software technology to help businesses implement the Ask Method, Bucket.io, so I think people should check that out as well.
Last question: Why is now the perfect time for entrepreneurs to use the Ask Method?
Levesque: Now's the perfect time for a couple of reasons. Technology has finally caught up so that small businesses, businesses of any size, can use this. In other words, you don't have to be Amazon, you don't have to be Apple to be able to do this.
The second thing is, if nobody in your market is doing this, there is window of opportunity and tremendous first-mover advantage right now. Conversely, if people in your market are asking questions to offer a personalized solution and you’re stuck in the antiquated model of providing a one-size-fits-all solution, then it’s difficult for you to compete and it’s likely you’ll be left behind. In other words, the best time to take advantage of this in your market is right now today.
