The ASK Method Masterclass by Ryan Levesque is a 6-week virtual online course that covers the entire process of creating a digital marketing agency. It aims to provide solutions for clients based on their needs through 3 phases: Discovery, Segmentation, and Launch. VIP students of the program receive access to recording. Other inclusions are support groups, software access and setup. This program is only open once a year.
People from Reddit and Trustpilot have mixed reviews about the Ask Method Masterclass and its related services. Many mentioned that it enhanced their business and provided them with necessary tools and support. Some of the commonly mentioned drawbacks of the program are its high cost, upsells, lack of actual hands-on experience, and the complexity of the methods.
Moreover, running a digital marketing agency can be challenging since businesses and clients expect you to do-it-all. You deal with the high maintenance clients, expensive paid traffic ads, social media marketing, and more. If you offer more services or add more clients, you are going to have your hands full and occupied working in it. This means it's difficult to scale your business without additional cost, labor, and effort.
This Ask Method Masterclass review delves into its pros and cons, content, reviews, and testimonials. We will also look at some other services from the Ask Method Company and the challenges with digital marketing agency. Lastly, we will look at another business model that offers a passive income and more control over your business while generating leads for local business owners.
Ask Method Masterclass Pros and Cons
Pros
Ryan has made over 7-figures as a digital entrepreneur.
The Ask Method Masterclass offers 5 live Q&A coaching calls with Ryan and his team.
It gives 3 Months bucket.io PRO Account for $1 ($600 value).
Ryan provides you with 10 years of swipe files that you can personalize and implement in your business.
Cons
The Ask Method is quite expensive.
Only VIP students can access to masterclass recording.
Facebook support group and marketing expert access is during live program.
The Ask Method Masterclass offers lots of upsells to its students.
Price
Ask Method Masterclass costs $1,999.
Refund Policy
The Ask Method Masterclass refund policy offers a 30-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Training
The training comes with 9 core video lessons (3 advanced bonus lessons), templates, case studies, and a workbook.
Group
Private Facebook group for support from Ryan, his team and experienced students.
Origin
The Ask Method Masterclass started in 2016.
Reputation
Ryan is popular in the digital marketing space and his company was a 3X Inc. 5000 award winner from 2017 to 2019. He has 14,178 followers on Facebook, 6.5K subscribers on YouTube, and 6,333 followers in LinkedIn.
2 Reasons a Digital Marketing Agency Isn't Passive
1. Clients are High Maintenance
Digital marketing clients are high maintenance because they expect you to do all social media marketing services. Most clients will expect to see immediate results. They don't realize that it needs some patience as you kick things off for them.
Many clients will constantly ask what you are going to do, if it's working, and what your next strategy is. This is the case when you are working on someone else's digital property. It could be a website, email marketing campaign, social media account, or paid ad campaigns. You can expect them to have high expectation since they are spending money on it.
2. High Competition
As the years pass, more and more people attempts to earn a passive income online. This makes it more difficult and expensive to compete for the attention of your target audience. Especially if you are just starting out and competing with already established agencies.
According to research compiled by Zippia, there are over 42,000 digital marketing specialists and 61,400 social media marketing managers in the United States. There has been an increase in marketers, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, when people started looking for other ways to make money online.
What is the Ask Method Masterclass?
The Ask Method Masterclass is a program that focuses on teaching how to understand and segment the target market using a comprehensive survey techniques. The core principle behind the Ask Method is to look into the specific needs, desires, and challenges of potential customers.
The Masterclass is actionable. It provides the theoretical foundation of the Ask Method developed by Ryan and the practical tools and templates needed to implement it into your own business.
What is in the Ask Method Masterclass?
In this phase, you learn how to find new profitable markets to get into, and what products to create based on what your market needs. The entire process starts with asking the right questions of your ideal audience at the right time.
Lesson 1
One of the greatest takeaways from lesson 1 is that of asking your potential customers' questions to find out what their needs are. By asking your potential customers, you will gain better insight into their needs and be able to provide them with a solution.
Lesson 2
In lesson 2, Ryan teaches you two methods of finding out information from your potential customers. They are the Classic approach and the Lean approach. A Classic approach is getting responses through quiz funnels to get an idea of your demographics. The Lean approach is when you interact with them.
Ryan recommends you get 250 classic responses and 10 lean responses before you have enough data to create an image of your typical client. To give a framework in which to frame your survey, so that you don't risk overwhelming people, and keep them until the end while adding a bonus at the end, Ryan provides you with a great tool: The Anatomy of Asking.
The Approach part is really fundamental and you can't really screw it up or you will lose potential clients before you even begin. It's three parts are:
- Advice (Asking for advice and not to reply to a survey).
- Hello (Being personable and introducing yourself).
- WIIFM (Telling right from the bat 'What's in it for me' to the client)
The Ask section comprises three parts.
- SMIQ (Telling the survey taker that he will only have to answer SMIQ).
- Call to Action (Asking the survey taker to complete and give data).
- Incentive (Remind the Survey taker what's in it for them).
The Acknowledge segment, as you may have guessed, also comprises 3 parts.
- Gratitude (You thank people in advance for being part of the survey).
- Bye (You sign off on the process being polite and saying goodbye).
- Second Bite (You reiterate your call to action for the people taking the survey).
Lesson 3
This third lesson in particular has been important to teach you how to analyze your responses, looking at three core return information packs:
- Your SMIQ language
- Market Demographics
- Product Demand
Here at this stage, you'll get the results of your Deep Dive Survey and use them to build or tweak the ads and products that best suit your audience. You'll be able to segment the audience into "buckets" so that you can speak to each audience in a language that convinces them and gives them solutions that address their unique problems.
Lesson 1
In this module, Ryan introduces the concept of bucketing. Bucketing is the art of organizing the most responsive people in your market into different segments, or "buckets, so you can diagnose and prescribe the best solution. If you can group people on your market into a few highly important buckets, you can immediately talk to each person about a particular circumstance.
Lesson 2
This lesson is all about how to create a segmentation funnel
With the Deep Dive Survey, you want to get the pulse of what the problem was in your niche and in your client's world. With the segmentation funnel, you want to use that insight and prescribe a personalized solution. The DDS is something that you send in a fixed moment in time to gain the pulse of the situation at a precise time. Your segmentation funnel will be working for you 24/7 once it's online.
Lesson 3
In this lesson you also get to learn about 3 more pages that you need to add to your quiz-funnel if you want it to take off:
- The Welcome Page
- The Lead Capture Page
- The Outcome Page
This phase is all about the various traffic channels and how to market your segmentation funnel. The Ask Method here uses the psychological mechanisms of curiosity and self-discovery. You'll learn how to use these stimuli to push an immense amount of traffic to your pages.
Lesson 1
This lesson highlights the relationship between traffic and mindset. According to Ryan, creating traffic is a mental game, and he recognizes 4 key strategies and insights that might help you increase your traffic.
- Always be learning: You have to become a student of all the data you process and of your own results.
- Think Big by Thinking Small: Rather than going all-in with one tactic to make cash, Ryan suggests small incremental improvements.
- Shifting from Spending to Investing: Businesses should consider ad spend as an investment.
- Stay in the Game: Ryan says 'the name of the game is to stay in the game until you win the game'. This happens also in traffic: many people give up when they might be really close to a win, without even knowing it. Sticking to it and never giving up assures you will win down the line.
Lesson 2
In this lesson, you will discover how adopting a mentality of optimization inspired by Kaizen (a philosophy meaning 'change for the better', adopted by the Japanese automotive industry) can continuously improve the efficiency of your Segmentation Funnel. In addition, you will also learn what to concentrate on and where to maximize your traffic. Ryan also shows you unique optimization techniques for all pages and questions in your funnel.
Lesson 3
You will get the last piece in this lesson when you explore Ryan's mindsets and techniques used to scale several companies from scratch, including Funnel Stacking, Traffic Expansion, and more.
Who is Ask Method Masterclass for?
The Ask Method Masterclass is for:
- Consultants, coaches & agency owners.
- Digital marketing entrepreneurs and startups
- Marketing professionals
- Business owners looking to grow their customer base
- Product developers
- Online course creators and educators
How Much Does Ask Method Masterclass Cost?
The Ask Method Masterclass cost $1,999 and opens for enrollment just a few times annually. It offers a 30-day, full refund guarantee. The course includes nine primary video lessons. It also has three additional advanced lessons, plus templates, case studies, and a workbook. Participants also gain access to a private Facebook group for ongoing support from Ryan, his team, and seasoned students.
Who is Ryan Levesque?
Ryan Levesque is the CEO and founder of The ASK Method® Company from Austin, Texas. He is a best-selling author of his book called Ask and Chosen. His ASK Method platform was one of the fastest growing enterprises in the United States from 2017 to 2019. He also co-founded and invested in bucket.io®, a premier quiz funnel software that serves over 30 million users annually. He amassed an email list exceeding 4.1 million people through the strategic use of quiz funnels. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Tylene, and their two sons.
Ryan has helped hundreds of businesses with his ASK Method and some have even grown their business to over 7-figures in less than one year. Ryan has developed a highly successful business, generating over $10 million annually across 23 different markets. The ASK Method Company YouTube Channel has over 5.3K subscribers and Ryan's team posts content that revolves around growing your digital marketing company. The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes featured him . He also appeared on NBC News and Fox. Ryan also maintains a podcast called KickASK in Spotify.
What People are Saying About Ask Method Masterclass?
People from different platforms have mixed reviews about Ask Method Masterclass. While some have seen significant success, some reviewers have complained about the program. Despite these issues, many still praise the program.
The Ask Method Masterclass Testimonials
Raffaele is a marketing agency owner from Italy who lost 90% of his business when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. This forced him to reinvent his business. After signing up for Ryan's program, he grows 10X his retainers from $5K to $50K per client and created a process for generating more leads. Raffaele also created a webinar that generated over $22K.
For over 19 years, Jodi worked a 9-5 corporate job. In 2017, she started her own private consultancy. Jodi put ASK Method and QUIZ funnel to work and took her business from Zero to profitable. The QUIZ funnel masterclass helped her create a steady lead flow and eventually grew her business to over $1 million. One sale she made was for $26,500.
Reviews From Trustpilot
The Ask Method Company has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars from Trustpilot, out of 65 total reviews. Most of the reviews were positive. For example, Janet Co appreciates its exceptional training and resources. Neil Nichols calls it the best roadmap for online success. Donna Schwartz mentioned its incredible support.
However, some people are not entirely happy with the program. Reviews from Alex McDonagh, Kirsten Karchmer, JB, and Theresa highlight the negative experiences with the services. Some issues mentioned were on the expensive program cost, constant upsells, complex refund process, quality of coaching, misleading promises, and failure to disclose the heavy reliance on Facebooks ads prior to purchase.
Reviews From Reddit
People from Reddit are saying mixed opinions about Ryan Levesque's Ask Method Masterclass. They praised its focus on deeply understanding what the target market desires through the use of surveys before designing products and services. Other positive reviews are on Ryan's detailed approach to teaching how to ask the right questions to uncover the genuine struggles of customers.
However, peterralff said that the method was too complex for the average marketer. He also added that 80% of the cohort didn't make their money back. Another Redditor, Riverwitch2023, criticized its aggressive and pushy marketing tactics.
Recommendations from LinkedIn
Ryan Levesque received three recommendations in his LinkedIn profile. Cloris Kylie
praises the high quality of Ryan's ASK Method training program for entrepreneurs and its systematic approach. Kevin Williams recognizes Ryan's expertise in research and marketing. Steve Siegwalt describes Ryan as a genuinely outstanding individual, both personally and professionally.
The Ask Method Alternatives
AltAgency by Greg Hickman is a training program that teaches you how to grow and scale your digital marketing agency. Greg has you simplify your business by packaging your services into one offering. That way, you don't offer and fulfill all kinds of services. AltAgency offers two programs, Foundations and the Academy. Foundations is a 90-day training to grow your agency and Academy is a 12-month program you can take after you've finished the Foundations program and are already making over $10K per month. Academy will help you take your business to over 6-figures.
Price: The cost of the AltAgency programs is revealed on your initial call with Greg's team.
More Info: AltAgency Review
Agency Navigator by Iman Gadzhi will show you how to start and scale your own digital marketing agency. Iman provides you with tools, templates, funnels and more that will help you run your business efficiently and scale seamlessly. There are over 50 hours of training videos divided into 8 modules. Each Tuesday, Iman hosts live coaching calls for Q&A and added support.
Price: Agency Navigator costs $1,499.
More Info: Agency Navigator Review
Is the Ask Method Company legit?
Yes, the ASK Method company is legit. It provides world class digital marketing education and training. It has in-depth programs that dive into all the intricacies of the sales process. The company aids you in finding the right solution for your ideal audience based on what their problem is.
The ASK Method Company is the brand behind the #1 National Best-Selling Book, "ASK" by Ryan Levesque. Moreover, the ASK Method Company achieved rankings in the Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Companies for 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021.
Ryan and his team will teach you every part of the sales and funnel process. They also provide continued support in the private Facebook group. Aside from the masterclass, it also offers other services.
Other Services by Ask Method Company
Software Only: Bucket.io®
Bucket.io® AI is a comprehensive software solution designed to streamline and automate creating and implementing marketing funnels. This platform tailors to help users rapidly move from the initial concept phase to a fully operational funnel with all necessary elements in place. Access to this software is $2000 for the setup and $199 per month.
This tool comes with unlimited creation of pages, funnels, products, quizzes, and surveys. It also comes with a drag-and-drop funnel builder, various templates, and many advanced functionalities.
Ask Method Bootcamps
The Ask Method BootCamp is a three-day intensive virtual training event designed to provide a deep dive into the Ask Method. VIP participants of the BootCamp will have access to recordings of all sessions. Additionally, during the live program, attendees can interact and seek support through a dedicated Facebook group and directly from marketing experts.
This format is ideal for individuals seeking focused, short-term training on specific elements of the Ask Method without the longer commitment associated with more extensive programs.
Ask Method Business Coaching
The Ask Method Business Coaching is a detailed and personalized 12-month program to help entrepreneurs refine their marketing strategies. It teaches participants how to use surveys and quizzes effectively to understand the unspoken needs of their customers. Participants will gain access to all Bootcamps and Masterclasses.
Key features of the program include one-on-one accountability coaching, done-for-you funnel design, technical support, and ongoing software access. It also comes with a supportive community, regular access to marketing experts, live monthly training calls, digital training materials, and many more perks.
Are Digital Marketing Agencies Profitable in 2024?
Digital marketing agencies are profitable in 2024 because most business owners still don't know how to market themselves. They are always looking for the next best agency or freelancer that can help generate leads or grow their brand online. This ensures that the demand for digital marketers remains high. However, starting a digital marketing agency is difficult because of the high competition and initial cost.
Clients also expect you to know all kinds of marketing strategies, such as social media marketing, email marketing, paid social media advertising, and more. If you aren't an expert in any of these fields, you won't be able to help them and therefore you won't get paid. If you can do these services, you won't have enough time to scale your business unless you hire a team, which can get expensive fast. As long as you can deliver result to your clients, you can make money with digital marketing.
Local Lead Generation Pays You Passively & Offers More Control in Your Business
Local lead generation allows you to have more control in your business than if you ran a digital marketing agency. You own and control your digital properties (lead generation websites & Google Business Profiles), which means your clients can't fire you. The decision of what niche you get into, the business to work with, and how much you'll make per digital property every month is completely up to you.
I generated leads in the tree care niche in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I vetted several tree care companies before closing a deal with one, and I dictated how much they had to pay me each month. To this day, they pay me $2,000 for the leads my digital properties consistently generate them every month.
Getting your digital assets to rank at the top of the Google search results is the goal. Once ranked, your sites will generate leads. As long as you send leads to your clients each month, they won't think twice about paying you for exclusive leads.
To learn how to make money online passively without having to deal with high maintenance clients, expensive paid traffic ads, social media marketing, and more, check out the local lead generation business model. It offers a passive income and more control over your business while generating leads for local business owners.
Very informative article. You mention that your lead generation method is passive. I would tend to disagree; I don't see writing at least one post a day as "passive.". Either way, you pay with your time for free traffic, or you pay with money with paid traffic. It's a toss up, but most big companies rather spend money for paid traffic.
Local lead gen is more passive than blogging, with local lead gen you can build the site in 6 hrs and that site once ranked, will make money for years to come.