VMP 272: Ryan Levesque Shares How To Use Quiz Funnels For Your Veterinary Practice

Brandon (00:00:01) - Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your veterinary practice using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breshears and today we have a very special guest. It is Ryan Levesque from the Ask Method Company and it is very exciting to have him. He's I've been trying to get him on the podcast for quite a while, and so I'm very, very excited to have him here. Today. We are talking about how to use what it's called the ask method or quiz funnels in your veterinary practice, and I think this is one of those tactics and strategies that can dramatically improve your veterinary practices. Marketing. Ryan is a fascinating marketer. He's been doing very, very cool things for a long time. But today, specifically, we're going to talk about how to use quiz funnels and specifically the ask method to serve your clients better and create marketing that is going to be far more targeted, and pinpointing the needs and wants of your clients so that you can give them better service and ultimately better marketing message that's going to convert better, collect more data, and give you more control over your whole funnel.

Brandon (00:01:10) - So very exciting. I think this is going to be probably one of my favorite episodes. I say that every time, but very cool and very excited. Before we start, we have two sponsors for the podcast. Are you looking to get better SEO ranking for your practice? Probably everyone I know that runs a veterinary hospital would be benefited from having better local SEO, and that's why I want to give you some free tools from one of today's sponsor. It is White Spark. If you go to veterinarymarketing podcast.com/seo, that's veterinarymarketing podcast.com/seo. You can sign up to get a free account to give you some amazing SEO tools. White Spark gives you everything that you need for better local SEO. If you haven't heard the episode I did with Darren Shaw, be sure to go back and look at it. He is the founder and owner of this company. It is fantastic. They have Google business profile management, local rank tracking, local citation finder, reputation builder. They even have professional SEO services if that's something that you're looking for.

Brandon (00:02:15) - So go to veterinarymarketing podcast.com/seo to check out White Spark and the free tools that they have available for you. You won't be disappointed. They're really cool. let me know what you think too. If you need help with any of that, please don't hesitate to reach out. But again, veterinarymarketing podcast.com/seo. Have you ever said yourself, I wish I knew where these clients were coming from? If you've ever been wondering, you know what is actually driving conversions in your practice, then I have something that I think will be great for you and that is called real call. Real is a fantastic tool that allows you to measure and see where your conversions are coming from, and which of the calls and call sources are driving clients into your practice. Call real makes it really simple to not only see where your calls are coming from, but the AI tools that they have that track and record the conversation so that you can assign outcomes to the calls is amazing. I highly suggest all of the clients that I have used Call Real, and if you've ever wondered where my clients coming from, you can try Call Real out for two weeks for free.

Brandon (00:03:26) - If you go to Veterinary Marketing podcast com forward slash call rail, you'll be able to try call rail for yourself and finally know where your clients are coming from. So for those of you who've not heard of Ryan, and if you're in marketing or interested in marketing, you've probably seen his book. specifically ask, but he's an Inc 5000 CEO seven times for his company, the Ask Method Company, and is the number one best selling author both of his books, Choose and ask our best selling books and ask was actually named Inc Magazine Number One Marketing Book of the year, which is really cool. But his work has been featured in Wall Street Journal, harvest, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, entrepreneur, and NBC news. And he's also the co-founder of bucket Io, which is the world's leading quiz funnel technology with over 80 million end users worldwide, which is amazing. So he's got 1% of the whole Earth has visited his site, which is, well, but he's been helping companies, marketers and entrepreneurs leverage the power of questions to better serve and sell since 2008.

Brandon (00:04:28) - So without further ado, here's my interview with Ryan. Thank you so much, Ryan, for being on the podcast. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on. I'm a huge fan of your books and also the products that you've made with the Ask method.

Ryan (00:04:43) - So it's awesome to be here and excited for this conversation.

Brandon (00:04:47) - So for people who haven't heard of you, which is probably actually quite a few, most people in the veterinary industry are not super marketing savvy, although they probably have seen your book, just because it's everywhere. But give us a rundown. Of who you are and what you do.

Ryan (00:05:02) - Real quick. Sure. So my name is Ryan Levesque, the author and creator of the Ask Method and now a seven time Inc 5000 CEO with the company that we built, the Ask Method Company. And what we do is we work with business owners to use questions in the form of quiz funnels, survey funnels and assessment based funnels to generate leads and customers. And it's a very scientific approach.

Ryan (00:05:28) - It's leveraged one that leverages psychology in a very deep way, and it's one that's designed to instead of trying to sell to someone right away when they first hear about your practice or land on your website. Instead, you begin in a much more consultative fashion, in the same way that you probably would interact with someone if they were to step into your office and you're having a conversation with them, you're having that conversation through your web presence on your website and elsewhere by asking a series of questions to understand a person's situation before you recommend the best next step for them. So at its core, that's what the Ask method is all about. And we've developed solutions and technology that help makes that possible for practices and businesses to be able to do that with their web presence.

Brandon (00:06:14) - Yeah. And it's amazing what what you've done and what you've developed. And I think that that is right along the lines of how veterinarians provide service, which is first you diagnose and then you prescribe. So you're not coming in and just kind of saying you need this, right.

Brandon (00:06:29) - It's what is this person about? What what do they need and how can we best serve them. And so, I think there's just so much benefit to this, when it comes to how you suggest people kind of getting started with quizzes in general, why do you think that it's more effective than my personal thought is? It's probably more effective than any other type of either landing page or tool. But what are some of the psychological, psychological reasons for that in helping to get, data before you start prescribing, you know, types of procedures or what people need.

Ryan (00:07:11) - Yeah, it's a great question. So, I'll talk about this in a few different ways. So first we'll talk about what's the alternative. The alternative is someone lands on your website and you try to get them to book an appointment with your office, or you try to get them to download a PDF, a lead magnet, a white paper, some, you know, document or asset that they get that's presented in a one size fits all way.

Ryan (00:07:35) - And the problem with that is that in either of those approaches, the approach is all about you as the service provider. It's not about them. When you flip that on its head and you say something to the effect of, you know, hi, my name is Doctor Smith and I've been working with patients or I've been working with clients for the last 25 years. And what we found is that when it comes to XYZ situation, whatever that may be in the in the veterinary space, it might be when it comes to the nutrition plan for your dog, there's no one size fits all answer, but if you take a few moments to tell me a little bit about your situation, a little bit about who you are, a little about your furry friend, at a minimum, I'll be able to point you in the right direction and recommend the best next step for you. So all you need to do is just answer a few questions, and I'll see you on the other side in just a moment. Just, just just like pay attention to your nervous system and your response to that and how non salesy it is and how it comes from a place of service.

Ryan (00:08:30) - And logically it just makes sense. It's the same way that, you know, Brandon, if you were a veterinarian, if you were a doctor and I reached out to you and I was like, hey, my dog is having some digestive issues, man. Like, what kind of food do you recommend? Yeah. What you're not going to do is, oh, I recommend this. Yeah. You're going to be you're going to answer my question by asking me a series of questions. It just naturally the way that we operate now, the problem is there's only one of you. And as brilliant as you may be, you can't be in all the places all the time you're seeing, your, your your patients. You're working with your your animals, you're working with your clients, you've got family, you've got all these things. But imagine if there was a way that 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, you could have effectively that conversation with anybody who visits your website in the form of a question based process that takes people down one of several paths that's right for them.

Ryan (00:09:24) - So for me, I do not believe there is any alternative. And I've been doing this for a long time. There's any alternative that replicates this process. It is a consultative process that's automated at scale, and allows you to serve people who come into your world without having to connect and talk to them on a 1 to 1 basis. Yeah.

Brandon (00:09:45) - Absolutely. So I think we need to talk about, bucket IO, because that's a big part of you have to ask method, which is a great book, and it basically lets you gather every kind of problem that your, your clients would. Have on the front end, but the tool that practically does that is is bucket. that I o and with did you develop bucket the same time that you wrote ask because I got started using the bucket software? probably two years ago. So the book had been out for a long time, and I think it was bucket 2.0. Now you've launched 3.0. So can you give just a quick details of what bucket that I o is?

Ryan (00:10:25) - Yeah.

Ryan (00:10:26) - So. For years I had been working with businesses to implement this methodology, and what we found is at the time, this philosophy is timeless, the philosophy of asking questions. It's timeless, it transcends technology, it transcends industries. It's just the way we as human beings like to interact. There's so many layers to this, from using the power of self-discovery to the power of micro commitments, and there are a lot of psychological studies that just will validate what we know inherently to be true. And yet, the biggest question that most people run into when they hear about this is, okay, this is great. What software do I use to do this? And for years there wasn't a great option. There wasn't a great answer to that. And so when we would implement this, when we'd work with a big company to implement this in their business, largely what we were doing is a custom engineered solution, which meant that this process was out of reach for most small business owners. And that's what spawned the creation of bucket, the technology that is the tool to integrate with whatever tech stack you're using right now, integrate with your website, integrate with your CRM, integrate with your whatever tool you're using to send email in your business, whatever you're using in your business right now, it plugs in seamlessly to be able to capture all this great information and data, feed that information from anybody who comes into this process to whatever else you might be using, and plug it into that system.

Ryan (00:11:51) - And Brandon, you probably know this, but for anyone who doesn't know this, just to give a sense of scale, we've had over 80 million unique human beings around the world go through this process. And for anybody who's counting at home, 80 million happens to be 1% of humanity. It's actually it's amazing. So 1% of humanity has used the technology that we're talking about. And I share that just to provide context and confidence that this isn't sort of like a new cutting edge, never been tested before. Is it dangerous? Is it safe type thing there? Innovations that are happening all the time, especially with the advent of AI. But this is a tried and true process. That's been used across industries, across cultures, across languages, and all sorts of different spaces. And the opportunity in places like the veterinarian space is that it hasn't yet fully penetrated in that space. There are a lot of traditional ways of doing business in certain spaces, the veterinary space being one of them. That presents an opportunity to apply this to ultimately do an incredible job in winning new business and ultimately, most importantly, serving the visitors who come into your world at the highest possible level.

Brandon (00:13:02) - Yeah, exactly. And with the veterinary space, you you probably don't know this, but, they are notoriously kind of behind the ball when it comes to any kind of technology. Like when I started this podcast ten years ago, I actually started it because there was a practice we were selling software at the time for veterinary hospitals, and there was a practice we had to send a computer to because they didn't have a computer in their practice. And so it was pretty hilarious. So they're kind of notoriously behind, but that is a huge opportunity. At the same time, I think, and I really think that especially the just all of the detail that you put into developing the system from the landing page to the value proposition that people will get, it really helps to gather data. And the cool thing about bucket two is you can see people's responses on these quizzes, even if they don't opt in. So you can kind of see there's just so many data points that you don't get if you're letting people self-select.

Brandon (00:13:59) - And I think majority of people are just putting up their site. They have a services page and then they're like, you know, go, go figure out what you need type of a thing. And that's such a inferior process to giving them some very detailed and personalized results that you can get with bucket. and so I, I really like I've been through your trainings, and I can't remember which, which training is called. it might just be the ask method training. I know you have a bunch of products and trainings, but, in terms of naming and I think we could maybe talk about some specific applications to veterinary hospitals that I think would be really kind of interesting to go through. But, I mean, you're so intentional with how you frame the naming, the headlines, the value proposition, how you get the quiz going. You grease the wheels questions to get it moving, and then positioning the conversion once they've done all the work and getting people to make micro commitments. So first, like few things that I think might be interesting are there's just really an endless amount of opportunities and, you know, types of quizzes that you could create that would really provide value.

Brandon (00:15:11) - But I think it's a lot of times, well, when, when do you think are generally the best types of times to use quizzes, like do you think that they should be very niche? And I'll give some examples. So one of the things that we're working on right now with a few clients is doing. Euthanasia quizzes. So when is it the right time for euthanasia? But you can have things as general as you know is your pet. You know, on the track for living a healthy life. Take this quiz. Right. So general wellness quizzes that kind of cover all ages and breeds and species, down to, you know, as detailed as is it the right time series in Asia. So based on your experience, what has been things that have worked the best, is it more niche or is it more general?

Ryan (00:15:54) - Yeah. So many great questions there. So I want to make this real. And I want to anchor this to the conversation that we're having here today around actual use cases.

Ryan (00:16:04) - For this you can really envision where this might show up. Sure. so you're right, there's a lot of intentionality that goes into this process, and I want to just take a step back for a minute because we're talking about we're using a phrase, a phrase right now, we're talking about this as a quiz funnel. And I want to be really, really clear, because sometimes in professional circles, especially in the medical space, people tend to think like, oh, a quiz. Is that just like a, you know, one of those time wasting quizzes like what Disney princess is your dog? Take the class for sure. That's how we're talking about this is people.

Brandon (00:16:33) - Love those too. I mean, those were super popular in 2016. Facebook, you know, that was like you couldn't get away from them.

Ryan (00:16:39) - They're popular because they tap into the same psychology that we're talking about right here, which is the psychology of self-discovery. So what your clients care about more than anything else is themselves. It's what we all care about.

Ryan (00:16:50) - We want to tell me more about me, right? And when you're tapping into this psychology, the power of self discovery, we're using what we call a quiz funnel. But just to really set the stage, this is a a serious business tool. This is not a flippant just you know what what costume is right for your dog and just funny pictures at the end of it. This is a tool. This is more an assessment. This is more of a question based assessment that you're using to help steer people in the right direction. So we'll use the term quiz funnel. But just so everyone has it in their mind what we're talking about. And so like for example, to answer your direct question, Brandon, where is this best applied? One of the best places to apply this specifically in the veterinarian space is to think about what are the common questions people come to you when they arrive at your practice? What do they want to know? So and I'm just going to give some examples. I'm not as deep in this space, certainly as you are, but you and I have had conversations about this.

Ryan (00:17:46) - Is euthanasia right for you? Is surgery right for you? What nutritional plan is right for your dog? Is your dog on track? Based on their dog age relative to their bodies age. In other words, do they have health ailments that are keeping them on track for a long and healthy life? Or are they showing signs of premature problems that need to? That needs that needs intervention at this point in time? So as as a as a as a as a professional in this space, the question that I might begin thinking about right now is I've just kind of introduced a few possibilities is what are some of the questions that you tend to get over and over again? What are the things that maybe in this moment in time that people are bringing to you? Sometimes these can be influenced by events that are happening in the news. There could be new technology. There could be a a recall associated with a specific product. there could be something that's just being talked about in the soccer soccer mom circles that.

Ryan (00:18:48) - Did you hear about this? You hear about that at the dog park? What are the conversations that are happening? And if you serve other niche, spaces in the veterinarian space, we live in a in a town where there's a huge equine population. So there's a big horse, a lot horsey people where we live. So, yeah, there's a lot of horse activity. And so there's always a conversation around, hey, is the topic of du jour? you know, you know, does does your horse's hay have the right nutritional balance or is it missing something? Take this assessment to find out. Now, what are the signs to know if your horse is having a healthy diet. So there are all sorts of these topics. And again I'm just spitballing that absolutely demonstrate where you start saying, man, I could have like three or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 of these in different places in my business based on how people are entering into my world. So what I like to say is your first quiz funnel is oftentimes not going to be your last, because once you go down the path of using this in your business, you start to realize that there is really no that really there really isn't a better alternative to using questions in several different places and a good starting place is where do people come to you already looking for help? What are those questions that they're asking right now?

Brandon (00:20:06) - Yeah, definitely.

Brandon (00:20:08) - And I think as you were talking about that one thing that I think that every single practice could use was do you need to go, you know, like it's after hours, for example, and you're closed down, but your client is trying to decide, do we need to go to the E.R. right now, or is it something that we could wait till tomorrow? And I you know, there's typically telltale signs that, okay, you have blood, like, you go in right now or, you know, things like that. Obviously you don't want to diagnose something that's medical. And you'd always on the side of caution and give people disclaimers and, you know, referral numbers and things like that. But if you can keep people at least peace of mind, there's those types of things that that definitely they have over and over again. And I think the CSR team at the front are the people that are probably have some of the best ideas when it comes to what are the questions that we continuously get over and over again that we could serve our clients better with.

Ryan (00:21:01) - Which dog food is right for my dog? Which medication is right for my dog? I mean, the list goes on and on and on, and you could probably make a list of 15 or 20 ideas immediately that are almost universally applicable to any practice, no matter where you might be located in the country or in the world.

Brandon (00:21:18) - Definitely. So I think that there's just so many ideas and applications. And the cool thing about bucket again, is that you get to see all of the data points for how people are answering these questions. And so one of the biggest difficulties as a marketer is we get traffic that, you know, somebody searches for vet near me or vet open today. They go to the site and then they just bounce and like, what was it that caused that person to not feel like they needed to. And they had the intention going in. And so that really solves so many problems of like, what did what are these people looking for? What are they after? And how can we better tailor the marketing messaging so that it's going to convert them? Right.

Brandon (00:21:55) - and.

Ryan (00:21:55) - Just imagine, like going to your website, someone who's looking to possibly, book an appointment. And, we've been talking about a lot of these, like, niche applications of a quiz funnel, but just imagine a global quiz funnel on your homepage, which is asking a series of questions to understand what this potential person is looking for, right? To help us better understand if we can serve you and recommend the best next step for you. take a moment to tell us a little bit about your situation. So first question, are you, is this your first time here or are you a returning patient? Oh, I'm a or returning client. I'm a new I'm a new client. Okay, great. Tell us a little bit about your animal. What type of animal are you looking for? Assistance with your today. Is it a dog? Is it a cat? Is it a, you know, reptile? Whatever the options may be, or, you know, something different. And if someone think about this, if someone is perhaps looking for help with an animal that you don't support in your practice, well, let's know this up front.

Ryan (00:22:51) - And what's great is if you're really smart and strategic about this, maybe there's another veterinarian practice. Is a veterinary practice that's in your town that does support that. Maybe you don't do horses, but you do dogs and cats, and maybe the horse vet practice doesn't do dogs and cats well. You can send business in each other's direction by saying, we don't do this. Here's who we recommend and they can do the same for you. So like when you start going down this path, you start realizing, oh gosh, like, you know, your your mind starts turning and you start saying, man, there are a lot of places that I could be using this in my business in a real way.

Brandon (00:23:25) - Definitely. So can we walk through because there's a lot of cool, cool features with bucket, whether it's like the the single outcome or the the varied outcome. But can we kind of walk through how the the process, what it looks like? I built lots of funnels here, but I'd like to hear you know, your thoughts on it.

Brandon (00:23:42) - I've been trained by you through videos and stuff, but so the first step is we have a landing page that that people get to. Yeah. and with that, you have a lot of intentionality on how you create that value proposition and especially the hook and the importance of that hook. Can you talk a little bit about that as at that first step in stage just generally.

Ryan (00:24:01) - Yeah. So first and foremost, you know, there's there's, there's, there's a like to think about in sort of a three step process. And you know, if you're in the business of, of, of diagnosing and prescribing it's going to be very intuitive. So first things that we want to do is we want to attract, diagnose and prescribe. So those are the three steps attract, diagnose and prescribe. So the way we attract is we need to have a hook that resonates with the market. That really speaks to where they're at. So we shared a few right. Is surgery right for you. It is going to take this assessment to find out now.

Ryan (00:24:33) - So that's a that's a hook that attracts the right type of person. If I've been thinking about that then I'm going to be attracted to that particular possibility. Next step is diagnose. So diagnose is once they've won it's once a user and user a quiz taker a visitor has gotten to that landing page. They're going to click a button. The button is going to say take the assessment. Take the quiz. Take the survey. Depending on the context that's going to pop up a series of questions that are introduced, one question at a time. And the question is, just like in the case of a medical situation, are designed to understand the person's situation before we and I'm going to use this in air quotes, if you're listening to this right now, prescribe the best next step. When I say prescribe, I want to use that term figuratively in this context, because we're not prescribing medication, we're not diagnosing a medically diagnosable disease, but we're applying the same principles. We're asking questions to diagnose a person's situation so we can prescribe the best next step.

Ryan (00:25:30) - So questions are introduced one question at a time. And then from there we're prescribing one of several different possible outcomes one of several possible solutions. And oftentimes what we like to do is what we call a bandaid cure combination. What does that mean. We want to give people some type of information advice. Useful tidbit that is the Band-Aid for free. So we want to be able to actually be a useful human to people. We want to be able to say, here's what we recommend and here's the reason why. But ultimately, the cure, the real solution to the underlying problem, is going to be to become a client, to book an appointment, to become a paying customer of yours. So we're providing something useful, the Band-Aid, after they take the assessment. So they're getting immediate value, and that immediate value is personalized to them. It's not a generic answer. It's not a one size fits all answer that we give to everybody. It's some version of based on the little we know about your situation.

Ryan (00:26:30) - And we can't know this for sure. But based on the answers that you provided over the last several minutes, here's what we think might be the best next step for you. And here's the reason why. So you're approximating what it would be like if someone walked into your office and talk to you one on one, and what that conversation would look like. And we're ultimately leading people where we we really want them to get to, which is if they are a good fit to become a client. We want to say, you know, well, the the next step is to book an appointment. And here's our point for booking page.

Brandon (00:27:02) - Absolutely. And so the cool thing is you can have a single outcome, you can have varied outcomes, and you can make it as simple or as complicated as you want, which is very cool. and actually, if you want to check out what this looks like, if you're listening, if you go to I'll set up a link here for it. But if you go to Vendor marketing podcast.com/quiz, I have a connect with clients assessment.

Brandon (00:27:23) - So which way is the best way for you to connect with your clients? in your vendor practice. And you can go through that and see what that looks like in real time. But, I built this out several times. Several different funnels that I've built out, using this. And one of them was actually with, Doctor Brett Beckman, who's a boarded dentist, and he helps provide see, for veterinarians. And so he did. What's your veterinary dentistry service disorder. and so, like, what's your biggest struggle when it comes to your dental procedures, basically. but back when we made it, it probably took, probably three weeks to make it, just because there was so much work involved. And that was probably one of the biggest, barriers to entry is just if you're going to make a quick funnel, there's a lot of process involved. and you've built something that's really, really cool. And it's part of the 3.0, software. So could you tell us what you built? Because it's amazing.

Ryan (00:28:22) - Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, if you are following technology or even if you're not following technology, then, of course, you're probably familiar with the advent of large language model and generative AI technology. And the most popular, well-known brand in that space is Open Eyes cat, GPT. And one of the things that we've been spending a lot of time doing again, we've had over 82 million people go through our technology platform. We've been doing this for a very long time. And now with the advent of LLM Large Language model AI technology, we're able to build a process where by entering just a few simple, inputs, your objectives are what your goals are. With that information, we can actually generate all the content for creating one of these assessments. So coming up with all the questions, formulating all the branching logic, so how you might branch people into different paths based on the answers to those questions. generating the outcome or output information. So what you want to give people after they take your assessment, the report, the results that they get.

Ryan (00:29:29) - So have that already created for you. And then from that connect that to the actual output, which is a living, breathing, fully designed, fully constructed funnel that lands on your website. So where technology was a year ago, that simply was not possible in, in brand. In your case, of course, you've gone through this the manual way. it's sort of akin to, you know, I was having this conversation with someone. It's like if you in 1450, if you were a monk with good penmanship, it would take you 15 months to, create a handwritten copy of the Bible. if you were Johann Gutenberg in 1454, you were producing between 150 and 180 Bibles per year with that printing press. And this is that generational leap forward. What took you three weeks or six weeks to do by hand, manually? The monk hand transcribing the the Bible by hand? you're now able to do in just a matter of hours and it's radically shortcut the process. And, and we're, we're just at the tip of the iceberg on this.

Ryan (00:30:34) - as I alluded to before we came on, what's super exciting is we're getting close to the point where we're able to take a form of input, a table, a type of collateral, a type of content, whether it's a whether it's a book, a video, a transcribed conversation, and use that input. And just with that input alone, put it into our machine if you want to think about it that way. And because we have the frameworks and process for teasing out the questions one might ask to lead people to that next step, automatically create all the questions using AI automatically create all the content using AI. And what we're very, very close to being able to do is pushing a button where that content and the questions become the fully functional quiz funnel itself, without having to spend the weeks and months doing it alone. Now, I say that with a bit of, I want to, temper the the excitement with that because I still continues to be quality and quality app meaning if you don't have something of.

Ryan (00:31:44) - some form of, I don't want to use the word thought leadership, but expertise, I'll say as the input portion, you know, and I know in your case, Brandon, you've worked with, boarded, vets. Yeah. If you are not working with expertise in some way, shape or form, it's garbage in, garbage out. So this is where I like to think of AI as being an enhancement to your brain, not a replacement for your brain. It's a way to tease out the knowledge and experience that you have, the wisdom that you've accumulated as a practitioner in your space. But organize that thinking and that information in a way that you don't have to be an expert in creating an assessment. That's the marriage. Your expertise, plus the expertise in creating an assessment. I being the bridge between those two things and then being able to deliver an end result that's very effective, very well designed, all based on best practices and do it in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the effort.

Brandon (00:32:41) - Yeah, absolutely. And so the AI tool has been just incredibly helpful in guiding it. But I do think that the the more expertise that you can lend to it, the better it's going to be. Otherwise, if there's no my opinion is if if you're not adding your own kind of flavor to it, there's no reason why people should go to you versus ChatGPT in general. Right. And so, yeah, and specifically within like working with, with boarded specialists who are helping to build these types of things, it's been very helpful too, because the questions that they know that they need to ask before they're going to, you know, like a mobile euthanasia appointment, for example, that they. Know that they need to know. Is the dog been aggressive with strangers? And you know what kind of specific types of questions they want to know before they get there so that they're prepared. And obviously they're not just showing up, but if they have that information going into that conversation, it's just a complete game changer versus them getting a call from their website, having no knowledge beforehand.

Brandon (00:33:44) - So totally agree. But it's so much easier now and becoming even more so. which is amazing. Definitely.

Ryan (00:33:54) - It's one of the things that we're most excited about for sure.

Brandon (00:33:57) - Yeah, it's it's amazing. So the I think, there's just so, so many different applications for this. What would you say to people that are hearing this? They say, that sounds like a cool idea. that sounds great. But, you know, typically if you're listening to podcasts, you'll get great ideas all the time. What is, you think the best next step for somebody? Because I think there's just so much benefit. If they're interested in starting a funnel, how should they choose their first funnel topic? And how do you think the best way for them to get started would be?

Ryan (00:34:27) - Yeah. You know, I mean, I'll be perfectly candid. I would say your best bet is to work with someone who has experience and expertise in creating this sort of thing and use the technology that's designed to do this very specific thing, use the right technology combined with the right professional to help you make it happen, in the same way that, you know, if I were a vet, I'd probably, you know, someone to say, so what should I do to treat my dog? I'd probably say, well, you know, you know, work with the professional, right? Definitely.

Ryan (00:34:59) - Like, the right, the right medicine, the right, you know, equipment, the right, you know, supplies, but use it in combination with the right expertise. So, you know, Brandon, this is a big part of what you do. You've got expertise in this space. And, you know, I'd say, like, you're a really great person to consider working with to implement something like this. and then I would advocate that use the technology that we've built to do this very thing. So you've kind of got the best of both worlds, you've got the best technology, and you've got the best person who knows this space and is doing this right now as a practitioner. now, of course, you can go out there and try to DIY it for sure. yeah, absolutely. And many people do, and many people do that. Well, so it's not to say that that's not an option. I'm a big believer in finding the expert who can do the job and use the right tool or technology in combination with that expert, whether that's a home repair project where I'm not trying to, re shingle my entire roof, whether that's a repairing my car, I might know what part or what type of, vehicle that I want, but I'm going to work with a professional to repair work and not try to DIY it myself.

Ryan (00:36:11) - and I think, generally speaking, that's the best path for someone who has practical expertise in an area that's outside of the digital marketing space that we're talking about right now. So that would be my best, recommendation is use bucket work with someone like Brandon to implement, and that's the perfect combination to get the best possible result.

Brandon (00:36:33) - I would agree, it's definitely, I've seen people try to make quizzes and things using like, many chat and tools like that, and it is just difficult and it's almost impossible to get the results. I think the, the coolest parts about bucket is that the landing pages are built so that they're going to optimize your your conversion process, but then the entire question process is so seamless. And then also it allows you to do multiple outcomes far easier than if you're trying to build the multiple outcome quiz. It's tough. It's going to take a programmer for sure like to build something. so I think that that's that's some really good advice in general. But when it comes to and, and want to be respectful of your time and everything, but as it comes to, maximizing conversion for your quiz, what are some tips that you've seen, generally speaking, work really well with all of the data that you've seen come through.

Ryan (00:37:30) - Yeah. So a few things to keep in mind. First is number of questions. Generally speaking you want to keep things to between 5 and 12 questions. Now why is that. Well again, we've had millions of of funnels built on our platform. We have access to a tremendous amount of data at a macro level. So we're able to analyze and evaluate what represents a best practice. And you want to ask for enough information that you're. And I'm going to use this in air quotes. Again your diagnosis.

Ryan (00:37:56) - And.

Ryan (00:37:57) - Prescription is accurate enough so that it's believable in the same way that if you know someone walked into your practice and said, you know, my dog is sick right now and you're just say, you know, did your dog eat eggs yesterday? And they say, no. And then, you know, you say, I know exactly what's wrong. Yeah, this is not enough information for the diagnosis to be believable. You've got to ask for enough information. And at the same time, you have to remember the context through which someone is going through this experience.

Ryan (00:38:23) - Most likely they're on their phone or on their phone. They are engaging with your web presence, mobile with the phone in their hand. They are not going to be spending hours and hours and hours answering some type of long, detailed questionnaire. Most of the questions that you want to ask, if not all of them, are going to be close ended, where they can just click the answer with their thumb. You don't want to ask for too much information that the person bails and drops off along the way. So there's a balance. Accurate diagnosis. Else's, but not too long. So that's the first thing. Second thing is you generally want to start with we call it a grease the wheels question, which is a question that is designed to build action, taking momentum. You don't want to start the first question in your assessment with a big, hairy, scary question that's going to scare people off where you're going. Maybe too personal, too soon, or it's a very difficult question for people to think through and answer.

Ryan (00:39:18) - You want to keep it short and sweet and very, very simple. Same thing with the number of answer options you want to keep. The number of answer options in any individual question, typically to somewhere between 3 and 5. Now there are exceptions to that. But what you don't want to do is which of the following 17 options is right for you. What it's going to do is it's going to slow people and it's going to give them a reason to bail. Now, the beautiful thing about a technology like bucket is it gives you access to incredibly detailed analytics. So not only are you able to see each individual response, so when someone gets on the phone with you, your team can actually see every single one of the answers that someone has given in the assessment so they can have an intelligent conversation with that potential clients not being cold, but they can actually see it on their screen. So you have that capability. But also on top of that, you have the macro data to see, you know what 35% of people are bailing after.

Ryan (00:40:12) - Question four. Maybe we need to rethink that question. Maybe we need to reword it. Maybe we need to make an adjustment to that. So you have access to that very detailed analytic package. So those are just a few best practices we could go deep deep deep deep deep. what I would say just to kind of bring it all together is that this is one of these things that on the surface sounds very simple. Oh, so I just throw a few questions on my website. In reality, there's a lot of nuance. There's a lot of science that goes behind it. There's a lot of best practices and you want to really work with. A combination of resources, technology and expertise that has gone deep in this space. Because while on the surface it may seem simple, like, you know, treating a dog or a cat for some ailment, how hard could it be? You know that there are 1,000,001 variations, and that depth of experience that you have, and the wisdom that you've accumulated along the way is what ultimately is going to yield the best outcome.

Ryan (00:41:08) - And if you want the best outcome, this is a strategy that is incredibly effective. It does take work to implement. It's not as simple as just close your eyes, snap your fingers and it's done. But when you do put it into practice, it's it can be transformative to any business.

Ryan (00:41:22) - Yes.

Brandon (00:41:23) - Definitely. And it definitely is an asset that will last a long time for you to. So you're building an asset that will do, do work for you and produce for a long time, which I think is what most people should be building in terms of marketing systems in place, because that produces a long, long return for you. Definitely. Well, the last question that I want to ask you, I know this might be a little in-depth here, but, with with veterinary medicine and veterinary marketing in general, you have two types of people that you're trying to reach, either behavioral, like they have a specific problem, they're looking for it or demographic based like people that it's so cool with Google Ads specifically, I think one of the biggest underused markets, to target or like very segmented, like they have people that buy raw dog food as an example.

Brandon (00:42:09) - You can target that level of detail, right. So you could get in all these nutritional things. In your experience, does it typically work better to have the behavioral type searches and kind of intent or demographic based when it comes to quizzes in general, or are they just is it too depends on too many, depends on things. Does that make sense?

Ryan (00:42:29) - It's a great question. And I think so. The targeting will inform the intent of that individual. And when we couple that with the outcome that we can provide someone. I think it largely informs the type of assessment based funnel or quiz funnel that makes the most sense. So for example, if someone is a raw dog food buyer and we know that about that individual, then perhaps there are a series of potential quiz funnels that could make sense for that specific traffic targeting. It could be, you know, is the raw dog food you're feeding your is the raw food you're feeding your dog helping or hurting their digestive system? Take this assessment to find out.

Ryan (00:43:15) - Now, you know, are there signs that you could be looking for someone who's searching for it? Is the raw dog food you're buying really healthier for your dog? Take this assessment to find out now. So those are examples of quiz funnels that are based on that sort of subcategory. if we look at, frappes a provide just another example as a contrast that.

Brandon (00:43:36) - Might be like a perfect one. I was just thinking, one of the segments that we don't use a lot, but is very accurate is people that will be adding a dog or a cat to the house in the next three months. So you, you could do, you know, is your house ready for your dog? Take this assessment type.

Ryan (00:43:54) - Of thing 1,000,000%, right. you know, is the type of dog you're considering really the right breed for you?

Ryan (00:44:00) - Yeah.

Ryan (00:44:01) - Is this, you know, what's the right breed for you and your family? Take the assessment to find out now. So that's a great way to build an audience of people that are maybe not in the market right now for veterinarian services, veterinary services.

Ryan (00:44:13) - Excuse me, but they could be in the market. And when you become the trusted advisor for someone when they're early in the journey, and you can help advise them and steer them in the right direction for breed advisory as an example, then who are they going to turn to when they bring that puppy or fostered or adopted older dog home later that week or month or year? Who are we going to? Who are they going to turn to when they need care?

Ryan (00:44:41) - Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Ryan (00:44:43) - So the perfect way to introduce yourself and establish yourself as a trusted authority, and that's the last thing that I'll say is one of the most effective ways to not only establish a relationship, but also build trust and demonstrate your expertise is by doing it in the form of an assessment like this. You don't have to talk about the thousands of patients that you've worked with, the thousands of clients that you've had, the years of experience, all of your certifications. You can instantly demonstrate your authority and expertise by asking thoughtful questions and advising people in a way that is unique to their specific circumstances.

Ryan (00:45:16) - So it is the it is arguably the most effective way to build instant trust and credibility with a stranger on the internet who may be a great potential customer for years of years, for years and years to come.

Brandon (00:45:28) - Yeah, absolutely. I think that that nails it for sure. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. I really appreciate it. Thank you for building bucket and, ask method. And, so where can people go? Obviously it's bucket IO but where where do you think the best place for people to learn more is? Yeah.

Ryan (00:45:43) - If you go to ask method com that'll take you to our, parent company website bucket. IO is our technology platform that we've been talking about here today. And if you want to follow what what what I'm doing, what I'm up to, what I'm sharing on social media, you can find me pretty much anywhere at ask, ask, ask Ryan Levesque. So ask Ryan and Beck and you'll find me on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and all the places that you might find someone and hear what we're up to and what we're talking about.

Ryan (00:46:12) - So, that's the best place brand. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me to be a guest on your show. And, look forward to doing it again sometime soon.

Brandon (00:46:21) - All right. Thanks, Ryan.