By JP Misenas, {grow} Community Member
Inquisitive thinking is what spurs humans to find answers to questions, even if these questions have little to do with their everyday lives.
You’ve seen them before. Questions like “How much do you really know about movies?” “What kind of pizza topping are you?” or “Which celebrity are you most similar to?”
These catchy titles are the start of a beautiful relationship that quizzes can form with your audiences. And it’s for that specific reason that marketers are learning to use quizzes successfully as an outreach technique.
With a demand for content that actually converts, a well-produced quiz can obtain opt-in rates north of 50% and enhanced lead generation.
If you incorporate these quizzes into social media, you’ll increase the size of the audience you’re targeting, doubling the amount of leads you obtain.
Let’s go over three practical ways to generate leads using quizzes. I’ll even throw in real-life examples to support each method in an effort to help marketers formulate ideas.
If you’re sold on the idea, let’s jump right in.
1. Personalize your website and ask for a lead in return.
Prospective consumers will always have questions for marketers like “Which (blank) should I buy?,” “What (blank) should I get?,” and “Which (blank) do I need?”
When it comes to marketers, the answers to these questions are worth trading for someone’s contact information. A small price to pay for a service meant to enlighten. (Although research shows that consumers are becoming increasingly wary of this trade-off for personal information).
Here’s an example from Ruby & Duke and a quiz titled “How Much of a Superstar Dog Parent Are You?”
Ruby & Duke is a company that sends out a monthly box of random goodies for pets. When an audience of dog-owners can’t decide which product to buy for their canine companion, these boxes offer a simple solution.
When it comes to their quiz, their choice of title/subject was an obvious one. Because of the positive phrasing of the title, the word “superstar” makes quiz-takers believe that no matter what the outcome, the kind of dog parent they are will still be a favorable one. Akey idea behind the psychology of quizzes is to reward the participant in way that will make them share the content.
It’s a good rule of thumb to keep quizzes short, simple and relevant to their topic. In this example, the Ruby & Duke quiz consisted of nine simple questions made up entirely of images.
Visual representation plays a major role with audience engagement. Providing images as answers gives quiz-takers relatable material to work with. Establishing this kind of a connection will develop a comfort level that will tie-in with the end result of the quiz.
Of course it should go without saying that you need to OWN your images for a quiz like this.
The more comfortable the quiz-taker is, the more likely that they’ll disregard the fact that we’re trading their results for their information. Even if we’re just asking for their email address, gating a quiz with a lead capture form enables marketers to obtain highly relevant leads.
Strategically placing a lead capture form right before revealing their results makes the participant more likely to give up their information. The reasoning behind this is simple: someone that just answered questions to get results wouldn’t abandon it after all of the work they’ve put into it. In this example, Ruby & Duke collected 9,448 potential leads.
The key component to creating a quiz of this nature is to know your customers. What is it that they want to know? Are they willing to give up their contact information to get an answer?
After completing the quiz, participants are informed of the kind of dog parent they are. Adding links to share their results to Facebook and Twitter helps get the quiz on a social media platform, increasing its exposure.
2. Create a knowledge test within your content.
Our next example comes from Pin Cancer, with their quiz titled “How Well Do You Know Team USA?”
Pin Cancer is a non-profit organization that sponsors pledges based on a wrestler or team’s wins, pins, or takedowns to fight cancer. The title of the quiz is fitting for their organization and appeals to a sense of patriotism as it targets a US audience.
The quiz itself is only made up of 8 simple questions, but Pin Cancer makes sure that they use images relevant to their topic. Each question is simple (ie: “Which Team USA Wrestler Is This?”) drawn from the information that Pin Cancer provides on their site.
Just like the previous example, Pin Cancer also gated their quiz with a lead capture form. Let’s take a closer look:
Most lead capture forms ask for email address at minimum. Others go as far as asking for first/last name and maybe even a phone number.
Submitting information automatically opts quiz-takers in to an email subscription. Of course a best practice is to inform the participant that they are opting-in to future, infrequent messages.
Some opt-ins include addtional incentives to make quiz-takers feel better about trading in their information. Some of these incentives include coupons, discounts, an entry into a contest, or even something as simple as a weekly newsletter.
In total, Pin Cancer has gathered more than 4,000 leads.
If you want to reproduce this type of quiz, identify highly informational pages on your site that get a lot of traffic, perhaps your landing page.
3. Re-purpose past successes
With the constant creation of content, marketers will naturally create items that will be more popular than others. Another way to use quizzes to generate leads would be to re-purpose your most popular existing content.
With the amount of attention that content on the Amerman Family Foundation Dog Therapy Program gets, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles created a quiz titled “Which Therapy Dog Are You?”
CHLA chose a title fitting for their Dog Therapy Program, and appealing images, including a picture of a dog wearing a bandana sporting the organization’s name.
A notable difference between CHLA’s quiz and the previous two would be their choice of incentive. As you can see in the illustration above, participating in the quiz results in a $1 donation to the Helping Hands Fund.
Not only are quiz takers encouraged to take the quiz for fun, but their participation also benefits a good cause. That kind of incentive is a great way to get the quiz circulating among the community.
CHLA placed a lead capture form at the end and asked for a minimum amount of information. They also inform participants that when they opt-in they’ll receive email updates, including ways to help children. The good thing is, they remind quiz-takers that they can opt-out at any time.
Within three weeks, Children’s Hospital LA generated 30,450 leads, averaging about 10,000 leads per week.
To produce a quiz just like this one, follow these three steps:
- Identify your top-performing posts by viewing your Google Analytics traffic stats.
- Create a quiz with a group of your top posts as the basis for your quiz results.
- Add a lead generation form that is relevant to the topic of the quiz.
When your job relies on bringing a constant stream of fresh leads, finding innovative ways to get opt-ins is a must.
Hopefully the examples in this article sparked some ideas for you. Quizzes can truly open up a brand new stream of leads for your business as long as you have a bit of creativity and the right direction.
JP Misenas is the content marketing director and audio/visual technician/engineer of Interact, a place for creating entertaining and engaging quizzes that generate email leads. He writes about innovative ways to connect with customers and to build professional long-lasting relationships with them.
