It’s no longer news: a quiz is a type of content. Content marketers’ obsession with blogging, which a 2018 research shows 79% of them use, is one reason why you should consider other forms of content. Or if you’re like me and you don’t plan to stop blogging, but wish to shake things up a bit every now and then, a quiz is a type of content you should use.
Apart from adding variety to your content, there’s some data behind why a quiz is a valuable type of content.
- A quiz brought Zenni Optical over $1 million in revenue.
- A quiz can get as high as a 64% conversion rate.
- Quizzes generally have an 81% completion rate (which I’d bet is a higher rate than the number of people who read a blog post to the end)
I’m pretty sure you don’t need further convincing now. And the good news is, it’s easy to create and wow your audience with quizzes. Just do these things right:
1. Choose the right title and type of quiz
When creating titles or headlines, there are several templates you can use. Some examples include:
- Titles for knowledge quizzes: Knowledge powers a better world. And humans are always seeking knowledge. That’s why marketers create blogs in the first place. Let your quiz title tell participants they’ll learn without the pressure of grades or a classroom and they’ll happily take the quiz. Examples of such titles include:
How Well Do You Know X?
Do You Actually Know X?
Do You Really Know How X Affects Y?
How Much Do You Know About X?
Myths and Facts About X
The Truth About X
The list goes on. Here are some examples from WebMD’s collection of Diabetes Quizzes.
You know the one, and chances are, you’ve taken a personality quiz before. Here’s an example from Buzzfeed.
Taking the quiz will tell you which state you belong in.
And another from this site you’re reading.
Take this quiz to discover what type of digital marketer you are.
Those titles arouse curiosity, and even though people may not finish your quiz – remember I mentioned earlier that quizzes have an 81% completion rate – they’ll click through to start it. Some templates include:
Perform Y and I’ll Tell You What Type of X You Are
Do You Know What Type of X You Are?
Design an X and We’ll Tell You What Type of Y You Are
What Type of X Are You?
Did you see what I did there with the subheads about creating quiz titles? You may scroll up again but I italicized some words. They’re basically the two types of quizzes we have.
- Personality quizzes
- Knowledge quizzes
Sites like Buzzfeed or WebMD have a wide variety of quizzes, so you can get some inspiration from their quizzes section for help with choosing your quiz title. Additionally, check where most of their traffic comes from especially if they’re in your niche, as this will enhance your quiz distribution efforts later. Always remember that 80% of readers read just the headline to decide whether your content is something worth devouring or not.
2. Ask the right questions
For quizzes, the questions and their possible answers or options are the main content and they should live up to the promise of the headline. Otherwise, your quiz completion rate will drop. Sometimes I find myself starting a quiz and stopping before I get to the end because the questions are too difficult or take too long to answer.
It’s more important because these days, the average human attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish. Keep the following in mind when preparing questions for your quiz.
- Make the questions short enough to understand, but just long enough so that a participant doesn’t need to reread several times to decipher how to answer.
- Inject your site’s tone of voice in the questions. It helps to prep the audience for what to expect in future content from your brand.
- Depending on the type of quiz, i.e specifically knowledge quizzes, prepare answers so participants can see their performance and/or the right answer as they progress. It can help to keep them motivated to complete the quiz. Here’s an example from this brain quiz on WebMD.
- Avoid wordiness whenever possible. It’s respectful of participants’ time. There are plenty of ways this question and the options can be rephrased, but this is just short and sweet.
- Include images at your discretion. Visuals are great but don’t let them distract participants from the quiz.
Remember, your quiz should have 6 to 11 questions that will take 2-4 minutes at most to answer. In fact, depending on your audience, 4 minutes might be overkill and 2-3 minutes is a sweet spot. You’ll gain more insight when you perform a/b testing.
3. Offer relevant incentives
Sure, the promise of knowledge or discovery in your headline might be enough to lure people to take your quiz – this is another reason why the right topic and headline will do wonders for you. However, it’s often not enough, and you’ll need to add additional incentives to encourage your audience to take the quiz.
Incentives you can use include an ebook, a free report, or a giveaway. On Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich, a quiz welcomes you when you get to his homepage.
Notice that he offers a free custom report to people who take and complete the quiz. “Custom” is perfect because at the end of the quiz, the report is generated based on your answers. That means, whatever your earning potential, there’s a free report for you.
Knowing how much Ramit tests and discards what’s not working for him ruthlessly, I believe that the presence of that quiz on his homepage is a testament to the fact that it works.
As marketers, quizzes are a good way to grow your email list. Sometimes people offer incentives like iPads or iPhones for their quizzes even though it’s completely unrelated to their business.
Offer the appropriate incentive to ensure that the people who sign up to your list are not there solely for a chance to win an iPad but because they’ll love to hear from you again in future.
4. Nurture participants
At the end of the quiz, you can provide sharing options for people to share their results or the quiz on social media. WebMD does this perfectly – you can share the quiz and/or your quiz result on social media.
Not a bad score, but I should do better next time
At the end of Ramit’s quiz, there’s a form where you sign up to receive your custom report and he tells you upfront that you’ll receive a few emails from him each week.
IWTYTBR lead capture form as it appears on mobile
Be honest with participants and let them know that you’ll send other emails their way after you’ve sent them the incentive they signed up for when they took their quiz. Don’t skimp on this, as it can also save you from legal and financial troubles in the future in light of Europe’s new GDPR laws.
Also, apart from following email design basics like keeping things minimal, using responsive templates, and even testing your emails on various devices and browsers, here are other tips for nurturing these newcomers to your email list:
- Thank them for taking your quiz. It’s best if you send them an email to confirm their subscription first before you send the thank you email. It will remind them that they opted in to, and they’re willing to receive an email from you. It also sets the tone for subsequent emails.
- Send case studies and testimonials of people who were like them to show how your product or service helped them.
- Convert them into paying customers. Use an email copywriter or your email copywriting expertise to sell your products and services.
Enhance your marketing efforts
Quizzes will not fix all your marketing problems. But if you want to gain more leads, integrate quizzes into your content strategy. Be ready to nurture them and lead them down the sales funnel.
Or you can create them for fun like WebMD does. That will increase engagement with your audience. Either way, quizzes are beneficial beyond self-serving purposes. Use them.
Guest author: Vikas Agrawal is a start-up Investor & co-founder of the Infographic design agency Infobrandz that offers creative and premium visual content solutions to medium to large companies. Content created by Infobrandz are loved, shared & can be found all over the internet on high authority platforms like HuffingtonPost, Businessinsider, Forbes , Tech.co & EliteDaily.