Online quizzes are a great way to present your content in a playful way. Quizzes are not only truly engaging, but they also allow you to collect valuable information about your audience
This includes both the insights derived from the quiz answers as well as contact information such as name and email address.
You’ve probably seen them pop-up in your Facebook-feed: “What does your favorite color reveal about your personality?”, “How well do you and your partner fit together?”, “What kind of marketer are you? Take the quiz!”. Quizzes are trending, BuzzSumo called them the “Content Marketing’s secret weapon.”. People like sharing them. Moreover, it is an easy way to repurpose existing content.
But did you know that a quiz is also a true lead-magnet? That is exactly the purpose of this article: explaining how quizzes are used for marketing and how you can start taking advantage of it.
A quiz as a type of interactive content
On WordPress alone, there are 56 million new blog articles published each month. In a world with that much content, it becomes a challenge to grab the attention of your audience. The attention span for written content is low: 55% of your visitors do not stay longer than 15 seconds on your site to read an article.
New types of content such as infographics or video content, allow you to reclaim the attention of your audience. A quiz works in the same way: because of the game-like qualities linked to a quiz, you will grab the attention of you audience faster and keep it longer.
Interaction and personalization
For content marketers, this is an opportunity to include two-way communication in your message. Personalization can be achieved by creating profiles that match with the results of a respondent, or by asking questions that direct your prospect to a specific product.
A good example of personalization is the quiz Brandeis University published to help students with the choice of their career “Which Career is Right for You”. Based on their responses, students get a suggestion for their future career opportunities and they are redirected to the most appropriate educational offerings. By helping respondents with their choice, the university manages to acquire an impressive 125 students per month.
This quiz is a good way to replace a series of landing pages that the student otherwise should navigate through.
Why such a quiz works
Everybody wants to know whether they are a shopaholic or which type of home fits their personality. It can be serious too: which training is most appropriate for you, given your current set of competencies.
We like to hear whether we are good at something, and especially how we compare to others. This self-serving bias is important in a personality quiz, because it helps to put people in certain categories. It gives a positive confirmation about themselves, they have something to recognize themselves in.
A quiz forces you – as content marketer – to split your content into more “bite-size” pieces, which make it less likely for users to quit. It also forces you to make your content more playful and conversational.
Getting insights into the needs of your prospects
A nice example is the “Find your home-quiz” below, from Module Housing. (FYI: this quiz was shortened as an example for this article – so your email will not be used. You can also look at the gif below)
With this quiz you can, as a potential customer, quickly find out which house is the most appropriate for you. Moreover, the answers are also useful for Module Housing. They can allocate the right sales person based on your type of house. This person already knows your preferences through the quiz and will be better positioned to help you realizing your housing project.
Unlike a static blog post, you cannot quickly scroll through a quiz and read the summary at the end. You ensure that people are guided in a ‘soft’ way through the complete process, with a reward at the end: they learn something about themselves. The result? People want to take such a quiz until the end
Hot leads
In the same way, Cloud Sherpas collects 4 new hot leads per day through a quiz on their homepage. Hot leads are highly-qualified leads, with an increased conversion probability. These leads indicate that they have an interest in the product by participating in the quiz. Because the quiz is about a niche subject (“How familiar are you with ServiceNow?”), Cloud Sherpas can categorize the respondents and their needs based on their knowledge about the services.
So quizzes are not only a type of interactive content, they also give you the opportunity to get better insights about the different segments in your audience.
How to collect leads with a quiz?
With the current technology and tools, there is no excuse for boring quizzes or questionnaires! In almost all quiz tools, there are useful features to make your life easier. Moreover, these tools are affordable and do not require technical knowledge to set up a great-looking quiz.
Below are a few tips you can apply to start collecting leads using quizzes.
1. Give the necessary attention to design
Ensure your design is attractive, without taking away the attention of your quiz. No problem if you are not a designer: most of the online tools offer great-looking templates that you can adapt with your logo and colors.
2. Include multimedia
If you add pictures, gifs or even an explainer video, the experience is better and it becomes more likely that people will take the quiz all the way to the end.
3. Have a conversation
Keep it short and write in a conversational tone by using short sentences and words like ‘you’ and ‘we’. A quiz or assessment can be considered as a conversation, rather than an article where there is only one-way communication.
If you have a longer quiz, do not hesitate to include some encouraging words when the respondent is halfway, for example: “Great job! You are half way – you will get your results in 55 seconds: that’s how long it takes to get from here to the end in average 😉”
4. Keep the attention with different question types
By combining different question types, such as multiple-choice, picture choice or even emoji questions, you keep the attention. The respondent will be less likely to quickly click through the quiz because there is something new every time.
Those were the basics, use following tips to go one step further
5. Use advanced features and take personalization to a next level
Using functionalities such as piping or skip logic, you can guide respondents through their own path in the quiz. It feels like the quiz reacts on your answers and gives a highly personalized experience.
Piping allows using the answers a person gave in subsequent questions or screens. Below GIF shows how it works:
Skip logic ensures that the respondent only gets relevant questions. Depending on the answer that you give, you are directed to different questions. Making the quiz both shorter, more efficient and more personalized.
6. Give something (and it doesn’t have to cost you anything!)
Your reader will perceive your content as more valuable if you give something back. A gift does not need to have monetary value. What works as well: a coupon with a discount, specific information (a comparison of the respondent’s result with a benchmark works very well) or access to specific extra content.
Take a moment to look back at the example of Module Housing. At the end of the quiz, you find out which home suits you best. But in addition, the potential customers receive a full package of additional information and insights via email. All without having to have a face-to-face conversation with a sales representative. Perfect!
If you make it clear for the reader that they will get valuable insights, they will be more willing to provide responses and contact information. You can communicate at the beginning of the quiz that these insights will be relevant for the respondent, even when they decide not to buy your product.
7. Think about how you will ask for the e-mail
It can be as simple as adding a text box to fill in your e-mail. You will increase the number of emails you collect if you consider to:
- Ask the email at the end of the quiz, just before revealing the score
- Communicate that you will use the e-mail to send them valuable insights – this can even be a personalized PDF report
- Clearly indicate that you will not spam and that they can unsubscribe at any time
You have the choice to use the e-mail only to send the results of the quiz, or to use it for subsequent communication (e.g. newsletter) as well. The latter requires a specific opt-in checkbox.
Get started now!
With a quiz, you will make your blog or homepage more attractive, your content becomes more interactive and you will have an additional way to generate new leads! So, there is no better moment to get started than now!
Thanks to Stefan Debois for sharing their advice and opinion in this post. Stefan Debois is the founder and CEO of Survey Anyplace, an online software tool to create engaging surveys, quizzes and assessments. After a 15+ years career in consulting and enterprise software, Stefan founded Survey Anyplace in 2012 with a mission to free the world from boring surveys and let you collect better data!