Ever take the Buzzfeed “What emoji are you” or “The Sorting House Quiz” to know if you’d be placed in the  Gryffindor or Slytherin Hogwarts house? Ok, maybe you aren’t obsessed with emojis or Harry Potter like me, but I bet you know exactly what I’m talking about or have at minimal seen your friends share their “what kind of _____ are you?” results on social media.

Quizzes one of the most engaging forms of marketing and one of the most underutilized strategies in small businesses. So today, I’m going to teach you these three things so you have another marketing weapon in that arsenal of yours:

1. Why you should use a quiz in your marketing strategy
2. How to use a quiz in your marketing strategy
3. Tips for quiz management and success

 

Why you should use a quiz in your marketing strategy

1. They’re so engaging they make history. Seriously, they’re interactive and so much fun for readers that the most read story on the New York Times in 2013 wasn’t even a story, it was a quiz. True Story: A “How Ya’ll, Youse, and You guys Talk” quiz that predicts where you’re from based on how you respond had more readers than the Obama inauguration and Pope resignation! People love to learn about themselves so give them some food for thought while they’re on your page and ask them to answer something about themselves.
2. It’s another way to grow your email list. When you run out of download ideas or whether you’re just looking for a new strategy to test, a quiz will be a sure fire way to get your audience engaged and signed up- eager to see those results! And we all know the power of the coveted email list so drop a form or link to your quiz  in your sidebar or make a pop up for your site.
3. It’s basically like a free survey for your audience. It provides insight to your audience that your business Instagram and Google analytics account can’t. Quiz your audience on questions you need to know and more importantly, that you can help them with. If you’re a web designer you could ask “What design style suits your brand?”. Then you have the opportunity to a) learn what types of readers are coming to your site and b) can cater an email series to drive them to purchase a template or custom service that suits their exact style.

 

How to use a marketing quiz in your strategy

• Ask questions you need to know for your business. Pick a category to start: Skill or Personality.
  • Skill quizzes test how much the user knows about a topic or what they’re currently capable of. This would be helpful for info-preneurs looking to gauge how much info users already know about a topic if they plan to pitch them something like an educational series.  
  • Personality Quizzes on the other hand are more questions geared toward you guessed it, personalities. For example, say you own a clothing shop, you could quiz users to find their signature style and pair customized recommendations just for them in their inbox after. #winning
• Make sure you include a form to capture their email address. You can even offer an additional incentive at the end like “Confirm your email address so we can email you the results and our free guide to ________. We’ll also send you exclusive updates about _____.” Just keep it crystal clear so you don’t run into wasted time and effort with a bunch of unsubs and unengaged readers.
• Try it in your paid social media ads. Play with a variety of quiz types to see which one converts more qualified leads for you.
• Use it in your social platform captions. Everyone is always telling us to engage with our audience at the end of a post so why not pose your quiz as a link-in-bio caption and opportunity while you’re at it?
• Test it in your welcome series email, getting started, or about page to learn more about your user. These areas are great for introducing a few options for your user’s first step to get them moving in the right direction.
• Try it on your site as a pop-up, side bar, footer, or listed as free resource if you a page for that. Alternate between your download offers and play with site pages and positioning to see if it outperforms another offer.
• Put it on your “start here” page if you have one so you can point them in the best direction on what their next steps should be to engage with your site.

Tips for quiz management and success:

• Find a way to automate the email capture process. You can google plenty of free quiz creators but most don’t connect directly to your email server like mailchimp or convertkit which means all the email addresses you’ll gather need to be manually entered into your system.  However, most of them do offer connections with services like Zapier that can easily setup yourself to pass the emails from your quiz to your email system, so don’t fret! Also if your list is small, give it a whirl with something as simple as Google Forms and just manually enter the email addresses until you get a better feel for if you need to automation before investing in it.
• Make it pretty. Use visuals that are commonly used in your brand, maintain the same brand voice in your copy, and if time allows try a free tool like Typeform that allows you to make free, visually appealing quizzes. If you can swing a customized approach, reach out to your website developer for a more custom form and email integration system that pairs perfectly with your website.
• Customize your sales funnel sequence according to the reader’s results. Send custom messages to your reader based on their results for increased engagement (cough, sales). Like how Amazon sends you a “you might like” based on your browsing history? Do the same thing with your quiz results. Tell your users what they may like, how it can help them, and how they can buy. Cha-ching.
• Make them shareable. Include shareable links to social media platforms to encourage others to take the quiz.

And there you have it. If you want more detail on quiz creation, content, or management or to just pick my brain on a custom quiz idea just for you…you can snag your free mentor session right here. I’m yours for 15 minutes, first-come, first-served. 

Tell me, have you given quizzes a whirl yet? If so, what kind?? If not, why not??