4 Steps to Create a Quiz That Generates Leads

Everyone loves online quizzes. I’m sure you’ve found yourself engaging in the occasional BuzzFeed quiz from time to time (who doesn’t want to know which character from “Parks & Recreation” they are?), as well as non-BuzzFeed quizzes — like the kind that tell you what kind of writer you are, how to stay top of mind with your audience, or which publications your audience might be reading.

Quizzes can be fun, but what marketers might not know is how truly valuable quizzes can be to engage their audience and capture leads.

As co-founder of Interact Quiz Builder, a company that helps brands build quizzes to generate leads and build their email subscriber lists, I’ve helped create more than 30,000 quizzes and generate 4 million new email leads across a variety of industries. I’ve learned what it takes to create a quiz that not only attracts people and brings in new subscribers, but also sets marketers up to send personalized communications and drive sales.

Building a quiz that appeals to your audience isn’t all fun and games, though. It requires a lot of planning and creativity. To make the framework for building an effective quiz easy to understand, I’ve broken up the process into four parts:

Before you put your quiz together, you have to generate ideas and brainstorm titles. Once you have an idea, it’s time to formulate questions around it.

• Topic ideation: I’ve noticed one universal trend among title formats, and it’s that “Which (Blank) Are You?” consistently performs well. It applies directly to the individual taking the quiz, and it’s immediately personal and engaging. Using this title format as often as possible (when applicable) will help you put together the right questions and set up your quiz for engagement once it’s live.
• Quiz questions: The reason we love quizzes so much is because we all want to know more about ourselves. (In fact, we spend nearly 40 percent of our conversations talking about ourselves, not others.) There aren’t many traditional marketing tactics that let people talk about themselves — but quizzes do.The key to writing great quiz questions, then, is to ask them as if you are talking to quiz takers in person. Imagine sitting down with someone and asking her questions to find out more about her. What format, word choice, phrasing, etc., is going to get her to talk about herself the most openly? Let those insights guide your question-writing.

Lead capture is essential to keep in mind when putting together a quiz. Sure, quizzes without a lead gen focus can still help you gain insight into your audience, but don’t miss your chance to generate leads when the opportunity strikes.

Lead capture forms should come after the last question but before results are revealed so they serve as a gate. This is ideal because a good quiz should take about two minutes to complete. After that amount of time, because a quiz taker is invested in seeing her results, the email capture form isn’t typically seen as a huge barrier.

Still, you want to write copy that entices your audience to submit information. The key to a good email capture form on a quiz is to provide some incentive beyond simply seeing quiz results. Obviously, people want to see their results, but you should offer some additional value that’s relevant to the quiz. This could be an email course, a free whitepaper or e-book, or a consultation to discuss the quiz results.

This is the part of your quiz your audience has been waiting for. There’s a specific process for writing quiz outcomes that leads to more shares and a greater click-through rate, and I’ve broken it down into three primary elements:

1. A featured image that depicts the result: You want people to share their results, and a featured image that represents each result is more compelling than a generic (or nonexistent) one.
2. A short description: At least three or four sentences describing each result in a positive tone tends to yield the best reactions from audiences and encourage the most shares.
3. A call to action: This is your chance to capitalize on the curiosity the quiz will drum up and use it to drive people to further engage with your brand. In addition to an image and description, include a CTA to offer more resources that are relevant to the quiz taker’s result.

Once you have a new subscriber from your quiz, you’ll be able to follow up via email and reference the particular quiz outcome her or she received. Transactional emails that reference customer input, such as quiz results, get opened twice as much as campaign-based emails that aren’t personalized — and that makes sense. If you get an email that’s personalized and actually puts to use all the information you indicated in a quiz, you’re going to be much more likely to engage with that content — and the brand that sent it.

The first email you send immediately after someone takes a quiz should reiterate his or her outcome and introduce your brand. After that, work in the quiz results where applicable as you continue the drip campaign. I recommend referencing the outcome of the quiz in at least the first three emails you send to a new subscriber who took the quiz.

Quizzes can be a staple in your marketing arsenal — but only when they’re done right. Otherwise, they can be a waste of time. Follow these steps to set yourself up to engage audiences, generate leads, and fuel custom email communication with your own quizzes.