“Stop telling me interesting and useful things about myself,” said no one, ever.
In Stephen Walsh’s and Owen Fuller’s webinar: Why interactive engagement is driving content through the roof, they break down the hype over internet quizzes and give 6 practical tips for making your own quizzes.
Why would you want to make your own quizzes? Because, in essence, content marketing quizzes enable companies to communicate directly and interactively with an engaged and bemused audience.
Why Are We So Addicted To Internet Quizzes?
When you think of quizzes and tests, what do you think of? I personally associate them with my years of schooling. Some of them are fond memories, and others a bit scarring.
So, why are quizzes so attractive? Why are they taking over our social media feeds? The truth is that we’re not in school anymore. We don’t need to listen to boring lectures and take standardized tests like we used to.
The whole perception and general association people have of quizzes has been changed, and here’s why: Internet quizzes are fun, engaging, and help you learn more about yourself or show what you know.
If you don’t like the results or are embarrassed of your score, it doesn’t matter. It’s totally inconsequential, and if you want, totally anonymous. You share the results if and when you want to with absolutely no real-life repercussions. Some sort of magic is created when you take a quiz. Quizzes help to answer the fundamental question of: “Who am I?”
As Owen says: quizzes make you feel like “It’s all about me!” Who doesn’t like that? To have Owen tell it, Quizzes are a marketer’s secret weapon. It’s kind of like walking past a mirror and not taking a look at yourself. It takes a lot of self-control to resist clicking on links to quizzes that appear on your newsfeed.
According to Owen and BoomBox, Quizzes on average generate an 82% click conversion rate, a 78% completion rate, and a 14% lead conversion rate. According to Hubspot, quizzes are the #1 way to get attention and generate leads.
Here are 3 reasons why content creators should choose quizzes:
1. Social traffic:
People will never get sick of answering questions, learning about themselves, and challenging their friend’s quiz results. An example of a quiz driving social traffic can be found in the BuzzFeed color quiz, based on “The Dress,” that nearly broke the Internet. 6 months ago, CNBC reported that at one point more than 670,000 people simultaneously viewed the quiz, which also garnered 16 million hits in just 6 hours.
2. Qualified leads:
At the end of an effective quiz, it is essential to ask for the participant’s email address and display a compelling CTA. By using a quiz you gain not only a lead, but also rich data to help you know the person behind the screen.
3. Drive traffic to targeted offers:
Once content marketing quizzes are completed, try to funnel consumers to either a product page or landing page to promote potential offers.
A quiz that recently went viral, called “You’ve Been Framed,” featured an appealing CTA directing participants back to Zenni Optical’s website.
Ultimately, this combination of engaging quiz and attractive CTA generated over $1 million dollars of extra revenue for the company. In less than 6 months, the quiz got shared 516,000 times.
From Good To Great Quizzes: 6 Steps To Start Creating Content Marketing Quizzes
1. Research: In order to create an effective quiz, you need to do a lot of reserch to fingure out what topics work. Ask yourself:
- What content resonates with my audience?
- What are the most shared topics?
- What topicsare most controversial?
Buzzsumo is an excellent tool to get ideas and see what content performs best for a given topic. Use BuzzSumo to reach out to the right influencers for your topic in order to increase engagement and traffic. Just like Stephen said, you don’t need to start your research from scratch. If you’ve got evergreen (perpetually relevant and accurate) content, use it as source content for a quiz. If you’ve got a how-to post, checklist, tutorial, picture list, those are all great raw materials that you can use for quizzes.
2. Type & Title: Once you have your topic in mind then you need to choose if it’s a graded or outcome quiz. Graded quizzes have right or wrong answers, also known as trivia quizzes. Outcome quizzes reveal unknown aspects of your personality and preferences. Once you’ve got that, pick a fun title based on content that has already proven to resonate with your audience.
3. Call-to-Action: Work backwards from the results stage to create your CTA.
Let’s say someone finishes her quiz based on the TV show Friends, and she is most similar to the character Rachel. Create a CTA related to that outcome.
The moment the participants see their results, they decide if they will share this quiz, put their email address, or click on a link. Know your personas and connect your CTA to the outcome to have the best conversion rate.
4. Create a Quiz: Once you make it this far, the rest is easy! Try using a tool like Boombox or Qzzr to create world-class content marketing quizzes. All you really have to do is plug in the questions, add preferred pictures, and place embed code on your website
5. Share and promote: Don’t forget this last, yet crucial step. Put your quiz on your site and make sure to promote it through all of your social media channels. If there’s one place to start, Facebook is it. According to BuzzSumo, 82% of people are interested in clicking on a link to a quiz on their newsfeed.
6. Learn, Adapt, Improve: Always try to test new things and see how it changes your outcome.
Another tip Owen mentions is: Try to get a custom share image. He found that the share rate increased 3 times with a custom image, compared to a generic alternative!
Remember to keep all the data you’ve acquired through the quiz. With that information comes valuable insights on your target audience. Use those insights to refine future quizzes and informing on your general marketing and sales strategy.
After all that… Go make something remarkable!
by The Penguin Team on August 20, 2015
As a leading B2B digital marketing agency, We help B2B Technology Companies, enterprise software, and hardware companies increase brand awareness, reach more qualified leads and close more customers. Penguin Strategies is a Diamond Partner of HubSpot.
