Written by Tim Davidson
If you’re part of the blogging community or even if you’ve been to pretty much any blog in 2020, you’ll understand that everyone is after your email address. A lot of the tactics that modern websites use to convince you to hand your email address over are… quite frankly annoying. Pop Ups, email newsletters forms, in-you-face-reminders, the list goes on. Luckily there’s a better, less intrusive way; quizzes. In this article we’re going to outline why quizzes are so good for lead generation.
Before we get into why quizzes are good for lead generation, I wanted to point out marketing tactics like popups, newsletter forms, and free downloadables can all be effective. They can also be used in a subtle way that doesn’t rub your readers the wrong way, but it’s a fine line.
Quizzes on the other hand offer two-way interaction. You’re giving the reader a chance to participate in something fun that gives them something back. This is a critical difference between quizzes and most traditional opt-in tactics.
Not sold? Think I’m crazy? No problem – I’m going to explain why I’m not and why I’m right.
Here are the reasons why quizzes are the champions of lead generation:
1. People struggle to look internally for self assessment
It’s no secret that people look to others to see if what they’re doing is right. While we might think we understand ourselves, we’re always looking to others for their interpretation and confirmation.
A great example of this effect is horoscopes. They are hugely popular because they reaffirm values, personal traits, and even past experiences.
Quizzes achieve the same effect, by asking respondents personal questions and then giving them an outcome which tells them something about who they are.
2. We’ve been trained to see test and quizzes as authoritative
If you’re lucky, like me, you have the opportunity to go through 13 (or even more) years of school as a kid. During that time you would have completed a number of assessments, tests and quizzes.
The tests would have told you a lot about where your strengths lay. They also trained you to see the outcomes of assessments as a kind of authority. They were essentially “the law”.
You’re not alone. Almost everyone went through this process, and now we all treat the results of quizzes with some unscrupulous belief. Whatever the results are, they’re probably right because that’s what we’ve been trained to believe.
…And the person that delivered the quiz is automatically a position of authority.
3. Social media has taught us to share positive social reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is something we all seek at a very basic level. It’s not widely publicized, but a lot of social media platforms are designed specifically to harness this behavior.
Getting a lot of “like”, “retweets”, “karma” or any other positive reinforcement on social media motivates us to continue sharing that content.
This works similarly for quizzes. A positive quiz outcome is received, the recipient wants to share (or more accurately “show off”) this result. This is a critical ingredient in the potential virality of quizzes.
4. Organic sharing is critical to catch algorithm “waves”
Once quiz respondents start sharing their quizzes on social media, it tells that platform that the content is worth passing around. Social media platforms are engineered to push the most engaging content to the top of the feed and they do this based on hundreds of different data points. One of the most important is re-sharing or engagement like comments and likes.
This is great news for your quiz. If it’s compelling enough for people to share their results, chances are it will get noticed by the social media algorithm that decides what posts are shown, and be exposed to a larger audience.
People are curious
If your friend scored “sausage dog” on the “what kind of dog are you?” quiz and you were a huge dog enthusiast it’s not hard to see how you would be curious about your own result.
In general people are curious creatures and if there’s potentially something cool to discover at the end of an adventure, like a quiz, they’ll be on board.
They offer a low cost per click
All of the above reasons make the perfect candidate for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. PPC ads work on an auction system where the advertiser bids on how much they’ll pay for a click. The social media platform then shows their ad to a set number of people in an attempt to get them clicking.
This equation can be unbalanced in the favor of the advertiser if the post is so compelling that users want to share the post with their friends. This organic sharing increases the “free” impressions and clicks received by the ad.
It’s worth noting that Facebook and a few of the other big advertising platforms have made specific updates to dampen this effect over the past few years, but it’s still achievable to some extent.
They can be a smooth funnel initiator
Pop-ups and other disruptive lead gathering tools can frustrate users. While they’re somewhat effective, they don’t kick a new relationship off on the right foot.
Quizzes on the other hand give your users something back rather than just taking. The user trades their email address for a fun, interactive experience where they learn something about themselves. They also now see you, the quiz master, as an authority. This means you’ve already opened the door for the next step of communication.
If you’re using a platform like Quizpipe, you can integrate your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool so an email campaign or marketing funnel will initiate as soon as a new user finishes their quiz!
Conclusion
Hopefully by now you agree with me that quizzes are good for lead generation. The main reasons they’re so effective are rooted in real psychology. But they also leverage well tested and popular marketing approaches like funnels and email marketing.
If you’re ready to give a quiz a try but you need a bit more information on how to get started, head over to the Quizpipe blog and read up on a few of their excellent guides!
