Lead quizzes – advanced & awesome technique to get MOAR leads

Lead quizzes I’m talking about is a tool for business to involve users into a dialog.

NOTE: there is a whole segment of social & game quizzes like ‘find who you are in Game Of Thrones” (hello Buzzfeed). They’ve been trendy a while ago and aimed at the entertainment segment. In this article, I concentrate on more business wise lead generation.

Quizzes are an impressive (and quite advanced) lead generation technique in digital marketing. They are in demand when the decision cycle is long:

• In B2C with a high average order value: real estate companies, car dealers, luxury shops, etc. That’s where the price is high, and one cannot be impulsive or make a decision just by answering a single question. If your client is a private individual, lagging with a choice — a quiz should help them.
• In B2C with low/medium average order value and a highly tense decision-making process. That’s when customers are picky, demanding and cautious about the decision they make. It includes cases like paying for baby stuff, apartment renovation or organizing events (like weddings, for example). People usually start deciding on things like that long before they’ll have to pay and they think carefully.
• In the B2B service industry, for example, SMM, SEO, IT-outsourcing, CRM implementation, ERP, consulting, recruiting и other industries, where designing a solution for a particular task is always tricky. Implementing a quiz at an early stage of the funnel allows to qualify potential clients and guide them to a specific offer in an efficient way (e.g., product recommendations based on questionnaire).

In some instances, it is a tool for segmenting them right away (i.e., getting qualified leads). Quizzes are not a direct sale tool and therefore quiz results in ina nice Return on Investment (ROI). So let’s dive into some details.

This guide (duh) is structured as follows:

1. Fundamentals
2. Examples & case studies (to ignite your thought process)
3. How to build them
4. How to market it to potentials customers

1. Fundamentals

What are lead quizzes in a nutshell?

A quiz is a multi-step lead capture form that allows you to conduct a survey and get the necessary information about the client in an easy-to-play form. Quizzes are popular among users as they are easy to fill and don’t take a lot of time.

A critical differentiation point compared to every day lead capture forms is some value user gets straight away upon completion.

• Not so good: we will be in touch shortly
• Okay: here is an approximate price bracket. We can send you a PDF brief to email.
• Better: here is a price bracket, leave your contact details so our specialist can reach out with a detailed price breakdown

Inspiration

1. I like what Hubspot does with lead quizzes, e.g., here is “blog posts idea generator.”
2. Then, why spend so many words here if I didn’t use lead quizzes myself? Here is the Website Costs Calculator(s) we promote to those interested in creating web-based projects of all sorts.
3. Also, maybe google something like “quiz templates” to spark your imagination

2. Examples & case studies

Multi-Step Form

Let’s take a look at the use of the quiz in the company designing nursery rooms. The “Pass Test” button was implemented. The result is an increase in the conversion of the website from 3.1% to 8.9%. The landing page constructor used as a tool for creating a quiz.

The number of steps and forms to fill depends on the user. You provide them with all the necessary data — clear visual images, lists of products, materials, etc. The test is more like a calculator in which the client chooses:

• Style of the future room — color palettes, etc.
• Preferred furniture set,
• materials,
• furniture brand,
• extra options: safety corners, rounded furniture geometry, furniture fixed in place, etc.

Contact information is the final step because psychologically most people are willing to provide personal data only after passing the test.

Based on the information received, the company can make a full commercial offer and relieve clients of additional questions during further communication.

Quiz as a way to attract (and convert) leads

This method is unusual. Despite all the efficiency, there’s no advertising aspect to it. During the test users better understand what they want.

Test: “What colors of the room are right for you?”. The trick is that people on social networks do not react to such tests as an ad, but pay attention to it in case they have a problem with choice.

That one-page test based on the analysis of opinions of professional psychologists on how different types of people perceive color. During the test, users will provide answers to common questions and address specific issues:

• variants of bathroom color palette;
• size of the bathroom;
• ages of residents (are there any kids or senior citizens);
• the amount of time they usually spend in the bathroom;
• bathroom type — with or without a toilet, bidet included, etc.;
• temperament;
• emotions, you want to feel;
• contact info.

The quiz was presented on Instagram and Facebook, targeted at women’s audience and contained a cross-cutting interest related to repair, design, bathroom tiles, and ceramic tiles.

The launch of advertising was quite successful:

• CPC — 18 cents,
• lead generation — 30,5% (around 4% before the quiz),
• CPL — 60 cents,
• CAC — $6.5 with an average order value of $120.

3. How to create lead quizzes

Time to figure out something to capture leads, right?

There are some SaaS services like leadquizzes.com (14-day free trial) offering you to do the job, but I’d stay with either

• custom coding (a bit biased statement as I run web studio, huh?)
• or some mix of 3rd party services like Typeform linked to your CRM (dig in Zapier if you have some unusual favors & certainly do check our custom CRM solution if you don’t have such system yet)

Whatever option you choose I recommend directing potential quiz takers to quiz dedicated landing page.

4. Marketing

No need to dive into acquisition channels, as there are plenty of guides written already (e.g., Paid digital advertising channels for business). Here is a quick recap:

• Facebook ads and other social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.)
• Reddit ads
• AdWords (Google Ads now) works for long term asset thinking
• Email marketing via paying some established media & bloggers for the opportunity to market your quiz to their email list and auditory in general
• Use owned media (e.g., blog) and site for promotion. Via direct embed or just a direction (CTAs)
• Retargeting for those who already interacted with your brand

Some less obvious things:

How to collect semantics for quizzes and how to work with it

Advertising quizzes are better run in the context-media networks like Google Display Network (GDN). Search advertising suits more specific content, which is not the case with quizzes. They are in a more blurred upper part of the funnel. In the search results on commodity requests, the user expects to see specific product offers with the price, not an ad saying “Find out the right interior for your bathroom.”

How to select target oriented semantics

Sometimes it is not that difficult. For example, selling interior items for the bathroom, you choose keywords such as “bathroom repair,” “bathroom decoration,” etc. But there is more than one case where the use of direct demand-oriented keywords is not enough. Then it is necessary to focus not on demand (“find/choose a product”) but on the audience itself.

An example from one real case: advertising of one Business Academy, should be targeted not just directly (like “MBA courses”), but also on the audience. The improvement of managerial skills is useful to any businessman. Thus the target can be set way broader: keywords like “wholesale clothing” or “mobile acquiring” may be signs of B2B segment. So such an entrepreneur may not be looking for courses now, but adequately respond to a quiz like “Know your type: action or result?“ and eventually move on to the study the business education market.

So targeting the audience means aiming not at specific needs, but at those who may have such requirements.

The quiz and the semantics are linked together. The optimal option is to connect your quiz with your best offer. For example, if you sell houses of timber up to 100 square meters — and this is your most attractive offer now, you need to do a quiz aiming at those who are going to buy a house of this type or may want to in the future. You select the audience, study its needs related to your product and form a list of questions related to these needs.

The quiz should be related to the audience. A campaign aimed at selling jewelry to men will contain one quiz and will be set to one semantics. The campaign, specifically targeting women, will include other semantics, and the quiz will be related to concerns of women. The selection of keywords in both cases may not be linked directly to jewelry. It is enough to capture the interests of the participants.

How to organize an advertising campaign for a quiz

Mechanics of the organization:

• Collect keywords;
• Segment keywords by client categories (especially if you select semantics targeting the audience itself and not their specific issues). Next, you need to segment requests according to the interests of each audience group.
• Develop interactive quizzes according to the information obtained from the previous two steps. Compile a list of questions for each group of clients.
• Test in advertising networks.
• Test in GDN.
• Test graphics content in GDN.
• Based on test results pick the most effective ads and quizzes.

How to personalize quizzes and increase conversion

As mentioned above, one of the essential points is the segmentation of semantics. The more closely the problem of the potential client is related to the questions in the quiz, the stronger the client involvement will be.

The next step is segmentation of quizzes content depending on the semantics.

The content of the quiz must also be submitted according to user data: geography, time zone and time of day, request, return (whether the customer is familiar with the brand or is it the first encounter), and the mainline — social networks, communities, mailings, etc. Build interactive quizzes adjusting them, according to what you know about the client.

Semantics better be split as accurately as possible to make different quizzes as efficient.

For example, you can make different variants of a quiz for day and night time. Set them up for various advertising campaigns (one will work during the day, the other at night). That can help reach the audience more effectively: people are the office during the day, and at night they are busy with personal life.

Do not ask users complicated questions – just above average is okay. Each of the items must have from 3 to 5 answers to choose. However, the choice and the questions should not be primitive either. It should all be easily digestible. Most users are not willing to spend too much time studying a test or a survey carefully. Remember people perceive with their eyes, so it should be readable and easily perceptible.

It is required to test quizzes on focus-groups. You can at least check quizzes on acquaintances, relatives, colleagues, etc.

As an additional source of client attraction, you can use all kinds of discount coupons and bonuses for those who play quizzes. One of the methods — unobtrusive or even direct request to share the quiz with friends and subscribers, for example, “Hit the like button and get a discount!”.

Nurture a visitor who passed a quiz with retargeting ads, loyalty programs, content and selling newsletters.

Potential challenges & common pitfalls

• Lead-Overload. Often people, who have a problem are unable to pay to solve it. So the sales department should have two operating divisions: one — to work with hot leads, the other — to work on nurturing “cold” leads.
• Any potential client should always stay in the informational field of your ad campaign (i.e., go through multiple touch points)
• Content-based interaction with clients after the quiz is a way to stimulate them to make a purchase eventually.
• Have a clear CTA at the end of the quiz worked out to direct users further in your sales funnel
• If you collect emails – add an opt-in checkbox to get permission for further marketing automation via email (permission-based marketing is an excellent thing, huh?)
• Consider adding a more straightforward way to contact you (e.g., placing a phone number) for those who are more ready to convert than you expected
• If you get a substantial amount of leads –
  • CRM is a vital part of closing deals and not losing new leads
  • work through hypothesis on conversion improvement and test them (a\b test)

To sum it up on lead quizzes

Quizzes do not impose responsibility on users. A potential client enters the sales funnel and is not required to make any purchase decision.

When the price is too high, and making is decision is difficult, it is much easier for a user to play a game about buying an expensive thing than actually to buy it. Costly choices are not instant. And quizzes make it easy for a user to take the first step. Let’s play a game of “What will my new apartment look like?”. You start the selection process without asking much from them.

It is not necessary to prepare a commercial offer immediately after the client has passed the quiz and left his contact details. The client should receive a content newsletter, start “catching up” on social networks and get used to being a future partner who needs your particular services. That is how the informational eco-system of the brand built around an individual.

Understand that your primary goal is establishing the initial contact with the customer. Your goal is to get contact details and build up loyalty, not to start pushing a client to an immediate purchase (at least in most cases).