“Quizzes are an interactive way to provide [customers] information while also receiving something as an organization, which is something we’ve been missing for a while as marketers—and why quizzes, to me as a content marketer, are so juicy, because they give us a real connection with those folks and allow us to give as good as we get.”—Maureen Jann
In this #ContentChat recap, Erika Heald is joined by our good friend Maureen Jann, marketing strategist and consultant, to explore one of the most underrated content marketing formats: Quizzes. Maureen explains how you can craft quizzes to learn about your audience and use those deep insights to deliver better content experiences, with tips spanning quiz creation to distribution.
Maureen mentions the following quizzes throughout the conversation, which we hope will inspire your approach:
- NeoLuxe Marketing’s What Kind of Marketer Am I?
- NeoLuxe Marketing’s How Burned Out Are You?
- The New York Times’s How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk.
- Responsible Training’s Rate My Training Provider.
- Shopify’s The Founder’s Zodiac: What Type of Entrepreneur Are You?
- Twilio’s Customer Tolerance Quiz.
Watch the entire conversation on YouTube or read through the highlights below.
Why quizzes are a valuable investment for content marketing teams
People understand quizzes, and we love taking them (thanks, Buzzfeed!).
“The first thing about quizzes that make them really impactful is people get them. They understand them right out of the gate. You don’t have to teach them how to take a quiz, BuzzFeed did that for us, right? So we come to the table being able to distribute the quiz or the concept as long as we stay within the parameters of what people understand.”—Maureen Jann
Quizzes are especially valuable for providing a two-way exchange. The quiz taker should get something valuable they didn’t already have, and the organization learns more about that quiz taker.
“It’s very easy to say yes to a quiz with the the idea that they’re going to get something out of it. And it could be a fun way to interact with the brand, get some information that you didn’t have, or learn something about yourself.”—Maureen Jann
Quizzes give people a reason to engage with your content and stay on your site.
“I love this idea of being able to connect with our readers and the consumers of our content in a way that’s interactive and engaging. It actually keeps them on your site longer and increases the chances of social sharing.”—Maureen Jann
Quizzes support lead generation and empower you to further personalize your content marketing.
“We have lead generation opportunities. Right now, if you do a good job with a quiz, you’re providing value to a potential prospect, customer, whoever. And the idea of them converting from a lead to a prospect in your system is far more likely if you’ve provided them something of value through this quiz process.”—Maureen Jann
“It also sort of triggers or harnesses the power of personalization in a way that’s very low maintenance for us as marketers. How do we get personalized results? When you answer questions and then we serve you information that you’ve specifically requested, that aligns with the answers that you gave.”—Maureen Jann
Quizzes bolster your first-party data strategy to make up for the phasing out of third-party cookies.
“And then suddenly, you have owned data that you can use forever for that person—as long as you give them a reason to log into your site or you’re using that data to create those personalized emails and changing the content that you’re delivering to them. Which is so important, since we can’t count on cookies as being the way that you tailor content to folks anymore.”—Erika Heald
“It’s a great way to get first-party data. It also allows you to track their user preferences. You can actually glean preferences from them, you can glean behaviors, and you can use that to inform future marketing strategies. What a cool way to both get permission from your audience to connect with them regularly and do it in a way that will inform what you’re doing beautifully.”—Maureen Jann
“I can even imagine a world where what they’ve put in to one of these quizzes, if you’ve designed it the right way, that at the end when you give them their results, you can have a button that says ‘Remember this information about me’ [or] ‘Click here to create your own account to save these preferences.’”—Erika Heald
Quizzes can be incredibly cost-effective content
“There are some other ways to help convince people to take that next step from a conversion standpoint. If you give them some abbreviated results, for free, and say that you could give them more detailed results if they sign up with you, you can bring them down this nurture stream that allows them to connect with your brand and understand what you do. Or, maybe, [it] just allows you to provide value in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise get. “—Maureen Jann
“And you can even customize a lot of those nurture programs based on the results that are coming in, even with tools as simple as MailChimp. If they come in through this quiz, then that quiz can provide you with this landing page, and that landing page has a specific form that will serve these emails. It takes $30 a month to have a MailChimp campaign that will support automations like that.”—Maureen Jann
“If you were to do like the most basic quiz, you could do it with a Google Form, MailChimp, and organic social. You have the Google Form for the quiz, you have MailChimp to actually distribute emails and results, and then you’re using organic social to distribute it. Just that alone would build you a small email list.”—Maureen Jann
Disclaimer: Be ready and willing to experiment with your quizzes. Your first quiz may not accomplish what you envision, but you will learn a lot in the process.
“I have done quizzes that sucked, by the way. They got me nothing. And I learned a lot from them. And I think you have to break some stuff to learn some stuff to do better the next time. So no shame in that game at all.”—Maureen Jann
Specific use cases for quizzes that content marketers should consider
Almost any marketing campaign goal can be supported with quizzes.
“Marketers have very similar use cases for every marketing campaign we do, right? Let’s say it’s lead qualification, or you’re providing educational content, or you’re trying to offer product information, or you’re trying to understand your customers better, or you’re trying to understand the market better. All of those are consistent challenges across marketing. But it turns out that you can use quizzes to assess or solve any one of those challenges.”—Maureen Jann
“You are literally giving them a thing—which is information, knowledge, fun—and in response, you’re getting something. You’re giving them something they want so that you can get what you want, which is that data. You want to get to know them better so you can serve them with better content. So that, to me, is outrageously valuable.”—Erika Heald
Quizzes can help you qualify leads…
“Lead qualification. You can build quizzes to qualify leads and assess their needs and their readiness to purchase. For instance, a B2B software company could create a quiz to determine a business’ specific scenario. Let’s use AI, for instance. Are you ready for AI? I sell an AI product [and] a person who is out there, as the primary stakeholder or executor, would like to know if they’re actually ready for your AI product.”—Maureen Jann
Refine your audience personas…
“BuzzFeed started that whole personality quiz approach. And the personality quiz approach is so universal at this point, that if you can help people categorize themselves into personality types or job types or whatever, you get a double whammy here. Not only do they get to satisfy their curiosity about whether or not you understand them, but you can also segment them on demand, right as they go through this process.”—Maureen Jann
“We did a can we guess what kind of marketer you are quiz. And we were able to convince people we understood what their challenges were and who they were. But we were able to actually segment them by type of person throughout that process. So we could send them very tailored emails over time.”—Maureen Jann
“Just think of the really great, rich commentary that you get for your personas, because I think we all struggle with personas that are not firsthand information. This is a great way to get more of that firsthand information that you can actually use to bring those personas to life.”—Erika Heald
“If you do a quiz for each of your personas, then you really could easily pigeonhole those folks in a way that’s meaningful. For instance, what I’m doing right now is by industry, and if you want to know about the stakeholders for each of the industries and sub industries, then you can actually put one out that specifically ties to a character, or an archetype, persona, or a business scenario. The tighter you get on that purpose, just like with any content, the more people are going to be excited to try that.”—Maureen Jann
Generate excitement in your community…
“There is one kind of outlier use case for quizzes. When I was at a large enterprise software company, we did a fun little quiz, I think it was five or six questions, to help people get excited about the conference we were having. And the bribe that went along with it is if you took the quiz, your results on the quiz would then determine what little badge you would get to put on your lanyard. So, which cute little animal. And we had more than 60% of everybody who attended do that in advance. And then once they got on site and saw other people doing it, then we had even more people take it, which was hilarious.”—Maureen Jann
And prove that your organization understands and emphasizes with your customer’s situation.
“It’s that idea of being able to say ‘I see you, I get you, I can help you,’ and show you that I understand your challenges based on the answers.”—Maureen Jann
Maureen shares a few examples of quizzes that fit these use cases
“I work for an organization that does training for the restaurant industry. And it’s pretty well known that customer service as an industry is really, really challenging. And so we recently did a grade your training provider quiz. And it’s anonymous, you don’t have to tell us who your training provider is. However, you can go in and figure out how they fit on the priorities of the company I worked for.”—Maureen Jann
“For instance, customer service, pricing, ease of taking the test, passability, that kind of stuff. And based on five key points that were important to our advantage, people would get grades for their training providers. What a juicy opportunity to come at them with ‘we can do better.’”—Maureen Jann
“We have a really fascinating sequence right now. So if you [scored] A [or] B: Congratulations, that’s awesome. If you ever want additional service or additional support, let us help you, we have some cool stuff. And then the other half is: Sounds like you’re frustrated. How can we help? Here are a couple of things that might be useful to you. So what a lovely way to use a quiz to see what the competitive landscape looks like and to help people self-select that.”—Maureen Jann
“If they’re really dissatisfied, if you have an optional text box as part of the survey, they might even tell you who their provider is, and why it is that they are just so frustrated, because people want to vent, it’s universal.”—Erika Heald
“We did a how burned out are you as a marketer quiz. Also, it wasn’t an are you burned out, it was how burned out are you. So we had that whole conversation and people were just very curious to have us confirm what they already knew. And a lot of times these quizzes are that.”—Maureen Jann
What do quizzes typically involve from a planning and distribution perspective?
First, identify a single question you want to answer with your quiz.
“This follows basic marketing campaign rules, right? You’ve got to have a strong statement. What are you trying to accomplish with this piece? For quizzes I always start with a single question. What question do you want answered? For instance, if you think about the training provider quiz, what we really wanted to know is how bad is your training training provider in comparison to us? That was the question. Another time was can we guess who you are?”—Maureen Jann
“If you try to do too many questions, you will find that the quiz is all over the place, it’s super confusing, and it’s gonna be really difficult to score. So start with a single question.”—Maureen Jann
Starting with the results you want to provide and working backward can be more effective than starting with the questions.
“Oftentimes, starting with the results and working your way backward is a better choice than starting with the questions and getting to the profiles. I usually write what I want the results to look like. Usually, that means this is who you are compared to other folks on the scale; if there are five different profiles, you fit here. And then an overview of what that means and what are some of the characteristics that are reflected in the questions you answered. And if it’s one where you can be better or worse, like a grade, how do I move you to the next stage? Those are sort of the long profile results that I would start with, and then you work your way back.”—Maureen Jann
AI can greatly accelerate your work.
“And oftentimes, I’ll use AI to do this. I ask AI to write me a short paragraph that I could use as a teaser. And then write me the quiz questions that might come out of these five profiles.”—Maureen Jann
Always plan for follow-up after someone takes the quiz.
“After they take the quiz, the key part is capturing some information so that you can actually make this super valuable for your organization. Quizzes without follow-up are kind of lost information. You want to be able to capture this somehow. At the very least, you’ll probably be able to see how people answered your questions, which is great. But if they want to take the next steps, why wouldn’t you let them take the next steps? Find a way to capture their information, and then make sure you have follow up,”—Maureen Jann
Recommended tools and platforms for creating and managing quizzes
Google Forms, organic social, and an email marketing platform are all you need to get started
“This baseline can be done with the simplest of tools. Like we were talking about earlier: Google Forms, organic social, and MailChimp. Easy as that.”—Maureen Jann
“People are pretty comfortable with using whatever their email tool is and driving to something like a Google Form, or even using a SurveyMonkey or something like that. And those are all very good options for doing a standalone quiz and integrating it into an email series.”—Erika Heald
Other paid quiz platforms give you greater control over the format and distribution.
“If you have more resources, what an exciting opportunity for you to also get very nuanced and be able to distribute your quiz more widely and fine-tune the results.”—Maureen Jann
Consider paid social media advertising to distribute your quiz.
“With some budgets, I actually had paid advertising. Which, honestly, you don’t need a ton of money to do that. You could do as much as $500 a month if you wanted to. Do one month of $500, and that would be amazing. So it’s on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever makes sense to you. I like to do it on the social platforms, because it means that they can continue to have a conversation with you in whatever profile you’re working with.”—Maureen Jann
“Instagram is great because they can go to your Instagram profile and learn more about you. They can go to your bio, and they can click into your website, that kind of thing. And they also have shopping ads now, which are really amazing.”—Maureen Jann
Owned email lists are perfect for sourcing responders for your quiz.
“I use email marketing for almost all of my clients, because it’s their owned property. Those are my people, they already know who I am. Regardless of the organization, they are already willing to take information from us. And if you play your cards right and experiment with subject lines, what a great way to get people connected to this amazing resource that you built.”—Maureen Jann
Maureen used Gravity Forms to manage more complex quizzes.
“I have done ones on Gravity Forms where they were embedded right into a WordPress website. That was probably our most complex quiz in that we had three different rubrics we were trying to go across to figure out who was what and what they did and who they were; it was extremely complicated. But even with that more complicated scoring mechanism, it cost me about $2,500 to stand up that quiz. And that was leveraging a developer, a license for Gravity Forms, and our WordPress instance.”—Maureen Jann
“It was seamless, and we were able to hook it right up to, in this case, MailChimp to ensure that the custom triggers for the next stage were very, very beautiful. And our results pages were gorgeous. But it was more expensive. And it was a ton more work on our side.”—Maureen Jann
If your goal is to keep people on your website, you can embed the quiz on your site. However, this may impact the user experience.
“If you go to a quiz provider [or] a quiz app, you can have it natively on their website. And oftentimes, you can customize things like URLs. But the analytics are a little tricky to track when you go that direction. Most quick quiz providers also have an embed option. That’s a great way to go, because then you can actually keep them on your site. But the user experience isn’t as nice.”—Maureen Jann
“I think about Typeform, for instance, their native experience is beautiful. And you can really customize those backgrounds and create a stunning experience. Whereas if you were to take that stunning experience out of a Typeform platform and put it on your website, it’s going to lose something.”—Maureen Jann
Tips for creating a quiz right the first time
Your audience needs to receive legitimate value from your quiz to encourage them to take the next step.
“What’s nice is that at the end of almost all these quiz programs, they allow you to push to your own page on your website. And that I think is where the magic happens. I use that opportunity as a place… if I serve them in the quiz platform a summary of the results, ‘Do you want to get deeper results?’ [or] ‘Do you want to get next week’s installment of our newsletter?’ Whatever it is, have them clicking to one of your pages on your site where they can sign up, or provide them with tools that they might also like, or resources they feel are valuable. But I think the promise really has to be there. Have something really juicy and really valuable to help them take that next step.”—Maureen Jann
Don’t gate all your quiz results.
“We got a lot of comments about giving away the answer for free, without exchanging email address information. That’s been my model. Thank you for giving me the answer. I loved it that I had an option to dive deeper if I wanted to. If you give a little, people will give a lot in exchange.”—Maureen Jann
“A lot of marketers, because of how their contribution to the business is measured—through how many leads they bring in, or their conversion rate, or whatever that thing is—we can spend too much time focusing on how to trick people into filling out a lead form and getting them on our list just because they want a thing. But what that does is you end up with a lot of churn, and you end up with people on your list that, frankly, aren’t interested in anything else that you’re doing. They just wanted that one piece of content that you gated. So I think it is nice to give people enough of what they came for, without getting them into your list. Because who wants a list full of disengaged people who don’t want to hear from you?”—Erika Heald
“I think it requires a bit of patience and the understanding that building trust comes with time. If I give you a little something, but you’re not ready to engage with my brand, but you still had a good experience, that goes a long way that is worth actual cash. Because the next time you see my name, or the next time you see my company’s name, or the next time you have a need, you see the possibility of interacting with us. There’s no barrier. You create no mental barrier for yourself. I wasn’t frustrated, I didn’t give away my email and get a bunch of spam, I was able to have a positive experience.”—Maureen Jann
Craft your quiz with an individual in mind. Be aware of their limitations.
“You’re speaking to one person, because one person has to be taking that quiz. I have made the mistake of trying to speak to one person about an entire organization, but there’s so many pitfalls there. It’s making sure that you’re counting for their perspective about the organization. What if they’re not the right person who knows the answer to this question? The digital maturity ones are some of the trickier ones, because if you don’t have the right person taking that quiz, then they’re gonna give you a bunch of junk information, because they’re probably guessing.”—Maureen Jann
Simplify your questions.
“Especially when you have a complex question you’re trying to ask, how can you simplify it? How can you make it easier? How can you boil it down to apply to one person and their experience? I think that is a big piece of what can make things complicated, and what can make things not successful.”—Maureen Jann
Don’t make your quiz too long.
“The other thing is making it too long. Don’t make it too long.”—Maureen Jann
“If it’s gonna take somebody 20 minutes to fill out your survey, they need to be getting analyst reports as their outcome, like they’re getting the full data from HBR about something.”—Erika Heald
“What I usually do is 10 to 15 questions max. And they also need to be simple questions. Don’t make me think too hard. If you make this too hard for me, I’ll leave. If you make them three-part questions with deep essay roots, you’re going to lose people, they’re not going to convert, they’re not going to finish.”—Maureen Jann
“When you think about where that quiz falls in your funnel, it should probably be on the lighter side where the questions aren’t so difficult. The reason why they’re there is because they have a problem. How can you help them solve that problem? How do you use this quiz to help identify the best way to solve that problem?”—Maureen Jann
Reserve some budget to pay for distribution.
“The next thing that I have struggled with with quizzes is getting them distributed. I had a B2B client and they were trying to get their information out on LinkedIn, but they didn’t have a big audience on LinkedIn. And we weren’t a big company to start with. So even having people share to their networks is still not impactful enough to get the kind of volume we’re looking for.”—Maureen Jann
Partner with your legal team to understand how you can deliver quizzes in a secure and compliant way.
“When I worked at Twilio, one of the things that I did was pioneer this idea of how to build a quiz within their existing marketing ops. And it was really fun, it was really cool. And it was very complicated, because they have the legal stuff, and then there’s the PII conversation. So if you’re struggling, if you’re thinking about this idea of a quiz and struggling with this, there are some cool ways you can circumvent those challenges with legal by making sure that all of the information collection—if you forward them from a quiz platform to the results page or the results page or on your own website—[is] using your own marketing automation forms. That solves almost all of those legal challenges.”—Maureen Jann
Examples of quizzes that provided great content marketing opportunities and drove business results
Maureen walks through her zodiac-themed quiz in the recording, with a few highlights below:
“We treated it like a ‘what’s your sign’ quiz. Zodiac-themed, can we predict what kind of marketer you are. One of our employees at the time, Jess Senires, she is so funny and she’s actually a real-life psychic. And she did some fun videos to illustrate the humor slash impactfulness of understanding who you are.”—Maureen Jann
“The small print about ‘we also send a monthly Horoscope tailored just for you, until May 2022’… when you want to talk about an offer that you’d never see, that is a promise for getting a monthly email for however many months—that’s really cool. You’re gonna get tailored content for a set amount of time every month.”—Erika Heald
“We did 12 horoscopes every month with the help of Jess, our psychic. And we made a video for all of them [about] what’s to come in that month. It was funny, it was smart, and people loved it. We had something like 40% retention rate, because they were just so they were engaging, and they had a personality, and they had a real perspective.”—Maureen Jann
She also delved further into her rate your provider quiz:
“It is a beautiful experience. Typeform does a lovely job. It’s full screen and it allows us to really be submerged into this quiz experience without being distracting.”—Maureen Jann
“Now that we have their email address they will now get the full results and some other questions from us, or some other information from us that will help them make decisions about what they want to do next.”—Maureen Jann
