A few years ago, quizzes were the hot new thing in business regarding email growth (and helping your customers make buying decisions). And while quizzes aren't being talked about as much right now, they are still just as effective as they were then. In fact, the average lead magnet conversion rate is just 20 to 25%, but quizzes have an average of 40 to 50% conversion rates, I can personally attest to that from my quizzes, and today I want to share how you can create a quiz lead magnet that grows YOUR email list too.
I've been creating quizzes since the beginning of 2018, so over five years now. Since then, I've made new quizzes, revamped quizzes, and helped other business owners make quizzes for their businesses through my quiz website template bundle for Showit.
I get asked about creating a quiz lead magnet a lot because it can be tough to know where to get started. So in this episode, I'm taking you step by step (in tons of detail) through the quiz creation process that I've used to create high-converting quiz lead magnets that are also fun and help make sales in my business. And I want the same for you. So let's get to it.
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Showit Quiz Template Add-on
Alright, before we get into all the step-by steps to create a quiz lead magnet, but first, I want to just give you something special, especially if you are a Showit user. So, I created a quiz add-on template that can be added to any Showit website. Regardless of whether you have a custom site, a template from me, a template from someone else, it can make your quiz lead magnet creation process easier.
As I explain the quiz steps to you below, especially the last few steps like embedding the quiz on your website and making results pages, you'll be able to see just how much time and effort this template will save you. My quiz lead magnet template is a seven page Showit template with three results pages, over 10 quiz cover style options, a quiz embed page, and more. Use code MAKEAQUIZ to get 15% off as my way of saying thank you for being a loyal listener! That code will work on the speaker template, the landing page bundle, the quiz template, and the entire add-on bundle as well if you want them all.
Now, let’s get into the steps!
1. Identify Your Quiz Goals And Topic
You can create quizzes that result in all sorts of things: from assessing someone’s skill level or need in an area, to matching them with specific products of yours, or even to create a personality type of profile around your niche. There are SO many options.
As a real-life example, Sephora has a skincare product quiz where they end up matching you with the products you should buy. I have a quiz that helps designers see what your business blind spot is (and shed light on the areas you can improve). I also have a website personality quiz to help you identify what your website style is according to your ideal clients and what they prefer (that then also gives specific product recommendations!). So as you can see - there are a lot of options!
Here are some tips for coming up with your quiz goals and/or topic:
- Your quiz should have ONE GOAL that your users are getting from taking it (ie. you want to be able to summarize the result they are going to get with clarity)
- Most of the time, you’ll want the result to relate back to your offers (so that way when people take the quiz, you're able to push them towards buying something both from the quiz results page and then also through an email funnel after they've taken the quiz and are getting to know you, learning about the offer, learning about problems it solves and the what's included).
- You can always come up with a fun or more concise title later!! Just make sure you know the topic/goal to start. What’s the point for them to take it? What are they going to learn?
- Explore other types of quizzes to get some ideas! There are TONS. I use Interact for my quiz software and they have a ton of examples right there on their website to help you get ideas too.
2. Start Thinking About (or Officially Decide) What People GET For Taking the Quiz.
This is DIFFERENT than the result. What are your quiz takers going to get? This is the marketer in me, but before we even get to the quiz making itself, I want to challenge you to start thinking about what the offer is.
A lot of times when people are exchanging their email for something, it’s something tangible like a PDF, webinar, an audio series, or a workbook. But with a quiz, the results are a big part of it. People are typically taking the quiz to know what the result is for them based on the question you're presenting. But the result doesn’t need to be the ONLY thing the person gets. If the result is the only thing they get, then how does having the result from this quiz improve their life, improve their business, improve whatever area? Get clear on that.
There are so many quizzes out there that just stink honestly, because they're not really helpful. The results don’t really do anything for the taker, and those quizzes are not going to ultimately lead you to more sales either. As a business, if you want your quiz to lead to more sales, you want people to get their result and think, “YES - that result was helpful, I wonder how much more helpful the paid version will be”.
Here are some made up examples for what people could get from a potential quiz:
To show you more about what I mean by all this, here are a few examples:
- A quiz that tells you your parenting style AND then additionally gives you 5 specific weak spots you might have as a parent (with tips to overcome them) and 5 specific things you’re amazing at!
- A quiz that tells you your skin type and the exact products you should use in your skin care line up (all for less than $50) AND you get a 15% off coupon just for taking the quiz.
- As a copywriter, you could create a quiz that tells you your brand voice AND then you also get a plug and play email introduction template that matches your brand voice.
- A quiz that gives you a curated podcast playlist from that person’s library of episodes based on what you’re needing help with.
As another example, real personality tests/quizzes like the enneagram or Myers–Briggs give you the result of knowing your type BUT all of those websites are also telling you your strengths and weaknesses, how you are in relationships, growth areas, famous people with your type, and more. And sometimes? They’re also upselling you to a paid version
My point being: you can include things in addition to the results, or just have the results be the outcome. Some examples of things you could give outside of just results are: a discount on a product, a free sample/trial, an exclusive bundle offer, a template that matches their result type, a workbook to match their result type, maybe you’re a service provider and a quiz unlocks a 30 minute call with you—the list goes on and on. You can basically merge freebies together and give them with the result.
You don’t have to decide this from the beginning, but I’ve liked thinking about this personally before I go into question/result creation mode! Then, I can use part of this strategy to play into some of the questions.
3. Create Your Result Types
We already talked about how most quizzes stink, right? Creating the result types BEFORE you create the questions will help you make a better quiz.
And in general, less result types are going to be easier on you! For example, at one point, my quiz matched everyone with ONE specific template which worked great, but having 15+ results was impossible to manage. That’s why I actually revamped my quiz last year to just filter into 4 results with the templates grouped together in categories instead. I would say anywhere for 3-6 result types is ideal!
At this point, I’d come up with a name/title for each result and know for yourself what the vibe is, or what that person needs. If it’s products, go ahead and group them all together within the results! Another example would be my quiz that helps you find your business weak spot as a designer. For that one, I chose 4 specific blind spots I think most designers struggle with, and came up with the questions from there.
4. Create Your Quiz Questions
Once you have your result types, you can make your questions. Quiz length can vary from short 3 question quizzes to 15+ question quizzes. It’s all about how extensive you want to be and what types of results you’re trying to provide someone. Generally speaking, shorter is going to be better, especially when it comes to the way you're phrasing questions. You want to be really quick for people to be able to read and answer, but you can also do longer. Using the enneagram and Myers-Briggs as an example again, they are long but people still take them! I’ve personally taken really short quizzes that are supposed to tell me my business archetype or my hiring style where I felt like they were a waste of time because they didn’t ask me enough questions to get an accurate result.
Whether you decide to create a short quiz or a long quiz, know that you can use the length in your marketing. If it’s short, you could say something like, “Get your results in less than 3 minutes.” If it’s longer, you can say, “get an extensive look into ways you can grow.”
With the quiz questions, you will likely do multiple choice, as that’s how most quiz platforms will be set up and then each option can correlate to a result type. If you have four results, it might be that you have four multiple choice options per question, as an example. You could also have six result types though and only still have four options for answers... it doesn't have to exactly match up! It might be that “option A” could work for two different results, for that question. Not every question has to be directly related to a result either!
Don’t put the questions directly in your quiz software (to start!)
As far as where to create these quiz questions to start, I would not recommend putting them directly into your quiz software, which we're going to talk about next. I wouldn’t recommend doing that when you're first creating them because it's going to be better just to do this in a blank document, like a Google Doc, or in your project manager.
For example, when I recently redid my website personality quiz, we did it all in Clickup and Clickup documents and that was really nice to be able to quickly click between all the different things and the task list for it and all of that. I loved having the document so that I could really look at all the questions side by side at once and then figure out which answer options should correlate to which results. Something I’ve done in the past two is come up with a highlighting system where I will make the first result pink, the second blue, etc. Then, as you're making the quiz, you can make sure that you're actually covering all the different results types so people are not just getting one result for everything they take.
It's worth noting too that you might end up changing up some questions once you really start playing with the quiz later. I know with my Business Weak Spot Quiz for Designers, I actually cut quite a few questions after I'd already decided on all of them. It felt too long, so I made changes! So it’s worth remembering that as you go through the questions that you don’t have to stick to them forever.
5. Create Your Quiz
Once you have your questions and your results, it’s time to MAKE THE QUIZ! I mentioned earlier that I’ve been making quizzes since 2018, and for that whole time I’ve used the extremely popular quiz software, Interact. I am an affiliate of theirs and you can get a free trial by signing up here. My quiz add-on bundle works really well with interact too, I should add! And the demo videos you get with your purchase show you how to set things up with Interact and Showit with ease.
But regardless of which software you choose, in order to make a quiz, you have to use something. You can’t do this without a specific quiz software. In my experience, I have not heard of any email softwares that includes a quiz-type software.
The good news is, once you’re in Interact, it’s very intuitive to take what you made in a doc and turn it into a quiz. You’ll add your questions, you’ll add your results, then you’ll connect the specific questions to a specific result.
After you make the quiz, I suggest taking it a few times. Think about different ideal customers of yours and how they’d answer and see if it works. Does the right result type happen? Is it somehow giving the same result every time? Is it balanced?
6. Connect Your Quiz to Your Email Provider and Create Results Sequences
In Interact, you can easily connect your quiz to your email software (like Flodesk or Convertkit), it’s all easily integrated without needing something external like zapier or anything like that. This is a MUST in order for you to make the people who take your quiz get on your email list… otherwise, they just are staying in Interact (which doesn’t serve your business).
You can set up how they get brought to your email list by adding them to a sequence, a tag, forms, etc. This is another part where you have to think about what you want your quiz experience to be! You can do sequences (a series of emails) for the results where they get an email telling them about their result in detail. OR, you can do a page on your website that details their result type. OR, you can do BOTH!
In an ideal world, I think doing both is the most effective. You can redirect them to the results page on your website… and by doing it on your website, it’s easy to call them to action to buy, give them a coupon, etc. Then, you can email them about the result with a link that will go back to that page on your website later.
My quiz template comes in handy here because you get a few different results page designs that you can mix/match between to make your perfect results page style, and then you duplicate it for each result type!
What to Include in the Results Pages and/or Sequence
So it depends on the quiz type, which I know I've said a few times, but if you're doing more of a personality type quiz, here are some things I'd recommend giving their results page:
- A name and a short description (which we talked about in step one)
- Some points (like 3 things to describe you if you got that type)
- Potentially speak to your related product(s) they should consider buying
- Other resources you've created to help them (like blog posts, podcast episodes, or YouTube videos)
- Call them to action (maybe it's to join your free Facebook community or buy something at a discount).
Read More: 4 Must-Haves For Your Email Welcome Sequence
7. Embed Your Quiz Onto Your Website (to a Few Places!)
The NEXT step is to embed the quiz onto your website so people can take it! I’d argue as a designer that the best way is for the quiz to live on your website, compared to it being a button where it then leads people to the Interact website. Keeping people on your website is a better experience for them and increases conversions.
With that, you can have a quiz cover designed in Interact OR within your website builder. I personally like building it in your website builder, so it’s all cohesive, but then they click a button and then are seeing the quiz. The quiz itself will be in Interact’s styling but you can actually make it match better than you think even with that being true! Customize the quiz fonts/colors to be similar to what’s already on your website.
Next, you want to add the quiz to multiple places. If this is your “main lead magnet” it should go on your home page for sure, but you could also link to it in the footer, via a pop up, in the top area banner of your website, on your tools page, on your ways to work together page, etc.
On your quiz cover, tell people why they should want to take it. What’s in it for them? And if you’re giving away free stuff to people who simply take the quiz… SAY IT!
For example, here’s what I show people who take my quiz (before they take it!).
8. Create Results Pages on Your Website
Again, this is made easier with my quiz template! It comes with 3 results templates and an “extras page” with more canvases to add on. You could do this from scratch, of course, but this template will save you tons of time on the design and give you content ideas for what to put. Remember, you can use code MAKEAQUIZ for 15% off!
9. Hook Everything Up and Test It All!
Once you have everything designed, you’ve chosen your software, you have the sequences made up, it’s time to TEST it. Take the quiz multiple times to get each result and make sure it works correctly.
In an IDEAL world, here’s what your quiz lead magnet should look like when it’s done:
- From your website, a user clicks to take the quiz, and then they go to a page or canvas on your website where they start taking the quiz
- They complete the quiz (it’s worth timing yourself as you take it!) and then it REDIRECTS them to a page on your website with their result
- At the same time that happens, they get an email from you with information on their result type
- With that email, they get put into a funnel that will sell them your offer
- They review the results page! They might take action immediately if you have a strong discount and maybe they already knew they wanted to buy but just needed clarity, and so they buy. Maybe they don’t buy right away and that’s fine too! The buy does not have to be immediate.
- Now they’re on your email list and in a funnel ideally to sell them the relevant offer based on their results.
With all this set up, it should work without you doing anything on your end after this is set up! That’s the best part of having a quiz! It grows your email list and nurtures your current and potential customers, all without you having to do stuff constantly.
10. Start Marketing Your Quiz, and Grow Your List!
Now that it works and you’ve tested it, publish your site changes and start marketing the new quiz. As you market it, focus on what they get for taking it, the same way you did on your website. You can share it all over social media, and even to your current email list to those who have not already bought what the quiz is connected to. I’ve had good success using ManyChat and making reels and stories about the quiz, then people comment to take it and get the manychat automation with the link.
And let me also just say - it's so fun, you guys. When you have your first quiz takers, it’s fun to watch and be like, “oh yeah, wonder what she got as a result”, and then watch them go through the sequence, and enjoy the free stuff you're giving them for taking it.
Read More: 5 Ways to Leverage the Power of SEO to Build Your Email List
Links Mentioned:
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