April
1, 2021
5 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Catching the attention of customers online is extremely difficult nowadays. The internet is loaded with distractions and standing out in a crowd of competitors is no easy task for most business owners. The reality is, as our digital ecosystem gets more mature and populated, marketing will continue to get more competitive, and piquing consumer interest will become tougher than ever before. Thankfully, marketing is as much a creative pursuit as it is a technical one, which means innovation in marketing tends to always be around the corner.
I discovered the power of this method by accident years ago while building trivia quizzes for my horror movie fansite. What started as a fun experiment turned into a creative way to get quality leads for my business.
I set up a quiz called “What Is Your Email Marketing IQ?” and ran it as a Facebook ad targeted at small business owners.
The quiz brought in more than 1,000 new subscribers for $0.45 per sign-up, which is exceptional considering my previous PDF-based lead magnet cost was $2.40 per sign-up. Not only that, but I saw my welcome email open rate jump from 20% to 66%.
There are three primary reasons why quizzes work so well, especially if your current lead magnet is not performing as well as it used to.
Interactive content keeps the customer engaged
The traditional approach to generating leads has been to create a static lead magnet (PDF, check-list, etc.) as a gift in exchange for an email address.
With many business owners using static lead magnets, the value of them began to diminish. Visitors developed “opt-in blindness” after seeing similar offers on multiple sites, and for reasons we’ll discuss shortly, felt underwhelmed with the freebies they were opting in for.
Interactive content such as quizzes, on the other hand, piques user interest from the get-go and retains their attention enough to get users interested in the product or service you offer. It’s a more natural process of curiosity that takes place, and so email lists created from quizzes are considerably more responsive.
In short, people simply don’t interact with static lead magnets, taking their attention elsewhere before they even have a chance to finish reading it and making it to your offer. Interactive content shifts the paradigm, giving your prospective customers a chance to see what’s at the end of the journey.
Related: How to Take Advantage of Interactive Marketing Right Now
Everyone loves to know more about themselves
The best type of quizzes help your customers learn more about their lives and personality. Other online quizzes exist, of course; trivia quizzes about movies and other cultural items are popular right now because people love to test their knowledge of pop culture and reaffirm their love for their favorite properties.
These are fun but they’re not the content you’re aiming for in converting your traditional lead magnets to quizzes. The quizzes you want to issue to your prospective customers will be all about what type of person they are, guiding them through their journey, and helping them understand where they are and where they want to be.
People online will line up to take the quiz because everyone today loves knowing more about themselves and how their minds operate.
Related: How to Use Quizzes to Boost Your Marketing Strategy
The fastest way to learn more about your customers
A third reason, and arguably the most important, to engage your customers with quizzes is because they represent an easy and automated way to collect information about your customer base. The purpose of the quizzes is similar, if not the same, to the purpose of the traditional lead magnet; you want to gather information about the lead and identify if they’ll work well with your company and purchase your products or services consistently.
Quizzes hold the same purpose but in an upgraded fashion. People have a hard time trusting companies they’re not already shopping from, but they have no problem offering insights about their life to know more about themselves. Quizzes are not intrusive or off-putting – they’re fun. This is why quizzes work so well for new and adapting businesses, they provide a path of information retrieval which works for both the business and the customer.
It sounds cynical, but most people would simply put their trust in a fun quiz that will give them additional information for their information entered, then trust a lead magnet that offers no purpose beyond a cheap discount or unfulfilling gift. Quizzes are simply more natural and help gather important information about your customers in a way a traditional lead magnet simply never could.
If you find that your current lead magnet is not working, perhaps it’s time to switch to a quiz!
Related: Why You Should Skip the Webinar and Start Quizzing Your Audience