Bringing in new leads is a huge part of our job as marketers.
Lately, a lot of emphasis has been placed on using content marketing for lead generation, putting pressure on us to create amazing whitepapers, case studies, videos, blog posts, and other forms of content that effectively convert content seekers into warm leads, who might then be nurtured into becoming lifelong customers.
Creating content that actually converts is a constant struggle, and even if new pieces of content attract lots of views or downloads, that doesn't guarantee new subscribers. Which is where quizzes come in: A well-produced quiz can achieve opt-in rates north of 50% and improve lead generation.
This article will break down how three businesses used a quiz to pull in huge amounts of new leads.
How to Create a Lead-Generating Quiz
I've now personally been a part of the making of 11,000 quizzes with Interact (the company I co-founded), and I've learned a thing or two along the way that will help make your first quiz a lead generation hit.
An earlier article I wrote for MarketingProfs goes over how to use quizzes in your content marketing. It's pretty exhaustive, so I'll let you use that as a resource for writing your quiz; this piece will focus on practical ways to use quizzes for lead generation.
Three Ways to Use a Quiz for Generating Leads
In my experience, seeing examples of how quizzes can be used for lead generation really opens up the chest of ideas for marketers. So let's look at some real-life examples, breaking down exactly what these companies did to achieve excellent opt-in results.
Here are three ways to use a quiz as a lead magnet.
1. Create a knowledge test within your informational content
Our first example comes from SkilledUp.com, which created a quiz titled "Test your Excel skills" and placed that quiz inside a long-form guide to Microsoft Excel already on its site.
Before placing the quiz, that page was bringing in approximately 20 new email subscribers each month. After implementing the quiz, that number jumped to 500 per month.
In the quiz, SkilledUp created a few simple questions to test people on their knowledge of Excel—fitting for a page that deals exclusively with that subject.
After quiz takers answer seven questions, a form pops up asking them whether they'd like to opt-in to receive more updates from SkilledUp. A whopping 30% of people who finished the quiz decided to opt-in, even with a clear skip option.
In all, the quiz has pulled in 6,413 new email subscribers.
To replicate this type of quiz, identify highly informational pages that are getting a lot of traffic on your site (e.g., "50 things you should know about Excel"), then formulate a knowledge test as an interactive element within that page.
To generate leads, ask people whether they'd like to opt-in to get tips and tricks pertaining to the subject of the page itself (such as getting exclusive Excel tips).
2. Repurpose past successes to squeeze more leads out of your site
As marketers, we create a lot of content, and some of that content is more popular than others (see 80/20 rule). One way to generate leads with a quiz is to reuse your most popular pieces (the 20% that get 80% of the traffic).
Let's look at an example from Afar.com that used this method for generating leads. Afar looked at Google Analytics data and found that many of its top posts were travel-destination guidelines, such as "What to do in Indonesia."
Afar compiled info on five travel destinations and turned them into a quiz: "Where Should You Go in 2015?"