How To Create Quizzes for Marketing To Boost Engagement

woman in yellow sweater sits at wooden table with a laptop to take quizzes for marketing

CopyPress

March 29, 2022 (Updated: April 1, 2022)

Marketers are always looking for the next big content innovation to help generate leads and engage an audience. With so many pieces of content produced and shared every day, it’s difficult to break from your routine and try something new, especially if your current strategy already works. Quizzes for marketing can be a fun, easy option to switch up your content campaigns and hit your goals without adding more time or effort to your process. In this article, we cover topics like:

Types of Marketing Quizzes
Why Should I Use an Interactive Marketing Quiz?
12 Steps for Creating Marketing Quizzes
Tips for Creating Quizzes for Marketing
5 Marketing Quiz Examples

Types of Marketing Quizzes

Marketing quizzes can help you engage with your target audience so they come to enjoy your messaging. In return, you can receive engagement as well, simply by readers actually taking the quiz. Making sure your content is engaging increases the likelihood that your audience regularly sees and interacts with what you share. They may be more willing to read your email newsletter, for example, or click links you post on social media because they’ve come to know your brand more through interactive content.

As you begin planning your marketing quizzes, here are three primary types you may use for your campaign:

Personality Quiz

This type of quiz sorts people into categories based on preferences and personality traits. Many “just for fun” quizzes on the internet use this type, like:

Which Law & Order Character Are You?
What Carole King Song Was Written About You?
Which Disney Character Would Be Your Best Friend?

For business-to-business (B2B) companies, you could use this type of quiz to showcase your company products and then create a CTA in the results for people to make a purchase. If you run a mid-market business and you want your audience to get to know your leadership team, you may create a personality quiz where the quiz taker answers questions to discover which leader they are more similar to. There are no wrong answers with a personality quiz, and they are meant to be fun and engaging to get and keep people excited about your brand.

Knowledge Quiz

A knowledge quiz tests people’s knowledge and recall of a topic. Unlike personality quizzes, there are right and wrong answers with this type. Instead of getting categorized results, the taker gets a numerical total of the number of questions they get correct. The bracket in which they score may sort them into different categories at the end of the quiz. For example, for a 10-question quiz called “How Much Do You Know About Content Marketing,” the final score could place the taker into categories like:

0-3 right answers: Content Marketing Intern
4-7 right answers: Content Marketing Professional
8-10 right answers: Chief Marketing Officer

Not only can a quiz like this engage your audience, but it can also show gaps in their knowledge of a topic. Make sure the knowledge quiz you produce is on a topic your company is an expert in so if there is a quiz taker who scores lower than they’d like or finds the test more difficult than they thought it would be, they know they can turn to your company for its services.

Decision Quiz

A decision quiz helps the taker choose whether to take an action or which product or service is right for them. They can have two or more options for the results. For example, “Should I Hire a Content Marketing Agency?” is a decision quiz title. Takers may answer questions about their current content practices, future goals and needs, and the quiz calculates their percentage of benefit from working with a content agency.

Even without that quiz, CopyPress is the right choice for creating quality content with a streamlined process. Start a call with us today to discuss your content needs and how to make them a reality.

Why Should I Use an Interactive Marketing Quiz?

Image via Unsplash by @christinhumephoto

There are many benefits to using interactive marketing quizzes as part of your content strategy. They include:

Audience Connections

Creating interactive content makes things more personal. Instead of talking at your audience or simply broadcasting a message, you’re including them in the conversation. This helps create better bonds and forms connections between your targets and brand. This can lead to more brand trust and loyalty.

Increased Engagement

According to Dana Flannery, Director and SEO Specialist at TAC Digital, interactive content encourages people to spend more time on a webpage. When people spend more time on a page, it can encourage them to click through content or browse other features of your site. It encourages them not to bounce away from a page so quickly. This looks good for your metrics and can help you get more conversions.

Lead Generation

Marketing quizzes are a lead generation tool. When you place the results behind a content gate, people must submit their information to get those answers. If they really want to see the result, they’re more likely to provide a valid email address, especially if you send the results to their inbox rather than having them appear on screen after passing the gate. Collecting personal information helps build your email list and find more qualified leads.

Target Market Research

Quiz responses can help you better understand your target audience, what they like, and what they need from your company. Depending on the type of quiz you create, you can learn about your audience’s preferences and behaviors based on their answers. This is especially true for personality quizzes. You can also learn what they do or don’t know from knowledge quizzes. For example, you can look at the most missed questions in the quiz to understand what topics aren’t clear and create other content, like explainer videos or knowledge base articles around them to provide more value.

Social Sharing

Quizzes are fun, and people like to share fun things with their friends, family, and colleagues. They’re a type of content that does well on social media because of the comparison factor. There’s the opportunity for conversation and competition among friends or co-workers. The more shares you can get online, the more brand recognition you can grab. This grows your potential audience pool, which leads to more qualified clients and higher conversion rates.

12 Steps for Creating Marketing Quizzes

Use these steps to learn how to create a marketing quiz:

1. Set a Quiz Goal

Why are you making this quiz? Are you trying to get qualified leads? Can you learn more about your target audience? You can create a marketing quiz for most of the same reasons you’d create any other type of content. And just like with those pieces, it’s good to have a solid idea of what you want to accomplish before you even brainstorm ideas. Setting a goal can help guide the quiz creation process and it gives you something tangible to track and measure when you’ve reached the end of the content campaign.

2. Identify Your Audience

You can use quizzes to target different subsections of your audience. Create them for people in various stages of the marketing funnel, for those who have multiple needs for your products or services, or a quiz that’s universal for everyone. Knowing which group you’re targeting makes it easier and clearer to write appealing content. It can also help you decide which data to track throughout the campaign and how and when to share the quiz to get the most traffic for it.

3. Choose a Topic and Style

Picking a quiz topic and style is part of the same process. Certain topics may only fit one style of quiz. For example, a knowledge quiz about search engine optimization (SEO) makes more sense than a personality quiz like “What Type of SEO Are You?” Topic and style choice may also depend on factors like your company, services, audience, or industry.

4. Pick Your Tools

How do you plan to make your quiz? If you have skilled designers and developers on your marketing team, you may make your own from scratch. Smaller organizations may choose services like Survey Anyplace or TypeForm that provide ready-to-use quiz designs. Another option is to work with a content design agency like CopyPress. We develop customized interactive media content to meet your needs and bring results.

5. Craft the Headline

Once you know your quiz topic, develop a catchy headline. The best quiz titles are honest but enticing and tell the audience exactly what to expect if they take the time to complete it. Three common quiz headline formats are:

“Actually” titles: Using this word in your headline presents a challenge to the reader, testing their knowledge. An example is “How Much Do You Actually Know About Content Writing?”
“Which [Blank] Are You?” titles: This option lets people know the category of the quiz results from the headline. An example is “What Type of Punctuation Mark Are You?”
“Should You” titles: These headlines are best for decision quizzes and present the options and choices the taker may have in the results. An example includes “Should I Start a Blog?”

6. Develop the Questions

The quiz questions are what guide the reader through the process to the lead capture, results, and CTA. For knowledge test questions, make sure each prompt is clear and only has one correct answer. Do your research and fact-check the results to prevent disputes over the answers. This type of pushback may be less common with personality or decision quizzes because they don’t have right or wrong answers. Other things to consider when developing quiz questions include:

Using your brand voice: Like any other content you create, infuse your brand voice into the question to make them conversational and sound like they’re coming from one source. Consistency builds trust.
Adding images: You can add photos, GIFs, or other media to your questions where it makes sense. Choosing relevant media may help keep people more engaged than with text-only questions.
Staying brief: Keep your questions and responses as short as possible, and keep the number of questions to a minimum, too. Ten questions are a good number for any quiz type to provide enough data for thoughtful results.

7. Create a Lead Capture Form

The lead capture form is the content gate you add before delivering the results to the test taker. This piece, in particular, makes quizzes an excellent marketing tool. People have already invested their time in answering questions and they’re eager and curious to get their results. By putting that information behind a content gate, people are more likely to exchange their personal details for the results. Collecting leads from these forms can help grow your email subscribers list and narrow down qualified leads.

8. Pick Share-Worthy Results

The results are the real reason people click on a quiz. With a marketing test, be sure the results are engaging, exciting, and worth your audience’s time to use the lead capture form. By creating a big buildup to the results and requiring people to share personal information to get them, they have to be valuable when the taker finally gets to the end of the process. Doing this also builds trust because you promise something and deliver it. Quizzes are also an engagement tool, so it’s important to make them share-worthy. A few ways to hit both marks include:

Be positive: For knowledge quizzes, it may discourage people if they don’t get a high score. There are ways to spin the content so the results are honest but positive. For example, if our CopyPress content team were to create a content marketing knowledge quiz, we could set up an email sequence to send our content marketing pyramid eBook to those who received a low score on our quiz. Doing so shows our company knowledge and provides education and insight to the quiz taker so they can learn and see us the valuable resource we are.
Use images: Just like with each question, it’s good to add images to your results. This makes them more share-worthy and more likely to attract attention on a social media feed. This also helps to keep quiz takers engaged with your material.
Use a CTA: The CTA helps you sell your brand, product, or services. It can be something as simple as visiting your website, or a harder sell for your products and services.

9. Design the Quiz Framework

Develop the quiz workflow using your tools. If you’re creating a quiz from scratch, you can design it any way you want. When working with an agency, they can often customize the design to your needs, too. Quiz builder programs and templates may have more limitations to customization. In this phase, choose how to order the questions, how to display the results, and select the formatting. You can also choose colors, fonts, and images. Make sure your quiz is aesthetically pleasing and looks branded, by using your logo or company colors in the design.

10. Distribute Your Quiz

Where can people access the quiz? You have the option to host the quiz on your website or create a dedicated landing page. Sharing your quizzes on social media is another way to get traction. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn may be some of the most responsive services for sharing marketing quizzes. They have good linking features and the opportunity to customize posts and share visuals with each link. Other ways to distribute include sharing the link to the quiz through email communications and encouraging your current subscribers to share with other people they know.

11. Use Marketing Automation for Follow-Ups

After collecting your leads through the capture form, you can connect with them right away, if they’ve given consent. You can use marketing automation to follow up through email drip campaigns. They allow you to engage with your leads after they’ve finished the quiz and nurture them to become paying clients. For example, you may run a drip campaign that hits the following points:

Thanking your audience for taking the quiz
Encouraging your audience to take the quiz again or complete another action
Building trust in your brand by sharing client testimonials, case studies, or other resources
Providing a strong value proposition and CTA to convert leads to paying customers

12. Review the Results

You may create your quiz for a specific content campaign or plan to leave it active forever and make updates as needed. No matter which option you choose, it’s important to review the results both of the engagement and of the information you collect from participants. The metrics can tell you how well the content performs and if it’s helping you reach your business goals. The actual responses can tell you more about your target audience. Both pieces of information can influence future marketing campaigns.

Tips for Creating Quizzes for Marketing

Use these tips to help you during marketing quiz creation:

Incentivize Your Lead Capture

Beyond receiving the quiz results, you can further incentivize your lead capture forms with lead magnets. These are free items or services you give away to collect people’s contact information. Additional incentives could include access to a free eBook or a free trial for a service. What you use for a lead magnet may determine what information you collect from the lead capture form.

Ask For Information You’ll Use

Don’t collect information just for the sake of collecting it. This can junk up your customer relationship management (CRM) tool with unnecessary data. Asking for too much information can also seem invasive to the quiz taker. It’s standard to ask for things like first and last name, gender preference, and an email address on a lead capture form. For B2B businesses, adding industry, company size, and company name is commonplace.

But anything beyond that, like a phone number or street address, may be too much unless you explain why you need that information. If you ask for too much, you risk the information exchange not being worth the reward in the eyes of the quiz taker.

Be Transparent

Whether you’re asking for the standard information or more, it’s always important to explain why you’re collecting it. If you plan to contact the leads through email or by phone, state that on the lead capture form. Give respondents the chance to opt-out of certain communications if possible. This builds trust with the audience and makes them feel more secure in sharing their information with you.

Include Additional Engagement Features

Marketing quizzes are supposed to be fun. You want your audience to want to take, share, and talk about them. You can do that by including additional engagement features. For knowledge quizzes, add timers or leaderboards to foster a sense of competition among participants. For personality quizzes, give people the opportunity to view all the results to see what answers they could have gotten if they’d made different decisions. These features make the quiz more like a game rather than a test, and encourage sharing and discussion.

Use Keyword Research To Pick a Topic

Keyword research works for all content, even interactive quizzes. Using keyword tools can help with your SEO, to get your quiz landing pages ranked in search for topics that matter to your audience. To further help with your topic selection, request your free content marketing analysis report from CopyPress. It shows gaps in your content strategy where people are searching for information where there’s little or none available on your website. You can create marketing quizzes around those keywords to both teach and provide value to your audience.

“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”

Kevin Doory

Director of SEO at Auto Revo

5 Marketing Quiz Examples

If you’re interested in seeing how other companies use marketing quizzes to their advantage, check out the following samples live online:

Outgrow’s “Are You Really a Facebook Marketing Expert?“
Outgrow’s “How Well Do you Know Google AdWords?“
Brand Personality Quiz’s “Brand Archetype Quiz“
Helene In Between’s “What Kind of Blogger Are You?“
Outgrow’s “Should You Switch From a Blog To a Podcast?“

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 66% of marketers report greater audience engagement after using interactive content. Marketing quizzes are a great way to get started in the world of dynamic content and see an increase in your engagement and audience enthusiasm.

Christy Walters

CopyPress writer