Posts in category: Marketing & Sales

Ever since I started working online in 2008, I have seen numerous companies use quizzes and surveys to generate qualified leads for their sales teams. It seems like this strategy always works really well. People seem to respond very positively to this kind of approach. This has made me wonder if there was something special about quizzes that allows them to be used successfully in lead generation for B2B. There must be some reason why they work such well for many B2B marketers. 

Since 2017, when I launched Centis, I used them also extensively for the nutraceuticals niche where we generated thousands of B2B leads for sales teams.

Lead Generation For B2B Using Quiz Funnels … Seriously?

The use of quizzes within marketing campaigns is nothing new. In fact, it dates back to the mid-1990s, when companies like Procter & Gamble used quiz questions to test consumers’ knowledge about their products. Today, smart marketers use them for alL types of lead generation and sales, including B2B.

Rather than relying on ads or brochure downloads, smart marketers leverage the power of quizzes to find what does the prospect is looking to buy – what are the pains they want to solve – and then simply offer them.

We also published an extensive case study on how we generated leads for a German supplement manufacturer where you can take valuable ideas from it.

Not only we have results from our agency experience over the years, but there are  also numerous studies out there that show how quizzes work well for lead generation for B2B. For instance, a study published back in 2012 showed that quizzes produced twice as many response rates as traditional survey forms did.

Another report found that quizzes were five times less expensive to run compared to traditional online survey programs, and we also support this based on our experience. These statistics prove that quizzes are a fantastic method of lead generation and can save you time and money when compared to other methods.

Why Do Quizzes Work For B2B Leads?

I am sure you’ve heard about the term “omni-channel”. This means that we should try to offer our prospects and clients options beyond just the traditional channel of advertising. If we want to succeed in selling more products and services, we need to give our potential buyers multiple ways to contact us, including email, social media, phone, text messaging, live chat, video calls, Facebook Messenger popups, Skype, etc… But let’s face it – none of these methods is going to get very far unless we convert the prospect into a buyer.

That is where quizzes come in. Quiz responses allow us to collect data that helps us determine whether the person is interested in buying our product or service. Not only does this increase the likelihood that they may buy from us but it also gives us valuable insight into what features, benefits, price points, etc.. we need to communicate to them. A simple yet effective way to put it is that quizzes help us to figure out exactly what we should be saying to get someone to buy from us.

But wait a second. Isn’t everyone already answering these types of questions during the initial stages of a conversation with a potential client? Yes, this is true. When we meet a new prospect for the first time, we usually ask them questions such as: “what product or service are you looking for?” “What is your budget?” and “Are you going to decide or are there others involved?” These kinds of questions aren’t necessarily designed specifically to convert a prospect into a buyer. Yet, you probably still get answers from participants while interacting with them throughout your day.

This concept applies equally well to B2B and B2C industries. Anyone who has ever worked in sales knows that one of the keys to closing deals is getting people to talk about themselves. Questions like: “Please tell me about yourself”, and “Tell me about your organization/company” are great tools that help us gather information about our prospects. The problem is that these types of questions require a certain level of confidence. Most salespeople won’t feel comfortable asking strangers deep personal questions right off the bat. 

So, instead of trying to force our prospects to reveal everything about themselves before we even begin talking, we could simply offer them a quiz that serves as a starting point. This could be by a link on our website, via an ad, social media or our own email marketing – even as a placement in a online magazine or business directory.

Interested prospects take the quiz and then we continue the conversation with them when they complete it and when we follow up. Now, here comes the interesting part.

Let us say that we receive 100 responses to our quiz and we realize that 40% of the respondents are ready to move forward with a conversation. Then we decide to use this information to design a conversation path for that 40%. To do this, we analyze each individual’s profile and find out what their needs are. Based on this analysis, we can either add additional functionality to the tool, change some of the existing functionalities, or completely scrap it and redesign it.

If done correctly, our quiz could potentially turn around 40% of our prospects into actual buyers. And, maybe even more. What if we could increase that percentage to 45%? Or 50%? What if we got people to sign up for our newsletter when they complete our quiz? Maybe we can send them a follow-up message to see how things are going. By applying these techniques, our chances of converting a B2B prospect into a paying customer will increase significantly.

 Quizzes are perfect for creating a path for prospective buyers. Imagine that we have created a comprehensive quiz that gathers all the necessary information for the 40% of prospects who are willing to move ahead with us. After we finish collecting their information, we display it on an outcome page with a solution (this could be a product, an appointment scheduling or a pdf download, like a brochure).

Then their name, email and other information are automatically entered into the company’s CRM and assigned to a salesperson who can do a follow-up OR enters an automated email flow, and not a salesperson – it all depends on how you want it.

By combining quizzes and surveys, we can capture data about our participants’ interests, motivations, personality traits, purchase preferences, demographics, attitudes and much more. All of this information can be stored in a database which can be analyzed to learn more about our target audience. In fact, most Fortune 500 companies keep track of at least five aspects of each participant’s behaviour, namely:

* Demographics (age, gender, race, income)

* Motivations (what drives them?)

* Personality types (type A, type B, introvert, extrovert)

* Purchase Preferences (price sensitivity, budget concerns, loyalty programs, etc…)

Quizzes Allow You to Increase Engagement

A lot of companies struggle with how to best engage with prospects. Surveys and email blasts are two methods commonly used. But according to a 2013 report by Harris Interactive, only 40% of marketers feel their emails are successful. Surveys produce lower response rates than emails, but they still aren’t very effective.

Surveys are a nice way to gather quantitative data, but they require a much longer interaction. Email is easier to execute, allows you to connect with potential customers at whatever stage of the decision-making process they’re at, and provides a quick return on investment.

This means you can reach out to hot leads more frequently, and keep doing it until they convert.

This doesn’t happen with quizzes. Once someone fills out their details and enter your database, your chances of getting a response to a question, booking an appointment or even an offer increases by 80%!!

This is because quizzes have a psychological effect on people – they love to take them, fun or education or otherwise, it is way more entertaining take a quiz. But this is not the real reason behind it.

The real reason that people respond to your follow up after they have taken your quiz is because you know what they answered, and you use that knowledge to pitch them.

So if someone answered a quiz about buying an industrial elevator and indicated that it is important to have a hydraulic elevator than cables, you could email him (or have this to be sent automated, based on the quiz answers) and say “I know how important it is for you for the elevator to be hydraulic – they are safer, they do not break easily and comply with all government regulations, while having less accidents during workloads” – you will drive him mad!!

Quizzes Are Easy To Add to Your Site

If you already have a blog or landing page, adding a quiz isn’t difficult. All you need is a form built into a WYSIWYG editor and a custom URL structure.

You can display the quiz as a pop-up, as a link on your main or footer menu, within your blog posts or you can even create a press release and put a link there. 

But Wait – Will A Quiz Work In My Industry?

The answer is dead simple – yes. Wherever we have applied it, it worked. You see a quiz comes down to two parts:

Effective advertising

and 

Highly converting headlines.

The rest is all about asking the right questions.

When a quiz DID NOT work for us, is when we had the wrong headline in the landing page. We simply split-tested headlines, found what worked and our client saw results in a couple of days.

Quizzes work for all industries – even if you are NASA or the Center for Infectious Diseases. It doesn’t really matter – it is just a tool that depending on how you use it, it gives you leads and answers.

If you work in any kind of industry where you need your customers to understand what you’re saying, then you should consider using quizzes as part of your marketing plans.

How To Attract Qualified Leads From A Quiz

Finally, the moment you have been waiting for.  We have broken down the entire process is simple steps that outline the entire workflow.

Step 1: Start with your persona in mind.

We have written an entire blog post about marketing personas and how to create them. In layman’s terms, if you do not know who you are selling to, you won’t be selling to anyone. So first, find out your target audience – the audience that your quiz will be addressed to.

Will it be male CEOs over 50 working in the IT sector? Purchasing managers in the car tires market? or maybe busy HR managers in the finance and banking sector? You know your target market so write it down.

Step 2: What does your quiz solve?

After nailing your persona, you need to identify what pain points your quiz will be solving. Let’s say that you are addressing agency owners who want more systems in their agency but they do not know how. 

Step 3: Write the 1st potential title of the quiz.

The title is the first and foremost element that you need to write and will determine not only the questions, but also the ad copy, the email follow-ups and of course, the outcome pages.

Following the example above, you could have a title “Is your agency running you, or are you running your agency?” and the subtitle “Simple quiz reveals what is missing from being profitable, hassle free agency and what to do about it” Ok, I understand that this may be a horrible title, but you get the point…

You can change the title later – but make sure it is referred to the same issue, otherwise you will have to change the questions too!

Step 4: Write the questions

First, write up a list of 20 or 30 questions that cover all aspects of your business. Be sure to mix up the types of questions — half should be factual, half opinion.

Once you have these questions written out, write the potential answers. Make sure you cover all aspects of your theme. The reason? When you start testing out the quiz by yourself – and you will test all potential outcomes mapped to questions and answers several times, so be prepared – you will realise that some questions are more important than others, so you will start eliminating them.

Eventually, our target is to stay within the range of 10 questions, max.

The reason (I asked this before, didn’t I ?) More than 10 questions and your audience will start leaving the quiz, without completing it. The sweet spot is 6-7 – max is 10. Just saying.

Step 5. Write the outcomes

Outcomes are the pages that people will land on, once they finalise your quiz. Ideally, you want to have 3+ outcomes, providing different products, solutions or a calendar to book an appointment. This is the most gruesome part of creating a quiz because you have to go back to each question and map each answer to one of the outcomes.

Let’s say that you sell ingredients for the supplement industry. When someone fills out the quiz, you could have him – based on his responses – redirect him to a page where you simply tell him to book an appointment to learn more OR if you have asked what is his ideal minimum, and you have mapped that a minimum of less than a tonne is not a qualified lead, then he will be redirected to a page which says that you are not the right partner and register your email instead.

Or if he is, you could redirect him to a booking page where he simply selects his ideal time and day and books an online meeting with your sales staff to learn more of what the prospect wants to buy and give them an offer.

Step 6: Write the ad

Ah, the ad. Tonnes of virtual ink have been spilt on how to write effective ads, which networks to select, what audience to try and so on. 

The important thing to know is that whatever network you select (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Ads or else) your ad must have the SAME headline as with your quiz.

Why?

Audience disconnect.

You see, when someone sees your ad, they expect to land on a page with similar content. If you have a headline on your ad that says “Does Your Business needs Zero-Interest Finance” and your landing page says “DO you Need Business Insurance” then I can’t tell you how many people will click on the ad,, land on your page and leave = wasted marketing dollars.

So make sure that at least your headline and your images match both on the ad and the landing and you have 50% nailed this thing.

Step 7: Write the follow-up emails

When launching a quiz, the reason we call it a “quiz funnel” is that we guide the prospect from point A, to point B, to point C. So we guide them through a path we want, where all outcomes are predefined.

Emails are also part of the equation.

And the objective here is to gather as MANY names, emails and information as you can, for the following reasons:

1. introduce as many as you can to your brand

2. Educate as many as you can to your products and services

3. Try to book as many appointments for send as many brochures, lead magnets or anything you seem necessary to your list

4. Have a point of contact when you have an offer, a new product or a product that these prospects never heard of

5. Add them to a newsletter so they can hear from you as often as possible;

and finally…

6. add them to a remarketing audience in order to serve them even cheaper ads than before.

 And that’s it! You know created your first quiz.

Now what?

Now it’s time to connect your quiz to your CRM and start analysing data. This is probably the topic for another blog post as this is pretty boring (sorry data analysts).

Conclusion

In conclusion, creating a quiz funnel is one way to generate leads. It’s simple, easy, cheap and fast. And it works. You can generate leads on demand that no other medium can, cheaply (we generate leads between $0.10 – $0.50 per lead) and with a contact rate of 80% or more!

All in all, you can create a powerful b2b lead generation funnel using quizzes in just a couple of days. Ask us how below: