How to Use a Quiz as a Lead Magnet

Every new client started as a lead. If you’re hoping to grow your business, one of the best ways to do so is to cast your net wide in an attempt to gather new leads.

But how exactly do you do that? Cold emails generally don’t work, and social media posts only engage so many people.

That’s where quizzes come in. People love online quizzes, and even someone who wasn’t previously considering interior design services is likely to take one for fun.

Of course, if you want your quiz to draw people in, you need to design one that really engages people. Here’s how.

Why Use a Quiz to Expand Your Email List?

In a world overrun with spam emails, most people aren’t going to just hand over their email addresses. They want something in return, and a quality quiz gives them that.

You might already be familiar with how online quizzes can build your email list, but if you aren’t, here’s a quick rundown of the process:

• First, you create a quiz and post it on one or more social media platforms
• Next, a social media user takes the quiz
• Once they’re done, a screen pops up saying they can see their results when they sign up for your email list
• In most cases, the person opts in

As you can see, with this model, both people get something. Your new leads get to learn a little about themselves, the design world, or both, and you get one more person on your email list — a person who might just become a customer in time.

How Quizzes Can Help You Grow Your Business

Why choose quizzes as a lead-generating tool instead of something else? After all, it takes time to develop a quiz (we’ll show you how in a moment), and if you aren’t too tech-savvy, it can be a challenging process.

The simple answer is that quizzes work. People across all demographics love online questionnaires, whether they’re casual, BuzzFeed-style quizzes or more serious, in-depth personality assessments.

Once someone has gone through the process of taking a quiz, they’re usually invested. In most cases, they’ll happily give you their email so they can see their results.

Of course, you can also accomplish your goal by offering other digital assets. For example, many businesses offer free ebooks or guides in exchange for email addresses.

However, quizzes have a major leg up on these alternatives thanks to their shareability. When someone takes a quiz they enjoy, they often want to share it with their friends. The more the quiz is shared, the more likely you are to add new names to your mailing list.

Quizzes have one more substantial advantage over other offers: they help you learn more about your audience. If you include questions that tell you something about the people taking the quiz, you’re effectively conducting audience research.

What Types of Quizzes Are There?

There are no rules when it comes to creating quizzes online. However, if you’re creating a quiz related to your business, it’s important to make sure it’s thematically related to your products or services.
You have plenty of options when it comes to the type of quiz you create. As you may have already discovered, most online quizzes (or at least those offered by businesses) can be divided into a few categories.

Personality Quizzes

These quizzes give participants a personality-related result. Owners of therapy centers or other mental health practices sometimes create more serious personality quizzes. The good news is that these quizzes don’t have to be overly serious to be effective.

For example, you might consider offering a quiz called “Learn Your Chair Personality.” Each result would show a different type of chair and describe the traits we would associate with each — a recliner would be laid-back, a rocking chair would be old-fashioned, and so on.

Style Quizzes

These are kind of like personality quizzes, and some people might even consider them to be a subset. Style quizzes tell people a bit about themselves, although they’re more focused on personal preferences than on the characteristics of the quiz-taker.

Style quizzes lend themselves well to the interior design industry. You might offer a quiz called “What’s Your Design Style?” and include results like Art Deco, mid-century modern, etc.

Assessment Quizzes

If you’ve ever come across one of those Facebook quizzes inviting you to see how many questions you can get right, you’ve seen an assessment quiz. These can be a lot of fun for people who want to test their knowledge. You might devise titles like “How Much Do You Know About Design Styles?” or “Test Your Knowledge of Color Theory.”

Which of these quiz types performs the best? Personality quizzes are arguably the most common and successful. Most people like to learn about themselves, and personality-style quizzes tend to draw them in.

How to Set Up an Email Sequence to Follow Up

Each time someone takes your quiz, they’re added to your email list. That’s a victory in itself, but if you want to maximize your chances of a conversion, you need to make contact with the person while the quiz (and, therefore your business) is still fresh in their mind.

To this end, expert marketers have developed what’s called a follow-up email sequence. Here’s an example of a follow-up sequence made up of four emails.

1. More Details on the Quiz Result

One smart way to keep your leads on the hook is to offer an abbreviated result on the quiz itself and send a more comprehensive result via email.

As soon as someone completes the quiz, you can send them (using automated email functions, of course) a follow-up that expands on their results. Make sure you have a unique email for each quiz result. It doesn’t hurt to welcome recipients to your email list, either.

2. Recommended Resources Based on Their Results

This is an outstanding way to build trust with potential clients. Some people might worry about spam when they see a second email from you, but they’ll likely appreciate the custom recommendations for books, podcasts, and videos you’ve picked out for them.

3. A Personal Story

This email gives you a chance to personalize your brand while demonstrating its value. You might share a story about how you helped a client transform their home. Alternatively, you could briefly explain why you went into the design field. Make sure the story you include ties into the topic of the quiz in some way.

4. Moving Into the Sales Funnel

If you have a robust email process already, you probably know that after your quiz emails, you should deliver a powerful call to action before moving each recipient to the next sequence. For many companies, this will be a “Welcome” sequence, but some prefer to jump right into the sales funnel.

You might wonder how you should go about spacing these emails. If you send them one after another, it will look like spam. But if you wait too long in between, you’ll lose momentum.

Many marketers send one email per day. The average person is inundated with emails, so sending a daily message makes it more likely that your prospect will see at least one.

Quiz-Making Best Practices

Want to get the most out of your online quizzes? Here are a few tips to keep in mind.

Find the Right Length

You want your quiz to be long enough to be meaningful but not so long that quiz-takers lose interest. Keeping it around six to 10 questions is ideal.

Make Sure Your Quiz Reflects Your Brand Voice

Remember, your ultimate goal is to gain new clients. To ensure that those clients-to-be have a seamless experience, it’s important that your quiz matches your chosen brand voice and the style of your website.

Keep Things Light

Most online quizzes aren’t meant to be serious or in-depth. Most people taking them are looking for a fun, momentary distraction. With that in mind, keep the subject matter light and entertaining.

Make It Look Good

As a designer, you already know aesthetics are important. If your quiz looks boring or low-effort, you probably won’t get the responses you’re hoping for. People are attracted to eye-catching things — if your quiz isn’t, they might drop it before they’re done.

Work Backwards

Before you draft your first question, you should have your quiz outcomes planned out. That might sound like odd advice, but when you know the results, you can make sure answers correlate with each one.

It’s generally best to limit yourself to three to five outcomes. That’s enough to make each one personalized but not so much that you get overwhelmed trying to put the quiz together.

Resources for Creating Quizzes for Business

Ready to start bringing in clients with quizzes but don’t know where to start? Check out these helpful resources.

1. HubSpot Forms

HubSpot Forms lets you create just about any type of user-filled interface you can imagine. It also adds new leads to your customer relationship management software if you have one.

2. Typeform

Typeform has quickly become a leader in the world of online forms and quizzes. It features a simple, polished-looking interface that displays one question at a time. This service has lots of templates and an affordable business subscription.

3. ProProfs Quiz Maker

The name might make it sound like it’s only for educators, but ProProfs is a robust tool for creating quizzes of all varieties and design styles. You can easily add images and videos, and ProProfs can instantly integrate with most marketing software.

Growing Your Interior Design Business One Quiz at a Time

If you’re like many interior designers, you left design school eager to go into business for yourself. This can be a lot harder than it sounds, and it’s made even more difficult by the lack of a substantial community among design professionals.

At Behind the Design, we’re working to change that. We offer training, continuing education, and an extensive network of interior designers looking to better themselves. Join us today and experience the benefits of being part of a community!