*Disclosure: I am an affiliate of the quiz creation platform, Interact. While this partnership gives you the chance to take advantage of a discount upon signing up with them, I also get a cut directly from Interact. 

#TrueStory – I had resisted creating a quiz to promote my business for the longest time.

I thought it was too gimmicky for my brand, as I wasn’t about to create a, “What’s Your Spirit Animal?” quiz. I thought the quiz craze was going to quickly die down. I thought it was just another flavor of the month that I didn’t need to give my attention to.

So, I warned myself not to jump on this bandwagon only to end up as another case study for allowing shiny object syndrome to side-track me from my vision for the business.

The reason I finally convinced myself to give it a try was when I gained clarity on the benefits of doing so. I realized that a free quiz could potentially serve more than the one purpose of building my email list on autopilot.

More on this later.

Little did I know that starting on my quiz creation journey was going to be one of the few best decisions I’ve made for my business.

By the way, I call this a “journey” because it took me a long time to finish it.

Wait, don’t bounce just yet because I said it took a long time. It’s not that it took me a long time to work on creating a quiz day in & day out. It took me a long time because I had to walk away from this for a few good months before I came back to finish it.

Actually, believe it or not, I walked away from both of my quizzes.

Yep, I have 2 quizzes, and I had to walk away from both of them. For the first one, it took me more than 5 months to revisit it. The second one took me a lot less time, about 2 months or so.

But the good news is that you don’t have to go through the same journey.

Just by reading this post, you will know what to do & what not to do so that your quiz creation experience will be a short & pleasant one.

Here’s a little sidenote: I’d listened to enough podcast episodes & read up on a few posts about creating a quiz before I had gotten into it, but I didn’t find anything that would have helped me to not walk away from them. Now that I’m done with them, I am delighted to share my experience here. 

So, if you spotted this post, I’d say it’s the universe trying to guide you to the right path. So, let’s get started.

Why You Should Care About Creating a Quiz for Your Business

A free quiz does not have to act as a marketing tactic to create hype or to go viral over social media. Once you realize the benefits of creating one, you will change your perception of quizzes just like I did.

A well-crafted quiz can run in the background and achieve 3 objectives while you run your business:

1.      Build your email list without creating a lead magnet or two (or three) & let it run on autopilot.

2.     Collect data to help create new service offerings that are relevant to them.

3.     Serve as an assessment tool for your new or existing clients & eliminate the need for discovery calls.

When I realized these clear purposes, I was immediately sold. And, the neurons in my brain started to spark like fireworks with all sorts of ideas!

Additionally, here’s another major reason for you to get curious about creating a quiz of your own as an effective tool. You may have heard me say this over and over again, “Gamification is the ultimate learning tool.”

Don’t get me wrong, free checklists, templates, workbooks & e-books are great lead magnets. But the reason I did not want to do any of those is this:

I knew people wouldn’t do anything with those once they received them.

This did not sit well with me.

Regardless of whether I charge for those or not, it is extremely upsetting to me to know that people don’t do anything with what I spend my time, energy & expertise on. Even if the purpose of those lead magnets is to encourage people to sign up for my email list, I could not help but feel counter-productive.

Wouldn’t you feel the same?

On the other hand, if you create something that is “gamified,” they will do it on the spot, and most of them will find the value in a matter of a few minutes.

The reality is people are all about getting instant gratification. That’s a cold fact. Also, it’s a cold fact that you and I have choices knowing this as a fact.

See, we can choose to argue that the urge for wanting instant gratification gets them nowhere near the solutions they are seeking.

Or we can choose to use this fact to our advantage & grab their attention while we can.

I must say, I am such a late bloomer when it comes to letting go of my stubbornness. It has taken me a lifetime to work on it. Luckily, though, there I was, willing to graciously back down & stop arguing about what was right.

Instead, as part of my “adulting” process, I’ve decided to meet them where they are at.

Yay me for finally growing up. LOL

My Stats from the 2 Quizzes I’m Currently Running

I’m not going to advocate for a marketing tool without sharing what it does for my business. So, let me share some of the key metrics.

Right now, on average, 2 of my quizzes bring in 100 people per month to sign up for my email list. This number may not be earth-shattering for you, but since I practically don’t do anything other than posting them on social media, namely Twitter, I absolutely have no complaints.

My first quiz attracts people organically through Twitter. My second quiz does very well via Google search because the title of this quiz incorporates strong keywords.

Here’s how the math goes:

100 people x 12 months = 1200 signups

Unsub rate: 33%

So, I am left with 792 people per year signing up & staying on for my email newsletter.

As you can easily see, for consultants, experts & strategists, this can be an enticing piece to put in place as the lead generation system in their business.

[UPDATE 2024]

My stats have improved. On average, I get anywhere from 140 to 240 monthly subscribers with a dismal unsub rate.

If you aren’t actively collecting emails, you would probably love to know that you can do so by doing a bit of front-loading work, right? 

Just one tiny caveat here: It did not look this way immediately after releasing my quizzes. I’m all about keeping it raw & real, and I must disclose that it took more than a year to get to where I am at.

So, patience is the name of the game.

But notice, I don’t run ads to my quizzes. It is all organic. Of course, if I wanted to get more out of this, I could run ads that I am considering for the near future & also actively promote them over other social media platforms.

Share | Connect | Grow

www.maikosakai.com

How This Quiz Creation Process Works

Any time we hear about a new marketing strategy, our immediate, knee-jerk reaction is to ask “how” questions & get overwhelmed.

Have you ever noticed that?

“How many apps do I need in order to make this work?”
“How much do they cost?”
“How long does this take?”
“How do I know this is for me?”
“How do I avoid making any mistakes so that I save time?”

Stop. Just stop.

Before you fill up your brain with all these questions only to feel overwhelmed, I will outline how this works & what should be the first step to make it all happen.

First, you only need 2 SaaS tools:

1.      Quiz creation platform that houses your quiz

2.     Email marketing software i.e. MailChimp, Convertkit, ActiveCampaign, etc.

One more optional item is to allocate one place within your website that tells people about your quiz.

What you do is connect your quiz platform and your email marketing software so that whoever takes your quiz will enter their email addresses to get their quiz results. That’s pretty much it.

So, you don’t have to be a tech-savvy person to set this up.

For my quizzes, I use www.tryinteract.com for 3 big main reasons:

1.      It’s been battle-tested by many marketers & online business owners.

2.     The process of creating one on this platform is super intuitive.

3.     It provides useful data i.e. completion rate in a visual and comprehensive manner.

Although you can create one using something like Google Forms or Typeform, I highly recommend you go with a platform specifically designed to create quizzes. It’s because these form-based programs fall short of one thing:

The features that allow you to create a quiz that’s visually appealing & fun.

Remember, gamification is the name of the game here. If you have to manually insert graphics & change color schemes… it’s just too much work.

On the other hand, a platform like Interact offers many templates, examples, use cases & other resources to make your quiz stand out. I don’t regret making this decision at all.

I know what you are thinking. “OK, Maiko, this seems doable, but how long does it take for me to create one & start using it?”

It depends on how much concentrated time you can invest in creating a quiz that is effective & attractive.

So, based on the assumption that you take my advice on how to create a quiz that works & you are willing to prioritize setting this up in your business, it can take as little as 3 weeks while you run your business, although it is possible someone could get it done in 1 weekend.

It looks something like this:

1.      First week, you draft your quiz and the results, then walk away from it to give yourself a mental break.

2.     Second week, you revisit what you drafted & add final touches.

3.     Third week, write anywhere from 3 to 5 email sequences for those who sign up to your email list, place your quiz on the quiz platform of your choice, and connect your quiz platform and your email marketing software so that everything is automated.

Again, all these tasks can be done in less than a week, but I wanted to paint a realistic picture taking into account that you need to run your business.

Needless to say, the most time & labor-intensive part of this effort is creating the quiz.

This is the reason why this post is mainly dedicated to guiding you through the quiz creation process and not so much about mechanics.

How to Create a “Value-Packed” Quiz that Invites Relevant People to Your Ecosystem

There are 3 key components you want to satisfy when creating a “value-packed” quiz. In other words, if you have already created one but it did not catch on, it means your quiz is missing one of these or more.

1.      The title of your quiz must pique curiosity within a split second and be keyword friendly.

2.     The names representing all the results must also induce the quiz taker’s desire to learn more.

3.     The content of the results must be meaty. It cannot just list results & a brief description.

Remember the 3 benefits of creating a quiz? When it comes to brainstorming for your quiz, you first want to start by making a decision about its purpose.

In my case, my first quiz, “What’s Your Impact Creation Archetype as an Entrepreneur?” was to help business owners identify their zone of genius in terms of connecting with prospects so that they would know what to prioritize when they work on expanding their audience base.

In other words, they get to ditch what is NOT aligned with their personality in order to avoid shiny object syndrome instead of doing trial & error with all sorts of marketing strategies out there to find what works for them.

This quiz serves as an entry point for business owners to get to know about my business and what I do. Without spending time & energy consistently, the quiz captures the attention of those who may or may not be aware of their business challenges.

The part that I was most proud of is the naming of the 4 archetypes. They are fun & memorable, which is an imperative component for an effective quiz.

But the only downside, in hindsight, is that the title of the quiz is not quite “keyword-friendly.” This is something I fixed for the next quiz I tackled.

So, let’s talk about my second quiz as another use case. The “Discover Your Hidden Profitable Niche” quiz serves as an assessment tool for more seasoned entrepreneurs looking to streamline their businesses before scaling.

I’ve written a few posts about niching down as a strategy to scale service-based businesses before. Because of this, my website is filled with the keyword, niche. Based on the data that comes from Google Console, this quiz has become easily searchable for those who type in:

Niche quiz

How to Find Your Niche Quiz

Find My Niche Quiz

This is vital as you get to capture the attention of relevant people you truly want to reach without spending money on paid ads. The bonus is that when you are ready for paid ads, you have enough data for effective copywriting.

Sweet, right?

Say, summertime or December is generally slow for your business, you get to work on various ways to promote your quiz without rushing. Once you get busy again, you won’t even have to think about it as it runs on autopilot.

Now the downside of this quiz was the naming of the archetypes. They are not as fun as the ones from my first quiz, however, I settled with the idea that this is an assessment quiz and that it'd be OK to leave them as is.

If I had obsessed over this part & did not release my quiz because I wanted to spend more time & energy coming up with catchy names, it would have delayed the launch. The core message here is “Pick your battles.”

By now, you understand that the title & the naming of the results are worth spending your time on. This is the reason why it is hard to give you a clear timeline when it comes to figuring out how long it will take for you to create an effective quiz.

OK, let’s move on to the last point of making your results “meaty.”

What you want to avoid is only having a paragraph or two explanations about each archetype. That’s not enough to make it enticing.

Rushing to get it done or keeping it light because you don’t want to give away too much will not help you make your quiz attractive.

This is where you’ll want to go all in with your expertise. In case you are concerned about people not staying on your email list because they got what they came for, which is your quiz, it’s a legitimate concern. The good news is I have the perfect way to reframe this.

Under the stats section earlier in this post, I mentioned 33% of people will unsub from my email list. That’s just a number, and to me, that is perfectly OK. If you ask me why I’m fine with it, my answer is, “It does not require my time or energy to filter out the ones who may not work with me.”

They do the job for me by self-deselecting themselves. How awesome is that?! Imagine getting to keep a healthy level of email open rate because of this. I bet you would love that, too.

One Mistake You Absolutely Want to Avoid When Creating Your Quiz

This is probably the most important point in this post. We are almost there, so just bear with me for a few more min because you will want to get this concept down pat.

Aren’t you curious as to why my 1st quiz took me nearly half a year to complete because I walked away from it for 5 months? It’s obvious that I hit the wall with it, but the question is, what caused it?

You are going to want to know this so that you don’t have to repeat the same thing I did. So here it is.

It took me forever because I started to work on questions for the quiz first.
 

Not sure if you noticed this, but I did NOT list drafting questions as one of the 3 key components of creating a “value-packed” quiz to attract the right people. I hope this is blowing your mind right now.

Think about it – It should be an intuitive thing to contemplate what to ask. Afterall, it’s a…quiz. Well, that’s what I thought, too, but that’s the wrong & time-consuming way to get started.

I’m willing to go so far as to say, “Questions are the least important part of the quiz creation process.”

Let me explain.

When I was ready to come back to where I left off by completely scrapping everything I had worked on, I reversed the whole process. I started drafting the results first.

It took me some time to explore all possible outcomes & be sure that I wasn’t missing an archetype or two.

You may be wondering how many different outcomes are needed to make yours “on point.” The shortest answer, again, is, “It depends.”

I’ve heard of a brand strategist who came up with 12 different archetypes. If you think that’s absolutely necessary, then you go with that. But the sweet spot is anywhere from 4 to 8 different types. All of my quizzes only have 4 outcomes each.

After I was clear on how many outcomes I wanted to put in place, how to differentiate them in the results, and how to name them, I was finally ready to come up with the questions.

By that time, it was super easy for me to draft questions because I was working backward from the results! One important thing to note, though, is that it did take some testing to be sure that all the questions are not so-called “leading questions.”

Here is the thing – what’s the point of creating a quiz that has all the questions laid out in such an obvious way that they don’t need to know their results? Right?

You want people to keep guessing while they are moving along so that the completion rate stays on the high side.

If you are saying to yourself, “Oof, this requires some heavy lifting!” You are not wrong. No doubt this cannot be something you want to jump on impulsively.

But just as I mentioned in the opening of this post, I have absolutely no regrets because I’m reaping all the benefits now.

So…What Say You?

There is another benefit of having a quiz in your business I did not mention. That is, if you are very serious about creating a unique assessment-type quiz, you get to sell it. Yep, you can charge for it.

This is an option for me as well, and I think about it from time to time. This can open up a whole new opportunity to do business with corporate and larger organizations.

I am strategically “tabling it” for the time being as this will require in-depth research and a few iterations as part of the process.

On top of that, it must offer a whole new approach to a very painful challenge in the market so that it does not get lost in a red ocean filled with sharks.

But I thought I’d mention this as a bonus benefit so that, just in case you are ready for it, you can start off the right way to turn it into a paid quiz.

To recap, I only focused on outlining the process of creating a value-packed quiz that the relevant people would love in this post because if you do not nail this right, the rest of the process won’t help you “catch on.”

But it would be a short-sighted post if I did not mention what I intentionally left out in this post.

For one, I did not go deep into discussing the tech mechanics of how all the components come together to make it run on autopilot.

Another is that I did not touch on how to market your quiz to increase awareness among the people you want to reach.

Because of this, I hosted a free live workshop to go over the entire process in under 1 hour so that coaches, consultants, thought leaders and strategists like you can take advantage of the robust quiz creation system.

The recording of this workshop is now available.

If you ever attended any of my live training before, you know what to expect from this one - no fluff, no nonsense, and pure value.

It’s loaded with implementable strategies featuring my no-fail, 10-step Blue Print.

Plus, you get to hear from one of my clients who appeared as the special guest! She shared her quiz creation journey you can easily relate to.

Also, it’s worth noting that watching this video is a requirement for all my clients before booking a session with me so that they get to skip the fundamentals and dive right into transforming their ideas into a quiz format.

Click the below button to watch the workshop for free.