If you’re an avid, or even casual social media user, you’ve most certainly seen or taken a social quiz on platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. Maybe you wanted to know “What City Should You Live In?” or you’re curious if Buzzfeed can “Guess Your Real Age” in 10 simple questions.
Love them or hate them, the attraction of these quizzes is undeniable--according to a Buzzsumo study, the average social quiz is shared nearly 2,000 times. They’re not only compelling, they’re downright addictive for most and the fact that many users share their results as badge of honor (or disgrace) makes a pretty good case for consideration by most digital marketers.
ONeil Interactive, a Hunt Valley-Md.-based marketing firm for home builders, began capitalizing on the quiz craze as a branding tool for clients in 2015. With thoughtful design and well-targeted promotion, a quiz campaign not only positions your message in front of thousands of potential clients, it allows those users to interact with your brand in a fun and memorable way that may also generate some leads.
We first introduced the concept of using social quizzes to generate leads to Columbus, Ohio-based home builder M/I Homes, No. 14 on the Builder 100, in 2016. When striving for lead conversion in a primarily “social” environment, the goal is to make users feel less like they weren’t being marketed to and more like they were participating in a fun exercise at their own will.
Today’s digital climate is hyper-focused on data privacy, and the topic has been so widely publicized that users are not only becoming more hesitant to share their personal information but are also more conscious of what their data is being used for. Now, more than ever, it is imperative for builders to give a potential home buyer a reason to offer up their email address.
What’s the good news? In the structure of the typical social quiz formula, asking a user to exchange their email address for their results is a logical next step in a process they’re already familiar with and does not come across as a ploy for email subscriptions. In our experience, successfully marketed quiz campaigns deliver a high volume of registrations with a cost-per-lead as low as $1.20. We have a few suggestions to ensure that these leads are better qualified and your online sales counselor or marketing department aren’t chasing dead ends:
1. Set the right expectation of lead quality with your marketing and sales teams. These are “top-of-the-funnel” leads, and not necessarily ready, willing, and able to purchase a home.
2. Ask a qualifying question somewhere within the context of the more light-hearted copywriting. For example, a question such as “When do you plan on making your next move?” with a multiple choice selection of time frames, will provide a good gauge of whether the user is in the market for a new home and how aggressively the lead should be followed up on.
3. If you are a builder entering a new market, keep your promotional targeting parameters tight on the geographic delivery radius and buyer demographic, and make sure to keep the quiz content geographically relevant. This is a powerful method to jump start a prospect database in a brand new market.
So, how do you build a quiz of your own? There are plenty of reputable quiz applications such as Typeform and Fyrebox that can help get you started. These apps provide the development framework, your job is just to generate the content and carry out the promotion.
However, you may find you need more robust functionality, such as CRM integration, or a more tailored design to match your brand. If this is the case, we suggest enlisting your local agency for custom development so that your specific KPIs are kept top of mind during the ideation and execution.
We think the quiz trend is here to stay. Consider the consumers you want filling the top of your funnel, identify a topic that resonates, drop in a qualifying question, and load that database!