You hear of images, videos, blog posts, design elements, questionnaires, polls as various tools of e-commerce marketing strategy. Quizzes can be thought of yet another type of content to use as a part of this mix. However, it is an extremely powerful tool because it is unique and it has more potential to engage than the other tools. Think about it – how likely are you to leave a blog post or a video mid-way versus a quiz you are taking. The trick is to use this potential and optimize it.
Since, at its very core, a quiz is like any other type of content, it would have to follow the norms and principles of content creation. In that sense, it is not a completely alien concept.
Quizzes for Marketing
Short and simple:
For the quiz-taker, a quiz from an e-commerce site is a distraction from the daily routine of their life. When work gets a little tedious and/or boring, you come across this quiz on Facebook and you take it. In such a case, the quiz cannot afford to be too long. 10 questions that take between 2-3 minutes to answer sounds just about right.
Relevant and personal:
Just because they are like any other type of content, quizzes cannot be generic. In fact, a general quiz with random questions put together can get quite annoying. Instead, it might be a good idea to get even more specific with quizzes. For example, identify a niche from amongst your clientèle that you would like to target the quiz to. With these specific people in mind then, the quiz can become more relevant and thus engaging.
Multimedia:
No one said you cannot combine two types of content. Using images always enhances the performance of the content. Quizzing people about an image or a video is a good idea too. But remember, you have to keep track of the time the quiz-taker needs to process the image/video.
Ease of use:
No one has the time or inclination to go through a complicated procedure to take a quiz that is “just for fun”. Technically, the quiz has to be a breeze. Not to mention, it has to be mobile-friendly.
Now, let us come to some specific criteria that apply to quizzes.
Topic and Title:
While any content needs a title that will rope the reader in, quiz topics and related titles can fall into three broad categories – the TIK formula.
Type: The kind of quizzes that claim to identify the kind of personality you are. A furniture store could be, “Are you antique or contemporary?” while an online movie ticket booking site has a range of fictional characters and celebrities to pick from.
Introspection: Such quizzes would get a visitor to think about themselves and bring them some insight. While this can seem very serious, it can be equally fun and entertaining. For example, an investment company can help you think about your financial inclinations with a quiz that asks about how thrifty or splurging you are or how much of a risk-taker you are.
Knowledge: Quizzes that check how much you know about a particular topic are going to do well. Of course, quiz marketing is going to involve questions that are not too hard. And once, a quiz taker answers a good portion of the questions correctly, they are likely to tell the world about it. This makes the quiz instantly shareable.
Once you have formulated your quiz – a quiz that is relevant, easy to use and short – you want to spread the word. Of course, you will use the normal channels like Facebook, Twitter, your website and blog to get it to more people. But, when you do so make sure the results of the quiz contain a call-to-action that makes it easy to share. Here an image comes in handy to make it attractive to the people who the results are shared with. You might have the most well-designed quiz with the funniest questions ever, but it will be all in vain if not distributed right.
Like anything else, it is all the steps in the chain that matter. The beauty of having quizzes is while it requires no special knowledge to make one (even technically!), it can create an impact far superior to the regular forms of content.
