This year marks year 13 of running Interact, and over those 13 years I’ve always done quiz marketing strategy calls with customers. Every single week I do at least one. And then track those customers through to see how the quizzes perform. Here’s what I’ve learned, and exactly how I operate those calls.
First question: What is the question that people want a personalized answer to, that they come to you for?
I wish that could be phrased more simply, but it cannot. So I’d like to break it down if that’s okay. What I mean when I ask you this, is what are people wanting an answer to for themselves, that requires an individual recommendation?
Classic examples in the quiz world are “What’s my personality type?” “What’s my unique advantage?” “Why can’t I lose weight?” “Why am I not happy?” “What skin care will actually work for me?” “What coffee should I drink that I will actually enjoy?”
If you think about each of those questions, none of them can be answered in a generic way. First you need to know who the person asking is, and what they are like as a person, then you can give an answer. So we always start here in our conversation about quiz strategy.
Often times I’m met with a blank stare and a long pause when I ask people this question. And if you’re in that boat, no worries. Good places to look for how to answer this question are your DM’s because that’s where people often ask these types of questions, because they want YOU to give them an answer, not just in a general way. You can also think about conversations you have with your customers, and what they usually ask you about.
Second question: What are the most common answers you give to the question people come to you for personalized help with?
Usually there are common answers you give to the question people come to you for personalized help with. Let’s say it’s the “Why can’t I lose weight?” question, and honestly the answers are usually “not enough movement” “too much eating” “unbalanced diet” etc. There is a long tail of course, but in most cases I’ve seen after helping set up 1000’s of quizzes, you can capture 80% of people within 4-6 unique results.
These answers to the question people want a personalized answer to, become your quiz outcomes. And you write them exactly as you’d say them if the person asking you for help was right in front of you. A great quiz is a great conversation, and you want people to feel like you are just chatting, so write your results that way. Go longer than you think with the results, people are infinitely curious to hear your assessment of them, so give it your all when writing your results. Once you get to 500 words that’s probably too long 🙂
Third question: What questions do you need to ask people in order to give them a personalized answer to the question they came to you wanting a personalized answer to?
Usually it only takes 5-7 questions to get a pretty accurate picture of which of your quiz outcomes is most helpful to the person asking the question. The best way to do this, which still works brilliantly well after all these years, is to ask a question where you can have one answer choice that represents each of your quiz outcomes, which are the answers to the question that people came to you wanting a personalized answer to.
That way, you (or rather, Interact) can simply tally up how many answers were chosen for each outcome, and whichever one has the most is shown as the quiz outcome for that person.
Again, write these questions as you would ask them in real life, we’re having a conversation here.
And that is all.
If you can confidently answer all three of those questions, and write your 4-6 outcomes and 5-7 questions in the way you would ask in real life, your quiz will perform. No need to overcomplicate it. This is my conclusion after 20,000 hours of working with customers to create quizzes that have generated $500 million in value for their businesses.