The value of an owned audience seems to go up every year. Platforms are changing at an increasing pace, and it’s neck-breaking to try and keep up. Which doesn’t mean you don’t need them. Because the platforms are where you reach new people. But what I have observed over the years, is that if you only rely on a platform for all of your leads and sales, and do not have an email list that warms up over time, the ups and downs are much more extreme. And you are more likely to fail when your platform of choice drops in reach, which it always does, boy do I know that too well.
The quiz, and specifically the personality quiz or diagnostic quiz, has been and continues to be, one of the most effective ways of converting audiences into your owned asset (email list). Whether you are biggest on Instagram, your podcast, YouTube, or your Website with SEO/GEO, quizzes continue to deliver incredible conversion rates.
I have been very happy to see this, as attention has shifted from mostly funneling through a website, to now beginning with Instagram in a lot of cases, and Podcasts or YouTube in less, but still many. The actual way quizzes are used hasn’t changed, because quizzes appeal to human nature, and human nature rarely, if ever, changes.
What I mean by that is people always want to learn about themselves. And quizzes can do that. People want to know more about who they are, how they are unique in the world, how fit in in the world, and how they can get where they want to go, or remove themselves from a place that don’t want to be in.
Every great quiz I’ve seen over the years appeals to one of those human desires. If it’s an attachment style quiz, the framing is usually to help you figure out how to have healthier relationships (something people want), or to learn what your attachment style is (learning about yourself) or both, honestly. If it’s a Highly Sensitive Person Assessment, people want to know if the reason they feel hurt by others all the time is because they are a highly sensitive person (learning about themselves).
The list of examples of this goes on and on and on. I’ve been doing this 13 years now, and every great quiz follows the same pattern. The creator of the quiz, who is using the quiz to drive leads into their business, understands what their audience wants to know about themselves. And they create a quiz that helps their audience answer the question they want answers to in their life.
Every time a quiz does super well, it’s because the audience it appeals to generally has the same question, and wants to know the same thing about themselves.
And that’s the hardest part of creating a quiz that does actually work. It’s knowing what that question is that people want to know for themselves. Anecdotally, this usually comes from DMs or in-person conversations, when people keep asking you the same thing over and over again. And you can’t give them an answer unless you know more about them, because their are different answers depending on the person. Like how the best way to get in shape depends on if you are a professional athlete or if you just want to be able to take a nice walk without getting winded.
Identifying the core thing your audience wants that would fit the mould of a quiz is an art and a science. You can also document every question you get and identify the top ones. Some of those questions can be answered with static content, like video, podcast, or blog. Others need interactive content, which is where quizzes come in.
I’d encourage you, if you’re thinking about different lead magnets and ways of building up your owned audience, to go through the following exercise over the next few weeks or months.
- Write down every question people ask you in DMs or one-to-one
- Weed out any questions that come from non-ICP customers
- Once you have enough to group the questions, rank them by most common
- Start going down the list and determine which content format is best to answer each question (video, podcast, blog, quiz).
- Publish, publish, publish. Many of the ideas will be static content, which is great for growth on Instagram, Podcast, YouTube, SEO. The ones that are dynamic can become your quiz lead magnets.
I hope this helps, building up your owned audience is such a valuable asset, and I’ve seen so many businesses grow past 100k to 1 million and beyond, in no small part because they built up their list from the beginning, and often using quizzes.