If you’re familiar with internet marketing, you’re probably familiar with the “Be Human” or “Date Before You Marry Concept” If not – the idea is that the we’re living in a world in which brands can develop personal relationships through positive human quality interactions.
It’s more important than ever to connect emotionally with existing and potential customers with relevant and important information that they can identify with. That’s why it’s silly to see some of the current digital marketing tactics being deployed on the Facebook channel.
Oftentimes, internet marketers get too caught up in making a direct sale that they don’t think about the user’s mindset. Surprise! No one wants to buy a $1,000 dollar learning course from a brand that no one has heard of.
But building off the above example: if a brand does their targeting right, and provides valuable or emotion-evoking content and experiences with the intention of building trust, then the brand has their foot in the door and can then ask the user to purchase a $1000 course.
The Date Before You Marry Analogy
The most common analogy you will hear in digital is the “date before you marry” concept in terms of building relationships online… Kind of lame I know, but it does the job.
If a stranger came up to you on the street and asked you to marry them, you would probably say no…
BUT, if that stranger asked you on a few dates, and you date for a few years, then he or she has a much better shot at success for that proposal.
Our digital efforts are the same – and when we drive “Cold Traffic” (users that have never been to our brand’s website), we want to promote something that is engaging and not salesy.
This is “the handshake”. And quizzes act as the perfect handshake.
The Handshake: Quizzes As A Brand Introduction
I’ll admit, I don’t take quizzes online. I just don’t naturally gravitate towards them. That’s why I’m not surprised when we hear pushback from clients when we suggest the quiz.
But the fact of that matter is… they work.
Why is that? Well for one, they’re engaging. A “cold” user will always be more receptive to taking a quick quiz then buying a product from a brand they’ve never heard of. And let’s not forget that Facebook’s algorithm will reward you with cheaper clicks as more people engage with your ad.
Let’s look at a few ranges of estimated ad costs on the Facebook Channel:
- Cold Traffic to Products: ~$.85-$1.75
- Cold Traffic to Blog Posts: ~$.15 – $1.25
- Cold Traffic to Quizzes: ~$.05 – $.30
With quizzes we can drive as much as 3x more clicks from cold traffic than a blog post. Additionally, we’ve seen we can drive as much as 17x more traffic to a quiz than cold traffic to a product page.
Users are on Facebook for enjoyment – not to shop. Chances are you won’t get a user to convert on a product first-touch anyways. Why not use that first touch as an opportunity to build positive brand affinity through interactive quizzes and drive MORE users in the process? Quizzes allow us to do this, and that’s why it can be the perfect “handshake” or brand introducer.
The Hidden Value Of Quizzes: Segmentation
Alright let’s take a peek at a few of these “innocent” quiz questions.
All good and well right? A soccer store asking people interested in soccer about their favorite soccer player is not a salesy question at all.
“Great Mike, what does this have to do with anything?” Just be patient…
Look at the access to the data QZZR gives us:
So, what do we do with this data to make it useful?
- Take Export And Remove Duplicates of All Emails
- Sort by Preferred Outcome
In the case below, we sort by “Neymar” and pull the emails accordingly.
And look what I’m going to do next:
Create relevant ad creative and offer
Each of these quiz questions provide us with tremendous insight on users interests and from there we can craft ad copy and offers accordingly.
Look at the return of this particular campaign:
- Amount Spent: $572.19
- Revenue Generated: $10,943.56
- Cost Per Acquisition: $9.54
Now while this return is very very high (it’s typically not THIS high), quizzes can be used in any industry. Quizzes act very similarly to a survey in regards to collecting very valuable information from users. Not to mention it drives cheap first touch clicks.
Quiz Gating: Should I Be Doing This?
Have you ever taken a quiz and expected to see the results, only to see the quiz say we’ll email you the results?
This can potentially piss users off… I know it annoys me on the few occasions I’ve taken an online quiz. Users typically think: “Well I don’t care about my quiz results bad enough to give up my email” There’s nothing particularly valuable the user will get in return other than the quiz answers to exchange an email.
BUT…
We’ve found that creating a very strong promotional offer that aligns with the brand in exchange for the email at the end of a quiz works much much better in terms of not only conversion rate, but to get users to actually make a purchase down the road.
Balancing Budgets With Driving Quizzes To Cold Traffic And Retargeting Offers
So now you know quizzes can be great brand introducers because of:
- Cheaper Traffic
- List Segmentation
But how should you budget this? How should you retarget users and what should that look like? Here’s a rough breakdown of what we’ve found to be most successful:
1. Basic Lead Gen Breakdown of Budget (Make Sure they Scale to 100%):
- Cold Traffic to Quiz 65%-70%
- Warm Traffic from Quiz Takers to Offer 35% – 30 %
- Example: $5,000 Budget
- Cold Traffic: $5000 x .65 = $3250 / 30 (Days in a month) – > $108.3 dollars a day budget allocated towards cold traffic
- Warm Traffic from Quiz Takers: $5000 x .35 = $1750 / 30 (Days in a month) – > $58.3 dollars a day budget allocated towards warm traffic
2. E-Commerce Ranges % Breakdown of Budget (Make Sure they Scale to 100%)
- Cold Traffic: 55%-60%
- Warm Traffic: 25%- 30%
- Hot Traffic: 20% – 10%
- Example: $5000 Budget
- Cold Traffic: $5000 x .55 = $2750 / 30 (Days in a month) – > $91.7 dollars a day budget allocated towards cold traffic
- Warm Traffic from Quiz Takers: $5000 x .25 = $1250 / 30 (Days in a month) – > $41.7 dollars a day budget allocated towards warm traffic
- Hot Traffic: $5000 x .20 = $1000 / 30 (Days in a month) – > $33.3 dollars a day budget allocated towards hot traffic
We suggest starting with multiple ad sets to test the effectiveness of each audience. From a day over day perspective, you should increase bids on top performing ad sets and decrease bids on lower performing ad sets.
How Often Should I Refresh My Quizzes?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for this question. It’s very situational. It’s a balancing act of frequency and performance.
How is your quiz doing? Is it driving cheap traffic? Are you collecting a lot of emails? Are you getting efficient conversions from remarketing off of the quiz?
If performance doesn’t look good across the board – it’s probably time to try a new quiz. Maybe you need to try a topic that engages your audience better. That’s why it’s smart to split test quizzes if you have the budget – the performance can vary extremely. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot and try one quiz and assume you’re getting the best results.
Find Out Which Users Are Most Engaged On Your List
If you have a large database of emails that have been sitting around, that list can be VERY valuable. But of those users in your list, how many still care about your brand?
A quiz can be a perfect way to find out which users are most engaged and can be a great way to survey what users are interested in based off of answers.
Wrapping Up
In summary, if you’re weighing the option of running a quiz, remember the benefits beyond their fun factor:
- They drive cheap traffic first touch, or other words are a very effective brand introducer or “handshake”
- They are an incredible way to segment users by their interests and tailor ad copy and offer accordingly
- Engage your list and uncover who’s still interested in your brand & what they’re interested in
Keep an eye out for our next post where we’ll talk about how to incorporate a cross-channel strategy that incorporates the Quiz, Facebook Ads, and Retargeting Lists for Search Ads (RLSA). In addition, if you’re interested in learning about how you can use quizzes to improve your marketing strategy, register for our free webinar with Boombox by clicking here.
