You’ve only had to spend about ten minutes online before getting sucked into the engaging land of free quizzes. You know which fancy coffee drink best describes you, you know if you’re an introvert or an extrovert based on the movies you’ve watched, and you know your emotional IQ.

So you already know the power of creating a quiz.

But you may not know how to create an excellent lead-generating quiz that will grow your email list and encourage more people to work with you.

That all ends now.

By the end of this post, you’ll:

• Understand what a quiz can do for your business
• Have a good idea of which kind of quiz you’ll want to build
• Get inspiration from some of our favorites
• And have a really good idea about the mechanics of how you can set one up for your business

I was so convinced about creating a lead-generating quiz that halfway through writing this post, I paused to create ours.

Here it is: What’s Your Marketing Style? 

Why create a lead-generating quiz in the first place?

Quizzes do a number of things for your brand:

1. They increase engagement and allow people to learn more about you and your industry in a fun and lighthearted way
2. They capture attention
3. They capture email addresses
4. And they increase the amount of time a user spends on your site, which is an indication to the search engines that your site is a good one

Plus, based on the quizzes we’ve created in the past for our clients, they can bring you a new source of income, too! One quiz helped a past client earn over $60,000 in two months. That’s a serious revenue stream!

So, let’s get into the nitty-gritty, shall we? Because you’re not going to make a quiz about fancy coffee or movies from the 80s.

No.

You’re going to make a quiz that generates leads.

What is a lead generating quiz?

A lead generating quiz is simply a quiz that asks for an email address at some point in the process.

But of course, it goes deeper than that. Because the first question you should be asking yourself is, “What sort of quiz would my ideal client want to take that connects them to my offer?”

Side note: your first question almost certainly is “What software do I need to do this?” and I get it, I like useful-seeming questions like that. But hold off. We’ll get to that later. Topic first, tech later.

Let’s parse out the question above.

• What sort of quiz would my ideal client want to take — This is key. The topic needs to be something that your ideal client doesn’t know, but is curious to find out.
• That connects them to my offer — This is the second important piece. Because you pay for email subscribers, you only want to bring people into your world who are likely to become customers down the line. And your opt-in (which is what this quiz is) should be consistent with your offer.

Keeping those two things in mind will help you build a lead-generating quiz that will not only bring you more subscribers but will bring you more customers as well.

4 different types of lead generating quizzes

Generally speaking, quizzes fall into these four categories:

• Knowledge
• Personality
• Assessments
• Scored

1. Knowledge quizzes: How much do you know?

These are the quizzes you think about when you remember school. Pop quiz! How much do you know about {{this topic}}? Are you smarter than a fourth-grader? Do you know all this technical jargon about an industry?

These are the easiest types of quizzes to put together, but often the least useful when it comes to generating leads.

Take digital marketing for example. Since we sell a membership to a vault filled with swipe files and templates, I could create a quiz around how much marketing jargon someone knows.

But my ideal client isn’t a marketer and isn’t well versed in the jargon of my industry.

And my product doesn’t teach jargon.

So I wouldn’t create a knowledge quiz. And most other service-based businesses won’t want to create one either.

A business that SHOULD create a knowledge quiz is someone selling knowledge. If you sell test prep software or a service, then, by all means, put together a quick knowledge quiz will get people into your system who truly need what you’re offering (people who didn’t score 100%, for example).

2. Personality quizzes: What type of person are you?

These are by far the most popular types of quizzes on the internet. What can I say? People love learning more about themselves. What’s more entertaining than learning a bit more about yourself?

If you’re considering creating a quiz, start with a personality quiz.

Brainstorm the following questions:

• How do your ideal people identify themselves? (As in, would they want to take a “what kind of HIPSTER are you?” quiz or are they already put off by the inference?)
• How can you get your prospects on the same page as you? Bethany McCamish is a strategic designer who doesn’t want to serve people who are looking for a new logo. So her quiz focuses on helping future clients build their brand personas.
• How can you connect two seemingly unrelated topics together? Can you connect the type of shoes a person wears with your offer?

3. Assessment/survey quizzes: What do you really need?

These are the most fun (and the most challenging!) quizzes to build. The idea with these is that people who answer the first question one way get a different second question than the others.

You can end up with a lot of paths that need to be taken into consideration when you build an assessment type of quiz, but you’ll have a lot of fun doing that.

Or at least we do.

If you’d like to create an assessment quiz, you’ll want to think about the questions you ask on an intake form.

When you’re asking someone in person a yes or no question, you’ll likely have a different path for them based on their response.

Chart that out, and you’ll have a quiz that works really well for you.

With the assessment type, you’ll want to create the endpoints first, then work backward. 

Otherwise, you’ll end up feeling like John Nash in A Beautiful Mind:

4. Scored quizzes: Where do you fall?

Scored quizzes are similar to knowledge quizzes in that they harken back to simpler times: the classroom.

These are scorecards, and they’re graded.

If you’re considering setting up a scored quiz, you’ll just need to figure out the math. Everyone knows and understands a graded scale, so you’ll be working within a known sphere when it comes to delivering results.

They’re easier to set up technically: ask a series of questions, give one point for each right answer, then turn the results into a percentage.

Anecdotally, I have seen people have more success with the other types of quizzes, and I’m not entirely sure why.

Maybe the people taking the quizzes are more interested in some aspect of their personality than they are to get a graded score.

Maybe they think, “I don’t think I’m going to get a good grade on this, and the only way to keep myself from getting a bad grade is to avoid taking this quiz.”

Or maybe it’s simply that the easier it is for the creator to make, the less fun it is for the taker to take.

Inspiration gallery: 7 lead-generating quizzes we found in our research

Now you know what a lead-generating quiz is. And you know the four main formats they take.

You may be coming around to the idea of creating your own quiz to generate leads.

Now it’s time to look at some quizzes in the wild. Find inspiration in the seven quizzes we’ve found in our research.

1. Kayla Hollatz’s brand voice style quiz

According to the article she wrote over on ConvertKit’s blog, Kayla Hollatz’s brand voice style quiz doubled her email list size on day one and has since helped her bring thousands of people into her world.

One interesting thing about her lead generating quiz is that she doesn’t gate results. Instead, the end screen has an option for taking the next step. That strategy makes me wonder how many more email subscribers she could get if she asked for the submitter’s name and email address before she delivered the results of the quiz.

2. Bethany McCamish’s brand persona quiz

Continuing the brand quizzes, we have Bethany McCamish’s brand persona quiz. If you look at this one vs. Kayla’s, you’ll see that she’s asking very different questions. Some are word associations, and some ask you to pick an image that resonates with your brand.

Her quiz does gate the results, which helps build her list, and helps her tell her prospects which language to use when it comes to their branding.

3. Beardbrand’s Beardsman quiz

In case you were gathering the intelligence that only people who use the word ‘brand’ in their marketing are benefitting from quizzes, allow me to introduce you to Beardbrand’s “What kind of Beardsman are you?” quiz.

Although I am not at all in this brand’s target audience, there are a few things worth mentioning here:

• They tell you how many questions you have to answer before you even begin
• They imply that you might be “the rare one” which is great for piquing curiosity
• At the end of the quiz, before the results, they have a line encouraging you to sign up: “(hint: First time taking the quiz? There’s something special in the first email & it smells like Four Vices.)”

4. Shopify’s “What’s your founder sign?” quiz

What do you do with all the data you’re collecting if you’re a company the size of Shopify? You share it.

And what’s more, you share it in a way that helps people identify with one of your types.

I like that they tell you there are five types of founders. There are links to the different definitions, but I’d be willing to wager that most people who end up on this site want to simply figure out which one they are.

Why read about the other types if you can find out your founder type and simply dive deeper into that?

5. Chanti Zak’s quiz about making quizzes

Chanti Zak is a service provider who helps people build quiz funnels, so her quiz about which type of quiz you should create is a perfect opt-in for her.

She uses this quiz to:

• Highlight that she’s great at creating quizzes
• Pique the interest of people who might be interested in working with her to create a quiz of their own
• And gauge the readiness level of those who do take the quiz

I love it.

6. DoFasting’s weight loss quiz

Here’s another quiz that I like, simply because the landing page makes it compelling.

This lead generating quiz does a good job of letting the taker know that they’re only into this for 60 seconds.

Plus, it starts with an easy question.

I typed in my answers (FOR SCIENCE) and although I gave them my height and weight, they didn’t ask for an email address until I made it to this screen:

18 pounds in a month!?!?!?!

Again, for science, I clicked the pink button.

After entering my email address, I was taken immediately to a screen where I could spend money on their fasting assistant.

I imagine that the conversion rate on the quiz itself is pretty high, but that a small fraction of people go from taking the quiz to buying… whatever it is they’re selling.

7. Annmarie skin care IQ

Annmarie is a skincare brand, and their quiz is one that gets scored.

Their quiz is short and has some fun questions mixed in with serious ones.

I took it, and got my score:

There are a few takeaways I want to highlight here.

The first is how they reframe a C minus grade into a “better than average” spin.

The second is that they have revealed to me that I have normal or combination skin without having me take a quiz about what type of skin I have.

The third is how the results page is … you guessed it … a personalized (or so it seems) sales page, complete with a discount on the products they think my skin will like.

This is genius, and although the logic can be somewhat complicated, it’s worth it.

According to their Facebook counter, 443,000 people have shared their quiz. If even 1% of those used a coupon code found on a personalized page, it was a thousand percent worth doing.

Creating a lead generating quiz for amplifiedNOW

At this point in writing this post, I’m thinking to myself… jeez, I want those kinds of results.

So, even though the content playbook has been really well-received, and we don’t typically create new opt-ins more than once per quarter, I want to make a quiz too.

We’re embracing the concept of building in public, so through the rest of the post, I’m going to map out my thought process in creating a quiz for my company.

Step 1: Brainstorm the type of quiz you are going to create

I’m kicking around two different quizzes in my head:

• Personality. What is your marketing style?
• Assessment. Where do you need to start when you first enter our template and swipe file vault?

I think both options are solid, but I don’t yet have enough information to figure out which one to start with. The assessment will be really useful for people who are already in the vault, but is there a way to make it good for lead generation as well?

The personality one could simply be fun.

I need to map each option out a bit more before committing to a path.

Step 2: Start with the endpoints.

Remember those mazes with the mouse on one end and the cheese on the other? Your job, with a crayon in hand, was to get the mouse to the cheese.

Those mazes were tricky, and often, the mouse would get stuck.

But if instead of moving your crayon from mouse to cheese, you started at the cheese and worked your way back to the mouse, you’d have a much smoother path.

That’s what we’re doing here. 

Starting with the cheese.

For the personality quiz, the theme is marketing styles. Thinking about the different marketing styles out there, there are about four possible outcomes:

1. The strategist
2. The integrator
3. The dreamer/idea person
4. The connector

For the assessment, the endpoints could be:

1. New start
2. New offer
3. New people

Or, we could go deeper. If we do, then these are the starting points for each of the three paths.

I like that.

Step 3: Develop the questions.

For the personality-style quizzes, aim to create one to three questions per endpoint. Since my personality quiz has four endpoints, I’ll need between 4 and 12 questions.

This is the place where a lot of people get stuck, so we mapped out the four different types of quizzes, with examples from different industries in our quiz-building playbook.

I opened the personality quiz one and got going.

What’s your marketing style?

1. Which image appeals to you the most?
   1. The strategist: mind map
   2. The integrator: a map
   3. The dreamer/schemer: daydream
   4. The connector: handshake
      
2. When it’s time to “do marketing activities” what do you typically do?
   1. The strategist: Create a 90-day plan
   2. The integrator: Write a bunch of scripts or record a bunch of videos or write a bunch of stuff until I run completely out of steam
   3. The dreamer/schemer: Read success stories and visualize my business reaching those same milestones
   4. The connector: Open up my favorite social media platform and connect with my friends
      
3. How would your friends and family describe you?
   1. The strategist: driven
   2. The integrator: reliable
   3. The dreamer/schemer: dreamy
   4. The connector: amiable
      
4. Which skill are you most interested in learning more about?
   1. The strategist: building a sales funnel
   2. The integrator: creating a month’s worth of content in a condensed period of time
   3. The dreamer/schemer: more effective brainstorming
   4. The connector: how to make more friends and influence more people
      
5. Which trait would you say best describes you?
   1. The strategist: you’re really good at taking a step back and seeing the big picture
   2. The integrator: you’re in tune with your energy and when you’re ready to do something, you get it done quickly
   3. The dreamer/schemer: you’re great at coming up with big ideas
   4. The connector: you know everyone, and everyone knows you
      
6. Which image best represents your idea of marketing yourself?
   1. The strategist: zoomed out cityscape
   2. The integrator: day planner
   3. The dreamer/schemer: thought cloud
   4. The connector: people around a table
      
7. What are you most excited about?
   1. The strategist: coming up with a plan
   2. The integrator: executing a plan
   3. The dreamer/schemer: ideating and brainstorming
   4. The connector: networking
      
8. Which of the following statements do you need to hear most right now?
   1. The strategist: success is 20% skills and 80% strategy
   2. The integrator: strategy without process is little more than a wish list
   3. The dreamer/schemer: if at first the idea is not absurd, there is no hope
   4. The connector: your network is your net worth

Assessment: which template/swipe file pack should you dig into first?

In this one, we’re asking people to choose their own path.

We’ve broken the template and swipe file vault into three components. Where would you like to begin?

• New start: I’m building a new business/brand or refreshing my existing one
• New offer: I’m ready to plan, build, or launch my new offer
• New people: I’m all set on the business, my offer is solid, now I just need to get it in front of more people

As I’m looking at this, I’m realizing that it has to stay internal. I don’t see how to turn this navigation into a lead-generating quiz.

But it took me until this point to figure it out. And if I’m being truly transparent, I would have given up hours ago if I hadn’t committed to brainstorming in public on this post.

So… thanks.

Step 4: Write the end screens

Write a paragraph (or more!) about each of your endpoints.

You are… the strategist!

You see the big picture. The zoomed-out view. You can visualize your next move, and you thrive in the planning stage. Our best advice for you is to spend more time implementing your big plans before moving on to your next one.

You are… the integrator!

You thrive in the details. The way you work is a lot like a GPS. A destination is set, and you figure out the best way to get there. You love spreadsheets, checklists, and marking things off on your to-do lists. Our best advice for you is to make sure to evaluate whether you still want to reach the destination you set for your business. Do a quick check-in every 90 days or so, then readjust as necessary.

You are… the dreamer!

You love ideating. You love brainstorming. You love thinking about innovative solutions to problems. You’re not someone who fusses about the details. You thrive in new situations. Creating something from the ground up is what gets you up in the morning. Our best advice for you is to channel your energy into building upon the foundation you’ve set. You could spread yourself too thin if you aren’t careful.

You are… the connector!

You keep a Rolodex in your brain, and you’re known for making introductions. You’re always invited to parties, and your presence is always appreciated. Networking is your strong suit. Our best advice for you is to keep giving generously, but don’t be afraid to ask your network to help you when you need it.

Step 5: Draft your email sequence(s)

There are two ways to go about the “email sequence” part of creating a lead generating quiz:

1. Send everyone through the same sequence, regardless of their endpoint
2. Segment your list by endpoint, sending differently worded language to people based on their endpoints

There are pluses and minuses to each option.

Writing one email sequence is (obviously) easier than writing a unique sequence for each endpoint.

But if you have a different product suggestion for each endpoint, it’s worth taking the time and effort to write separate sequences.

The quiz I’ve drafted here will suggest the template and swipe file vault, regardless of marketing style.

But let’s say you had a quiz where one endpoint led to your high-ticket offer while the remaining endpoints led to your medium- or low-ticket offer.

Then of course you’re going to have to write a couple of different email sequences.

In our quiz playbook, we have outlines of email sequences to get you started. But generally speaking, you’re going to want to write at least five emails after the quiz. Each with one call-to-action.

Take the time to make these emails good. You just created an amazing quiz, do NOT lose that momentum with a lackluster email sequence!

Step 6: Hook it all up (NOW we can talk about the tech stack!)

Now that you’ve created your quiz and emails, it’s time to look into the best quiz builder for you.

We use (and love) Paperform. The quiz playbook contains four different quizzes with screenshots into a shared Paperform account so you don’t have to start from scratch.

Paperform allows you to:

• Create logic piping
• Ask just about any type of question you can think of
• Integrate with ConvertKit and a whole host of other software

And it’s so super easy.

Which is why I left it for the end.

Because the truth is, you can buy other software. I used Interact in the past and liked it.

But if you’re already paying for a form builder, you can use it for your quiz.

This is true for Typeform and Gravity Forms as well.

Further reading: 25+ Customizable Quiz Templates & Free Examples | Creating Quizzes with Gravity Forms

Heck, you could probably do it in Google forms, but it won’t win any beauty contests. (http://g.co/createaquiz)

How to create your own lead generating quiz in less than an afternoon

We’ll get into an in-depth comparison of the various quiz builders and form builders that can be used for quizzes in an upcoming post.

But the way this article has been laid out is intentional. See, most people start with the tech.

They do a ton of research.

And find the “best” quiz-building software out there.

Then, after they sign up, they sit there, staring at a blinking cursor, thinking… What should my quiz be about?

But that’s not how it should go.

Instead, follow the 6 steps:

1. Figure out which of the 4 types of quizzes you want to create.
2. Determine the number of endpoints. Name them.
3. Create your questions. 
4. Write the end screens.
5. Write your email sequence. Shoot for five emails.
6. Hook it up to the quiz builder of your dreams. (Seriously, check out Paperform.)

If you take this in-depth article and follow it step-by-step, you’re almost done.

Honestly, even if you only get through the first five steps, you have about an hour of work left, not including edits.

If you want assistance getting your lead generating quiz deployed, you can join the vault. Members of the vault have instant access to the quiz playbook.

What’s in the quiz playbook?

The quiz playbook is my favorite playbook to date. Here’s what you can expect:

• Templates for:
  • Knowledge quizzes
  • Personality quizzes
  • Assessment/survey quizzes
  • Scored quizzes
• Email templates/swipe files for post-quiz results
• Tutorials and walk-throughs for pulling it all together

It’s everything you need to create a high-converting lead-generating quiz in less than an afternoon.

If you decide to use Paperform, use our link. It’s not an affiliate link. It’s a referral link, where you can get 10% off. Plus, you can use the templates we created in Paperform with one click.

Get it all for just 9.: Become a member – amplifiedNOW