🔍 How To Create Quizzes That Convert 📊
Quizzes are just so irresistible, especially when done right. How do you create quizzes that convert? Today, we're joined by Catharine O'Leary, aka the Quiz Queen, who unveils a lead generation system that's not only easy and fun but delivers immediate results. With 25 years of expertise in developing consumer insights for top international corporations, Catharine now empowers entrepreneurs to create quizzes that attract their ideal clients through strategic questioning. In this episode, she shares the transformative power of quizzes, emphasizing their effectiveness in engaging audiences, customizing offers, and delivering valuable insights for better business focus. Get ready to dive into the world of quizzes with Catharine and discover a game-changing approach to client attraction.
#impactfulentreprenurshow #guestinterview #ConvertWithQuizzes
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
We are here with the lovely Catharine O’Leary. I am so excited because if you want to know the best questions that attract the best clients, Catharine, the Quiz Queen, can help you out. She's here to showcase a lead generation system that's easy, fun and delivers results immediately. Who doesn't love a little bit of that immediate gratification, am I right?
The best questions get you the best clients.
She is the Quiz Queen spending the last 25 years developing consumer insights for the top international corporations but now she's helping entrepreneurs like you to create quizzes that attract the best clients by asking the best questions. If you have one click to grab your ideal clients, then this information is for you. We cannot wait to dig in. Quizzes are hot, popular, and fun, so let's dig in. Welcome, Catharine. I'm so excited to talk quizzes with you.
I can talk about quizzes all day long. This is great but I love an audience. Now I'm not just talking with myself. That's awesome.
I know everyone in the audience is super interested in quizzes and surveys. Anything that’s like finding your avatar or finding out which flavor are you is so hot. Before we jump into the goodness, some people in our audience might be meeting you for the first time. Do you want to tell us a little bit about you and your entrepreneurial story? How did you become the Quiz Queen? Tell us all about that.
I did not grow up wanting to be the Quiz Queen. I wanted to be the Wolf of Wall Street. That was way cooler. I went to school. I became an economist and started in corporate. I have always been in the market research and consumer insights field for the past 30 years. When I told my father what I did, he sighed a big sigh and shook his head. In his Irish brogue, he said, “Jesus, Maddie, and Joseph, Catharine. What the hell is that? Could you make it more complicated?” I'm like, “It's not complicated.” All consumer insights are a translation of asking consumers what they want, need, and are challenged with. It’s translating that into corporate products, services, marketing campaigns, and sales conversations.
It's a fancy way of saying translation. I left corporate because the three-hour commute was getting to me and it needed to be done. I spent 30 years in corporate. I worked with some of the biggest brands out there, including Apple and Pepsi, which was awesome. When I started my own entrepreneurial journey, I had a hard time figuring out how consumer insights were going to translate into a business, so I started with network marketing, which was fantastic.
It was a personal development course. They were good. The problem was my lead generation was terrible. I was miserable. I was talking to all the wrong people all the time. I was so frustrated. I was throwing hand over fist money at Facebook hoping that if the net is bigger maybe I'll catch one fish. I was doing all the one-on-one calls. I don't know if anyone else has done that. The one-on-one calls with anyone who will talk to you which isn't a good strategy for getting any cash in the bank, then Google SEO.
I don't know anyone baffled and beat. I was done. I started thinking that a three-hour commute might not be so bad. Maybe I can do audiobooks. No, I don't want to do that. There had to be a way. People are making money doing this. There had to be a way to attract the best clients in a way that didn't feel salesy, smarmy, weird, or slipping into somebody's DMs. I went on a quest and I found quizzes. We were talking earlier about it was one of those eureka moments where I was like, “This is how I can use my experience in my own business. This is cool.”
It made sense that as someone who is already skilled in gathering market research, insights, and information, the online business version of that is quizzes.
It took a little while to get there. There are two stumbling blocks. One was that the corporate mindset and the entrepreneurial mindset are totally different. That takes a little while to get into your space if you will. The second was corporations are spending $50,000 to upward of $2 million or $3 million on a study. I was stuck in that mode where it had to be that complicated. As my father said, “Why do you make it so complicated?” I was stuck in that mode where it had to be so expensive and so complicated that it was outside of the reach of most entrepreneurs.
Finding quizzes and quiz funnels, I realized I could offer support, tools, and techniques to get those best clients into your funnel so you're not wasting your time and money on the wrong people. Release them. They're for somebody else. God bless and good luck, but being able to get up every morning and know that you're talking to the best clients, know that you're going to be serving your zone of genius and not chasing a bunch of people. That's where the click happened if you will.
Which makes sense. For a lot of people tuning in, they're thinking, “I've heard of quizzes. I get that, but I already have a PDF download. I already have a mini course. I already have some video training. I have a bunch of lead magnets already.” What makes a quiz different? Why is a quiz so worth the time of building out as compared to some of these other lead magnets?
Some of those other lead magnets are great. The challenge that everyone is facing is that as more people get online, there's more noise. There are more people offering this free that, this masterclass, and this downloadable. Only 20 % of downloadable are opened after they're downloaded. You have to wonder a little bit about who's on your list, are they your ideal clients? They haven't read your stuff. You haven't built that know, like, and trust factor.
What a quiz does is get them to take no more than sixty seconds to take a couple of questions that you have spent the time upfront to ensure that it is a journey that they're going to enjoy and they're going to learn something out of. You're going to build your know, like, and trust factor by the way that you phrase the questions and the way that you put your personality into it. You then get to invite them at the end of the quiz to your next step, whatever that is.
Not only do they get the insight and the downloadable immediately but they also get it as an email. You have two places where they get it. They get it right at the end of the quiz and they get it through an email, but they've also got an invitation to your webinar, one-on-one call, your sales page, or whatever that happens to be at the time. I call it a lead magnet on steroids. It does a lot of different things all within 60 seconds all within that one click.
They get to the end of the quiz. They get to see their result, and there's always a sense of satisfaction. Curiosity gets the best of us. We all love taking a good quiz. I get that. It triggers an email with their results on the backend. Are you saying that depending on how they answer the quiz questions, it would direct them to the next resource? It might be different. One person might see, “This master class is perfect for you.” A different person might see, “Grab my download.”
You can do it like that. You can also do it where everyone gets the same offer. If you're a business coach, you might cover a bunch of things in modules. You might cover mindset, system, and time management. Anyone looking for your services might be looking for all three, but it’s likely they have one that's their priority. Within the quiz, you might ask them, “What are you struggling with most? Is it a mindset? Is it time management or is it systems?”
When they go to the end of the quiz and they get their insights, their insights talk about mindset or systems or time management, depending on what they're struggling with. Everything goes to the same offer. You're still having the exact same coaching offer. You put the lens on the priority that is for them. That's one way to do it. The other way is, as you said, maybe you have an emerging superstar who needs maybe a little bit more support. Maybe it's more of a call or maybe even your $97 course to get them started so they're warmed up for your signature course.
Maybe the experienced person gets a call with you and it's a good half hour or 45 minutes. You've done all these steps, let's go to the next step. It's very flexible and you can have fun with it. It’s your business and personality. You're building yourself up to the next step or for them to take the next step with you. You can have a lot of fun with it.
I'm hearing it's far more customizable than your average lead magnet. The person taking the quiz is going to feel like they're getting a customized response versus the same download that everyone gets.
Even if they get the same offer, they're going to feel like they've gotten customized treatment because of the way that you have generated. You always start with the offer in mind before you start your quiz then you reverse engineer it. Quizzes are taken from front to back, but they're created from back to front. You know the location that they're going to hit. The thing is as you take them through that journey of where they're currently at, what they're struggling with, and where they want to go, “Here's the next best thing. Talk to me further for information.”
You look like a mind reader. You look like you're the amazing Kreskin. You're blowing their socks off because it's like, “She's in my head. How did that happen?” It's all because you've designed it that way. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy for them to end up in the areas that you've predestined them to be in. It's a lot of fun to see people go through and go, “How did you know that?” It's like, “You told me and I designed it that way.”
It works well. I know from firsthand experience, that if someone feels like you understand them so well, you're in their head. They immediately jump to, “If they understand me that well, they're going to be able to help me.”
They have the solution to the problem that I'm trying to solve. What you do is the insights, you give them a few little nuggets. If they're trying to climb Mount Everest, you get them to base camp one with the free insights. That's your “downloadable,” but then the power is in the invite to next. If you want to go all the way to Everest and you want a guide to get you there, then this is where we need to have a conversation about the course, the master class, or the webinar. It could be straight to a product page. If you're a network marketer, and you have maybe skincare products that you want to send people to right away like, “You're worried about the eyes or you're worried about non-allergenic,” you could send them straight to a product page with suggestions.
The power is in the invite.
Speaking of which, I'm assuming quizzes sound like it works for network marketing, it would work for coaches or course creators. Anything where you have a product or service to offer or something that you can connect them with digitally, this works.
Even bricks-and-mortar. If you want to bring people into your coffee house, are you coffee or tea? Are you a chocolate mocha skim milk? You can have a lot of fun with that.
Depending on their answers, you could say, “We happen to be running a special on a latte. If you're a latte girl, get in here.”
You're building your list in a way that is tagged or segmented so that you can run those promotions after the fact. Whether it's bricks-and-mortar or online, you can capture that information so that, going down further, if you're a coach that's also a speaker, it’s like, “You're primarily a coach, but here's an offer from my partner or my JV affiliate about speaking on stage. I know you're a speaker so I thought this would be of interest to you.”
With every question in the quiz, you could tag them with their answer so you can send them more detailed communications later.
If you wanted to, yes.
This is interesting. There are so many interesting options that open up when you go down the rabbit hole of quizzes. This is fun for me. One of the things you talked about is when someone grabs your average lead magnet. They all sign up for it. It's all triggered to them via email, but only 20% of people ever open it. Do you know the average number of people who take a quiz or the percentage of people who complete the quiz and see their end result?
For somebody that hits the quiz and goes on, a rough benchmark is about 50% because some people will hit it and then be like, “This isn't for me.” That's amazing. That's fantastic because you want those people out. You don't want those people in your close friends pile. As you go through, you're going to get anywhere from 50% to 90% of people opting in to get their results.
They don't get any results unless they give you their email. They go through this whole process. They're getting excited. You're getting to know them. They're getting to know you. They hit the, “Now give me your email.” They know that they're going to get something. They know that they're going to get on your list. That's fine. Your best clients want to be on your list. It's an immediate result. They immediately get, “You need to be focused on mindset. Here's a couple of things that you need to do.”
The actual information and the getting to know you and building your know, like, and trust, that's 100% of people are taking the quiz questions. Getting their opt-in can go anywhere from 50% to 90% or 100%. It depends on how much fun you're putting into it. If you're hitting the problem that they want to solve, you're going to see better results.
Potentially, it’s a much higher conversion rate of people interacting with your content after they've taken the quiz as opposed to downloading something and never looking in their email to see it.
To give you some other numbers, I've had clients that have three times their return on advertising spend. A lead that used to cost them $3 now only costs them $1. You can do it three times with the same amount of money. Your conversion rates will go up, probably double if not triple, because you're shortening the timeframe of them getting to know you.
You don't have to have a month of email nurturers and sequence of emails going out because you've done all that in 60 seconds and you've invited them to the webinar or whatever that is next. Your conversion rates are going to go up. You're going to get better quality people. I would rather have a hundred people that are bang on my target audience or my best clients than a thousand people and try to find the hundred.
You're looking for a needle in a haystack and it's like, “Where do I start?” That process of warming them up is faster because, by the end of the quiz, they already feel like you're in their head.
They're ready to take the next step. If they're not, that's okay. You have them in your email list and you can still nurture them. It's a win-win in that sense. If they don't want to go to the webinar, that's fine. That's great. You have a system in place to keep them engaged. Maybe they're good for a promotion. Black Friday is coming up. Maybe it's the time for a bonus deal but you have them in your system. You're not relying on targeting that is not working anymore with some of the platforms.
Have you found that these quizzes work well both with organic traffic and paid traffic? You did talk about ads getting a bigger return. Does it work organically as well like both sides?
Everyone loves to take a quiz. The more that you can get it out, the more that you have fun with it, the more that they're going to have fun with it. Play it up in your organic leads, like, “Have you taken my quiz?” Go down the street and have your stylist take it. Do a live. “My stylist is taking my quiz. What's your quiz? What's your quiz type? What's your superpower? What color is your cape?” You can have a lot of fun with organic as long as it's going back to the quiz.
What I also like about quizzes is that they can live, like the platform is on its own. It's not like a Facebook platform. It doesn't only work with one thing. Anywhere a link works, your quiz can work. You can put it on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and your emails. Your affiliates and partners can use it. It becomes a lead magnet that is more than just a lead magnet. It's an engagement. It's warming people up into that conversation. It's like your coffee conversation without the coffee.
It sounds like there's a lot of potential not only for engagement but for customization, and then for conversions on the backend as well.
Also, follow-up. I had one client that she put her buckets together. She put her mindset systems and time management buckets together. She had four of them and she thought that the one was only 10% of her client base. It turned out to be 50%. She realized that she didn't have a product for them. She created a product for them and she was better able to serve her audience that she was underserving. I'm a data geek. Once I get into the data side of things, I can go quite nuts. That's the power of it as well. It's not just the upfront power. It's the back-end power of being able to serve better.
Create Quizzes That Convert: It's not just the upfront power. It's the backend power of actually being able to serve better.
That's fascinating. The insights it gives you might be surprising. As with your client, it was the exact opposite of what she expected.
She realized she didn't have something for them because she thought they were the more relaxed version of video people. She thought that she wasn't attracting them. She thought they weren't in her best client pool, and she found out that they were. As soon as she offered them a product, they were like, “Thank God. Now it's not so hyper in your face. This is more laid back and it's brilliant.” She was able to serve them.
What a great example of how a quiz can come together now. It's interesting. I could see this being used across multiple different industries in different ways and giving you some smart insights on the back end of what to email those people then based on how they answer questions.
It gives you clarity. It grounds the business in, “This is what I do. This is who I serve.” You have to get very clear on your offer and your target audience.” You don't want everyone in your quiz. You want only your best client. It gets you and the business super focused on making sure that you are attracting the right people and then it flows from there. Six months from now or a year from now, your marketing is on autopilot. It's running 365. It's systemized. Now you can work on your zone of genius. You can work on your business instead of in your business, which is what we all strive to do.
I love that. We've already talked about some of the things that are key in helping a quiz convert, starting with the end in mind, reverse engineering it, and thinking about the experience of the person. What are some of the top mistakes you see people make when they first start playing with quizzes?
One of the mistakes is narrowing down and problem-solving that ideal. Your best clients, what's keeping them up at night? Also, phrase it. Don't get too cute and too markety. What are the words that they use? That's what they're going to be drawn to. Goldfish have an attention span of eight seconds. Our attention span is seven seconds, so you don't have a lot of time to stop at scroll. You're going to have to hit them with their words and their problem.
Getting clear on that and making sure that you're the GPS. You have the offer and the end in mind. You have their starting point, now you have to get them in between those. You have to bridge that gap in a way that makes sense. Don't just throw every question into a survey. Don't do the kitchen sink. Treat it like a million-dollar real estate. If it's not serving a purpose, get rid of the question. Keep it tight.
I'm not saying have a two-question questionnaire. That's not what I'm saying, but don't have a fifteen-question questionnaire if that's not honestly what you need. Remember, you're trying to introduce yourself, trying to get them to see those insights, and invite them. You don't have to know everything about them to get them to say hi to your high-ticket offer. That's not the purpose of a lead generation quiz.
It's to get them in as a lead and let them feel like you're in their mind.
Make sure that you have those questions like, where are you now? What are you struggling with? Where do you want to be? Questions that make sense to get them from problem to “I have insights. This is what you can do, let's talk more.” Don't just throw everything from what's your dog's name, what's your favorite ice cream, what's the weather outside and then all of a sudden, you have a financial plan.
That drives people bonkers because they're not in their minds. It's random. That does you more damage than good. Don't do a quiz in that case. You're now going to lose a potential client because you've wasted their time and made them mad because they thought that they were going to get something cool.
Every single question has to solve or have a specific purpose in your quiz funnel.
It has to lead to the next question. It can't be just random. It's that GPS, like, “Turn left here. Turn right here.” What journey are you trying to get them to explore? It should be a bit of a discovery for your client like, “What is the answer to that? “I see why you asked that. This is where I want to go. You can help me? That's brilliant. You're in my head and you gave me something cool that I can do right away.” Do you want to talk to me more?” “Of course, I want to talk to you more.”
That's wicked smart. A few of these examples of how it worked for your clients. Do you have any other top examples that come to mind of someone implementing quizzes for the first time, like shifts that they experienced as a result of bringing quizzes into their business?
I have a long client that was surprised because they were doing a quiz. It was a lead generation quiz. It was off of summit traffic, so coaches out there that are speaking or networking. A quiz is a good way to have something easy to drop in the chat for people to do. This one client was selling a course and she was trying to get webinar traffic to a $995 course. She ended up selling more of her done-for-you, like $5,000 packages off of the end. In two weeks, she had $17,000 weeks in the first two weeks of the launch. They were off of done free. She was sending people to a one-on-one call, expecting to talk to them about the $995 course, but ended up talking to them about done-for-you.
Create Quizzes That Convert: A quiz is a really good way to have something easy to drop in the chat.
That's what they were looking for.
It happened to be what they were looking for. Again, the power of the best clients is like, “I want this. The course is great, but I don't want to do it myself.” “Great, there's another option.”
There's a done-for-you service and they were ready and happy to pay for that. It does truly pick out the highest quality leads like it's the best ideal clients who are usually flowing through. Especially if they get to the point where they're booking a call, it sounds like.
I don't usually suggest a call at the end of the quiz because you could get inundated with calls. If you're just starting out, it might be the way to go. For cold traffic lead generation or people who are just getting to know you, it’s brilliant for a $20 book. If you have a book funnel or if you want a book funnel, quizzes are great for that, or your $997 course or maybe your $199 course. After that, it's great to invite them to a webinar so they can learn about your $997 course or your $2,000 course.
The other thing is that you might have a webinar going this month, but not for the next three months. Where do you send them for the next three months? You can change that. You can change the URL at the back end and just say, “Now that stops.” We're going to send people to maybe an evergreen video or a masterclass that you always have. It lives a long time. It lives longer than your typical PDF download.
That makes sense completely. Very fun. I'm sure there are people in the audience who are realizing, “Quizzes are what I've been missing and I want to set one up, especially when it works so broadly across so many types of businesses and it can get you these super targeted ideal clients.” I know you have a free gift that will help the audience to get started with learning how to incorporate quizzes and it's a quiz for them to experience themselves. Is that right? Do you want to tell us about it?
One thing that I'm asked all the time is like, what quiz is best for my business? I created a quiz called What's the best quiz for my biz? You can go and do that at QuizForMyBiz.com. That gives you a good starting point of where your business is at and where a quiz might be able to plug in and why it would be a good marketing strategy for you. It also invites you to the next step.
Not only are you going to learn about which quiz would be best for your business type but you also get to experience the quiz to see how it feels and experience both sides at the same time. Get your creative wheels turning on like, “How might I do this for my business?” It’s super helpful to have that.
Important Links
Catharine O’Leary – LinkedIn
About Catherine O’Leary
If you want to know the best questions that attract the best clients Catharine, The Quiz Queen can definitely help you out! Catharine O'Leary is on the Social Media Sales Summit today to showcase a lead generation system that is easy, fun, and delivers results immediately.
She is the quiz queen, spending the last 25 years developing consumer insights for the top international corporations now helping entrepreneurs create quizzes that attract the best clients by asking the best questions. If you only have just one click to grab your ideal clients this is the information for you!
