When you put together your annual content marketing strategy, you may not have incorporated quizzes — and that’s okay. However, that doesn’t mean it’s too late to update your content calendar with a quiz or two, because they are easy to put together using quiz software, and they generally require no help from your development team.

Where Does a Quiz Fit Into My Strategy? 

Before you decide which channels to promote your quiz, you should ask yourself, “What is my number one goal for this quiz?” 

In some cases, your top goal may be to drive a bunch of social traffic. Conservative website Media Research Center saw immediate success with their first two quizzes, resulting in nearly 100,000-page views between the two of them. The first one, “7 Questions All Marine Corps Fans Should Be Able To Answer“, has been taken more than 65,000 times, and the second one, “12 Simple American History Questions All Patriots Should Be Able To Answer“, has been taken 127,000 times.

In other situations, your goal should be to  convert existing visitors on your website into email subscribers or customers. In that case, placing the quiz on your homepage or a very popular page on your site makes a lot of sense.

For example, Zenni Optical placed a quiz on their site helping consumers decide which eyeglass frames were best suited for their specific budget and lifestyle. Over 140,000 people took the quiz resulting in 7,000 new email subscribers and a $124,000 increase in revenue! 

And Zenni Optical isn’t alone. When online collectibles retailer Sideshow Collectibles wanted to increase awareness for their Court of the Dead brand of collectibles, they decided to run a quiz. For their campaign, they created a quiz that invited fans to discover which fictional character from Court of the Dead best represented them.

The results? The quiz was taken over 27,000 times, brought in 15,000 new email subscriptions and generated 1,800 orders delivering $75,000 in revenue! Of those 1,800 orders, 1,220 were first-time customers! 

How to Make a Quiz Go Viral 

The recipe for making a quiz go viral may not be as complex as you think. Here are the ingredients you must have to make it work:

• The quiz must be relevant to the audience. A quiz like, “Which season best represents you?” may not be the best way to promote your shoe company. You could instead ask a very relevant question such as “Which shoe represents your personal style?” Keep it relevant and simple.

• There should be an incentive for taking the quiz. When Court of the Dead ran their quiz campaign, they offered a coupon and guaranteed entry into a giveaway. Keep in mind that not every incentive needs to be monetary. For example, if you’re a university looking to generate email leads for your English degree program, you can put together a grammar quiz and have your participants share the results for bragging rights. After all, being able to brag about your intelligence is a big incentive for many people.

• The quiz must be user-friendly and mobile-friendly. One of the key elements for getting a quiz to go viral is to make it easy to take. Moving through the questions should be effortless and quick — on both desktops and mobile devices. Qzzr, a quiz software company, reports that roughly 53% of all quizzes being taken are on mobile devices! Don’t miss out on this big piece of the pie! Also, make sure the quiz is easy to share. Offer buttons for users to share on Facebook, Twitter, etc. once they reach the results page.
• You must ensure people take the quiz. “If you build it they will come” is an outdated concept. The competition for your audience’s attention is too big to ignore. The burden to make your quiz campaign successful rests with you. Placing the quiz in a high traffic channel is the number one step towards generating desirable results. This may mean your homepage, your social media channels or even spending money building Facebook ads to direct traffic to the quiz.

The quickest way to fail is to not recognize a quiz campaign as a true marketing tactic. Similar to all of your other content, you must promote your quiz campaign and drive traffic to it. When you follow these steps, quizzes will become a staple of your content calendar for years to come.

Chris Kilbourn is a content strategist at Qzzr, an online quiz tool that allows you to create quizzes and post them anywhere. In past lives, he was a professional rock star (seriously), and he built and sold 2 successful companies from the ground up. You can connect with him via email at chris.kilbourn@qzzr.com.