Quizzes can help you:
- Grow your email list
- Serve your audience better
- Make more money
We’ve been talking a bit about the power of quiz funnels over the last few months, and so I thought, why not call up the guy who’s famous for implementing these things and helping others do it as well?
Ryan Levesque is the bestselling author of Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Formula to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy…Create a Mass of Raving Fans…and Take Any Business to the Next Level, and CEO of The Ask Method Company.
Using the exact methods we’re talking about today he’s built a highly-profitable 8-figure/year business across 23 different niche markets, amassing an email list of over 4 million people along the way.
Tune in to The Side Hustle Show interview to hear:
- what exactly quiz funnels are and why they are so effective
- how you can get started building your own quiz funnels
- how to drive lots of targeted traffic to your funnel for next to no cost
Next Steps: Register for the upcoming live quiz funnel training (use code SIDEHUSTLE to make the $100 registration free!)
- The Traffic Course – The proven path to get more qualified traffic to your website! Use promo code PODCAST for a special listener-only discount.
What Are Quiz Funnels?
First of all, Ryan said it’s important to know the difference between typical online quizzes and sales quiz funnels.
The types of quizzes you typically see on fan pages or sports sites about your favorite characters or players are fun and engaging, but they’re not designed to convert clicks into customers and build an audience.
Quiz funnels are, and they’re used as a type of “conversational marketing,” Ryan told me.
Quiz funnels are designed to ask visitors landing on your site a series of questions to help you better understand who they are.
When you better understand your visitors, you can better sell to them and serve them.
Quiz funnels give you a lot of flexibility in how you can customize your messaging and content towards your visitors.
This enables you to direct people to the next best step for them based on their answers.
For example, if you’ve got a YouTube show or a podcast, you can use a quiz funnel to send people to the best video or episode of your show for them based on their answers to your questions.
Quiz funnels are common in e-commerce to recommend the best product for your specific needs.
Why Quiz Funnels and the “Ask Methodology” Are So Effective
“We as website owners need to take control of our own data strategy. If you can’t rely on third-party data, you must rely on what’s known as ‘zero-party data,’” Ryan told me.
First-party data is when you track how a visitor on your site is behaving. Things like what links they’re clicking, which articles they’re reading, and so on.
“Zero-party data is when someone lands on your website and you’re relying on the information your users have explicitly provided to you,” Ryan said.
This is exactly the type of information you can get from someone by asking them questions when they land on your site.
There are also a few other things that make quiz funnels incredibly effective, such as:
Incredibly Cheap Traffic
When done right, Ryan said creating quiz funnels is an incredibly cheap way to generate targeted traffic.
This is because a well-designed quiz will get shared by users and has the potential to go viral.
An example Ryan shared was a quiz called “What’s your parenting style?”
This quiz went viral and more than 1 million people took part in less than a month. It was mostly shared by parents as it revealed compelling information about their parenting style based on their answers.
Social Media-Friendly
Ryan said that large social media platforms like Facebook encourage and promote well-designed quizzes as they’re so good for engagement.
Even if you’re pushing people off the platform, Ryan said social media platforms love quizzes as they promote sharing and user engagement within their platform.
Ryan explained that you will often see a boost in organic exposure on sites like Facebook which will drive down your cost per click.
Incredibly High Conversions
“It’s not just cheap leads on the front end, these leads convert into customers, readers, subscribers, and viewers at a much higher clip,” Ryan told me.
You’ll often see double to triple the conversion rate that you see with one-size-fits-all marketing, Ryan explained.
This is because you’re able to customize your content, copy, and your creative, all based on the answers someone gives to your quiz.
Where To Start
Ryan said a lot of the principles in his first book, Ask, which he released in 2015 are timeless and still apply to how he builds funnels today.
Some things have changed, however.
Ryan said the main shift in the last 10 years is that it’s easier now to build an audience through a quiz by asking them what they want.
The best part is that you don’t need a huge budget. “Money buys speed,” Ryan told me, but you can get started with little to no budget.
A bootstrapped example Ryan shared was a couple called Don and Tom who are experts in the health and fitness niche and wanted to start their own online business.
Don and Tom launched their quiz online organically with no paid advertising and managed to get 60 people to take the quiz.
Don and Tom followed up with every one of those 60 people personally, and one person responded and said they wanted to buy into whatever they were selling.
That person paid $10,000 for a program that Don and Tom hadn’t even created yet. They reinvested that $10,000 into their business while creating their product and reached out to more people from there.
An Example of How a Quiz Funnel Can Be the Start of a Business
Ryan shared an example of someone he worked with who created a quiz funnel with no existing audience or experience and turned it into a business.
That person is Jamal Miller. Jamal was working at a non-profit making $17/hr and looking for ways to make more money.
Jamal went through Ryan’s training and designed a quiz funnel aimed at the Christian single’s market called “Why are you still single? Take the quiz to find out now!”
It was costing Jamal $0.08-0.10 in Facebook ads to get people to take the quiz, and in just a few weeks he’d had more than 10,000 people take it.
Seeing people write detailed responses to the pain points they were experiencing in the dating game, Jamal decided to start a community and build a product to solve their pain points.
He created a product called “Married and Young” — a membership community designed for Christian singles looking for love.
Jamal launched this product to the list of people who took his quiz and made just under $500,000 and was able to quit his job and go all-in on his business.
Ideal Quiz Structure
Ryan explained that every successful quiz funnel follows the same 3-step process:
- Attract
- Diagnose
- Prescribe
This flow is pretty simple; the first step is to attract the right type of people to take your quiz in the first place.
Your quiz should then be designed to diagnose a person’s situation, and prescribe them the best next step.
Ryan described the initial results as offering a “Band-Aid” cure — something your audience thinks they need. From there, you can sell the actual cure — your paid product or service.
Types of Quizzes
Ryan added that quizzes also boil down to three different types:
- “Type” Quizzes
- “Killer” Quizzes
- Score-Based Quizzes
1. “Type” Quiz
This type of quiz uses categorical perception. This taps into the psychology of helping people identify themselves. If you’ve ever taken a DISC assessment or the Enneagram, you’re familiar with “type” quizzes.
For example, you might ask questions like, “What type of person are you?” or, “What’s your skin type?” to find out key information about people.
2. “Killer” Quiz
This type of quiz is designed to ask specific questions to identify the biggest mistake someone is making in their life.
With this information, you can provide a solution or an answer to help them get the result they’re looking for.
An example Ryan shared is a guitar teacher named Charlie Wallace. Charlie created a quiz called, “The guitar progress killer quiz.”
Charlie used this quiz to identify the mistakes guitar players were making that were holding them back.
He then directed people to the correct resource in his online course called Guitar Mastery Online.
Today, Charlie is making more than $2,000,000 teaching people to play guitar online.
3. Score-Based Quiz
A score-based quiz is designed to give people a score based on their answers and place them on a “spectrum of success.”
Ryan explained that this is based on the psychology that we’re constantly comparing ourselves.
Asking the Right Questions
Ryan also shared some best practices when creating questions for a quiz.
One of the most important best practices is to open up with a “grease the wheels” question, Ryan said.
You shouldn’t dive right in and ask for too much, too soon. You want to think of your quiz funnel as a conversation, Ryan explained.
Your subsequent questions should then be designed to make someone take “micro-commitments.”
This means easy, diagnostic, non-threatening steps that help them build confidence in the quiz and the process so they’ll be more likely to take action.
The ideal number of questions is 5-12. Ryan said he’s not 100% sure why 5-12 questions are the sweet spot, but this is the number of questions the most successful quizzes have.
It’s enough to make a diagnosis or have the results feel meaningful, but not too many questions that people give up and fail to complete it.
For your final question, ask the person for their contact details so you can send them the results of the quiz.
Start With the End in Mind
“You want to always begin with the end in mind,” Ryan told me when explaining how to create a quiz.
Ryan said you should actually build your quiz in reverse. You should start with the offer(s) you want to drive people to, then construct your questions to get them there.
Tools and Tech
When Ryan got into the business he couldn’t find software that did everything he wanted, so he created his own quiz software which is called Bucket.io.
You can get access to Bucket.io in combination with the training Ryan provides, along with some done-for-you components. Or you can build your own software.
If you want to build or find your own technology provider to power your quizzes, Ryan shared some tips on what you should look for:
- Canvas technology that allows you to build out all the branching logic inside a visual interface.
- Look for two types of connection points; outcome mapping and a scoring algorithm.
- The ability to build pre and post-quiz questions.
- Some pre-converting templates to give you a starting point.
- Access to detailed analytics so you can analyze how people are interacting with your quiz.
- Direct integration with the other marketing technologies you’re using.
Ryan also added that it’s a best practice to self-host your quizzes off-site.
If you try and build it into your WordPress site you run the risk of your tech conflicting with plugins and software you’re using.
Bucket.io Alternatives:
Common Quiz Funnel Mistakes
Ryan shared some of the most common mistakes he sees people making:
- Using the wrong hook
- Having the wrong big idea to build a quiz around
- Attracting the wrong people
- Not having the right question strategy or asking the right questions
- Having the wrong offer
- Using the wrong traffic strategy
- Using the wrong technology
In addition to these mistakes, the single biggest mistake Ryan said he sees people making over and over again is overcomplicating the quiz.
Less is more, and the simpler the quiz and the questions the better. This is especially true if you’re creating your first quiz.
Key Quiz Funnel Metrics
Ryan has benchmarks for every step of his funnels and keeps a close eye on how his quizzes are performing.
He said that you should expect a 90-95% completion rate for your first question which is designed to “grease the wheels.”
Any less than 90-95%, and you know your first question isn’t performing how it should.
On the lead capture step where you’re asking for someone’s contact information, you should see at least 50% of people opting in.
Ryan tends to see 80-85% on his quizzes. But said that 50% is the minimum you should expect if you’ve set your quiz up correctly.
What’s Next?
Once a year, Ryan holds a week-long quiz funnel workshop. In this workshop, Ryan runs through the whole process of creating a quiz funnel from start to finish.
I’ll be joining in myself!
If you’re a visual learner, or maybe you just want to see a quiz funnel being built from scratch, this is your chance to see Ryan building a funnel step-by-step himself.
Ryan’s workshops are usually $100. But if you click the following link quizfunnel.com/sidehustle and enter the coupon code “SIDEHUSTLE” you’ll get in for FREE.
This year, Ryan is running the workshop from June 13-18th. He really does only hold these workshops once a year and it’s 100% live, so you do not want to miss out.
Ryan’s #1 Tip for Side Hustle Nation
“Find a coach or mentor and strive to become their #1 student.”
Links and Resources from this Episode
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