Every month, 19% of the world’s population logs on to Facebook. Try and think of one other thing that 19% of the world’s population does online every month – odds are you can’t think of one.
That’s an incredible amount of people, and anytime there is a platform with that level of reach, there is an opportunity for marketers to harness some of that audience and gain new customers.
On Facebook, the largest publisher is one that creates quizzes – we can’t resist taking and sharing quiz content on the social network. However, just getting shares and likes doesn’t mean much unless there is a clear path to revenue. That means you need to get people from the quiz shares back to your site where the sales process can begin.
The way quizzes drive traffic back to a website is through what I call a “closed loop” system where the quiz is embedded into a host site and every social share points back to that host site. This way no visitor ends up on another domain and you can utilize your quiz to make money in various ways.
Today we are going to look at how three unique brands have used Facebook quizzes to generate traffic and cold hard revenue. We’ll go step-by-step so you can glean the information needed to re-create these tactics on your own site.
Afar Magazine: Generate leads with Facebook Traffic
Afar is a travel magazine that makes addictive quizzes. These quizzes get 90% of their traffic through Facebook shares and an average quiz they produce brings in 20,000 unique visitors. These are stellar numbers; so let’s find out why they have had such success.
Why did this quiz get shared?
Put simply, this quiz got shared because the quiz results invoke an emotional response. The first line of the result below is “You’ve got a discerning palette, a predilection for the obscure, and strong sense of self-awareness.”
That sentence is flattery at it’s finest, and makes me feel positive things even though I know in the back of my head it’s just a silly internet quiz telling me that I’m great. The numbers are undeniable though; a full 16% of people who took this quiz shared their results, resulting in brief virality.
How did it benefit the site?
Afar used this quiz to collect new email subscribers who will get updates when articles come out and will become long-term contacts that can be marketed to. Because the quiz is on the Afar website, incoming Facebook traffic can be converted effectively into leads, and the results below show that it worked pretty well.
Results:
4,240 opt-ins.
Lifetime value of subscriber: $1.50
Approximated Quiz Value: $6,360
How to replicate the Afar quiz method
What Afar did is what I call “quiz-purposing.” They started with the “spirit cities” such as the Berlin one pictured above. Then they made a quiz in which those cities were the results. The reason they chose the spirit cities was because they already had articles written about each result city and those articles were some of the most popular on the Afar site.
To use this same method with your content, identify top posts using Google Analytics and then create a quiz in which the results lead to your popular content. This could be “Which animal are you” (if your popular posts are about animals) “Which computer are you” (if your popular posts are computer reviews) or “Which founder are you?” (If your site is about tech founders).
Equip2Survive: Improve on quizzes that are already popular
You don’t always have to re-invent the wheel. Many times it’s easier and more effective to just improve on an idea that was already successful. This way you’ll avoid taking such a big risk on a new idea. There’s actually a name for this, it’s called the Skyscraper technique.
This method is what Equip2Survive used to come up with their popular quiz “Which celebrity survival expert are you?” The quiz is a direct translation of the “Which celebrity are you?” quiz that’s been popular since the 1920’s when Cosmo Magazine used to print these quizzes in hard-copy publications.
Why did it get shared?
This quiz again brings out an emotional response that leads to social sharing. When you see the celebrity that you are most like, that gives you a sense of pride and affirmation, which is strong enough to give this quiz a 12% share rate among all takers.
How did it benefit the site?
Using a closed-loop system, this quiz drove over 17,000 hits back to the main Equip2Survive website where they present multiple opportunities to purchase digital products from the site.
Results:
17,569 visits
1% conversion rate to upsell digital products ($35 average sale)
Approximated Quiz Value: $6,149
How to replicate this method
To use the skyscraper technique like Equip2Survive for your own quiz, the process is simple. First, Google “(your industry) + (quiz)” and find the one that has the most social shares. Then create your own version of that quiz that’s improved and tailored to your specific audience. Voila! You’ve got an excellent quiz that’s already proven itself in the market!
HotNewHipHop: Gamify the news and use it to drive ad revenue
HotNewHipHop is in the surprisingly competitive Hip Hop news space. In this industry, there are hundreds of articles written every time there is big news like the release of an album. These press articles are all nearly identical, and it’s difficult to even tell them apart.
What hnhh did was gamify their news story about Kendrick Lamar’s new album “To Pimp A Butterfly” by asking people how well they listened to the album. The outcome was a massive amount of sharing and traffic; let’s find out why.
Why did it get shared?
There were 397 comments on this quiz, and they ranged from elation to anger and several fights broke out along the way. This interaction is exactly what fueled the quiz to more than 48,000 views in just a few days; it’s also why it achieved a 13% share rate among takers. See, people felt very strongly about their results, some were happy that they scored highly; others disagreed with their poor scores. No matter what the outcome, however, the quiz takers felt a need to express their opinions by sharing, primarily on Facebook.
How did the Facebook Traffic Benefit the site?
Hnhh lives and dies by ad revenue. By placing the quiz on their website and using the closed loop method, they were able to drive a large influx of people back to their domain and sell ad space around the quiz.
Results:
Hits to webpage hosting quiz: 48,899
Click through rate for ads: 1.5% (Average revenue per click of $0.75)
Approximated Quiz Value: $550
How to replicate this method:
There will always be news in every industry – shit happens. To stand out from the crowd that shares the same bland news stories every day, turn your news articles into quizzes that test people to see how much they really know about current events. These quizzes turn press updates into personalized, share-able content that performs highly on Facebook.
To wrap things up…
Facebook is inundating every part of our lives. It’s likely the most pervasive thing on the Internet today and it’s not going anywhere. Marketers need tools to harness people who spend time on Facebook and bring them to their own sites where visitors can be turned into subscribers, purchasers, or ad clickers. Hopefully one of the examples we discussed today resonated with you and sparked an idea to create a quiz for your company. I’d be more than happy to discuss specifics on strategy in the comments!
The post How to Get More Traffic from Facebook Using Quizzes appeared first on Heyo Blog.
