Using an Expert Quiz Funnel to Grow Your Business

An expert quiz funnel is a potent tool for overall business growth, not just for lead generation. It is also a very useful tool for consultative sales and needs assessment with clients.

Because of the applicability and broader purpose, an expert quiz is also very different from the typical Buzzfeed style quizzes you see floating around on the internet.

In this blog we’ll cover the following:

  1. What is an expert quiz funnel?
  2. What are some sales & marketing use cases?
  3. How to create & make the most of your expert quiz funnel?

Let’s get started.

What is an Expert Quiz?

An expert quiz is also known as a diagnostic assessment, maturity model, or scorecard.

It is a way for experts to:

  1. Help their clients understand what their current state is
  2. Define a desired future state and
  3. Create a roadmap to get there

At the very basic level, it consists of a series of questions followed by a diagnosis or result. The result must yield an useful insight or help respondents see the information they provided in a different light.

Note: When used for lead generation, typically “personality or type” style quiz is more useful. For example, “What’s your sales personality?”, or “Identify your brand’s personality?”.

However, when also used an onboarding, then an assessment is a good choice. For example, a customizable Wheel of Life. So your expert quiz funnel could have a lead generation quiz followed by an onboarding quiz.

Multiple questions could also be organized into categories or dimensions to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the subject area.

Evalinator also allows for personalized feedback to be given to respondents based on individual question or dimension level scores.

Here’s how they work in general:

  1. A business assessment may ask different questions about finance, marketing and operations. The respondent will see their overall score and what they could do to improve or balance their business. This could be structured as a Wheel of Business for a very simple and powerful snapshot of overall performance. Then you can engage with the respondent and help them.
  2. A DISC assessment or a Big 5 personality assessment are also great examples. These help the respondents understand their personality types and organize their business or personal matters appropriately.
  3. The versatile Wheel of Life is another tool used by coaches for different purposes. The basic wheel can be customized for various purposes.
  4. Consultants can use maturity models, such as on digital or analytics maturity. These are very useful for clients to understand how they are doing, and can lead to creation of roadmaps that consultants can work with their clients on.

Consultants, coaches, and experts of all kinds (technology, process, or business) may create sophisticated lead generation quizzes in areas of their expertise.

Free templates are available on Evalinator to customize and use for your own coaching or consulting business.

Sales & Marketing Use Cases of an Expert Quiz Funnel

Think of your expert quiz funnel as a strategic business growth tool.

Here are a few different applications:

  1. Lead generation – use as a quiz to create curiosity and get your audience to take the quiz. Visitors on your website who would have just clicked away will now likely take the quiz. You can also run advts to your quiz to generate leads. Read more here if you want to generate more leads online.
  2. Lead qualification – an expert quiz can work as a sales needs assessment tool to improve sales efficiency by having prospects take the assessment to determine urgency and scope
  3. Personalized sales pursuits – a nurturing tool to use the data provided by prospects to make every follow-up meaningful
  4. Client onboarding – a tool to create a baseline as you onboard clients because you start with a clear analysis of needs
  5. Account growth – a cross-sell/up-sell tool to position your offers based on a roadmap you develop with clients
  6. Show & tell – a value identification tool that shows your clients how you are partnering with them strategically

Now that you can appreciate the many uses of an expert quiz, here are a few things to keep in mind so you can be successful with your expert quiz or assessment.

Best Practice 1: Define a Narrow Subject Area for your Expert Quiz

Often we try to make an expert quiz or assessment that can do multiple things at once. However, research has shown that the narrower the focus, the better your results.

It’s tempting to create a “strategic” maturity model that covers a very large scope.

For example, if you are a consulting firm, you may create a digital maturity model. This appears to be a great model for C-level conversations but it may not be optimal for 2 reasons:

  1. If you typically do not operate at the C-level, this such a quiz may not be substantiated by your experience and credentials.
  2. If your target audience is generally several levels down from the C-Suite, then this high level model may not resonate with the practical challenges that your audience is trying to solve every day. For example, consider data & analytics leaders, operations leaders, or leaders of various technology application portfolios.
  3. Even a higher level model must be personalized to be useful and account for business domain or industry sector differences. If you tailor the default maturity model template that Evalinator includes in your subscription with your own specific industry knowledge, then the C-level audience is much more likely to engage better.

Exception: An exception to the rule is a coaching Wheel of Life. Coaches must generally understand interactions with different facets of your life. So a broad tool such as a Wheel of Life works very well for them.

wheel-of-life-wide

 

So, your expert quiz must be aligned directly to your audience and your offers. That way it will deliver meaningful insights, and have enough specificity around industry processes, trends, etc. to be relevant.

Consequently, while the underlying principles are the same, a narrower or more targeted assessment can be much more impactful and relevant to stakeholders.

Create an Expert Quiz “Ladder” or Funnel for your Subject Area

ladderIn addition to creating a lead generation quiz, this strategy is to create a series of quizzes or assessments that work like a ladder. Following this approach means that you can use the same basic asset for different stages of your funnel.

Type 1: A Suite of Assessments

Coaches and consultants may want to create a suite of assessment to reflect their process and the different subject areas. For example, the first step would be to identify the challenge and the assessment would focus on this activity. The next step would be to determine which solution is most applicable and they would create a specific assessment for that. And finally, they may have an assessment that helps clients determine the effectiveness of how the solution is working.

Type 2: The top-of-the-funnel or lead generation quiz

This is a broad and easy-to-take assessment, typically offered online, with about 8-12 questions. It offers immediate value in terms of a useful framework to think about the problem. It can also provide some generic insights.

For example, “Score your online presence“, or “Assess your sales methodology“, are good candidates for a lead generation quiz. They are curiosity inducing and offer instant value and gratification in return for very small investment of time and brain.

You can narrow these expert quizzes down for better returns. These types of quizzes are popularly called quiz funnels and used for lead generation.

Type 3: The Middle & Bottom of the Funnel Expert Quiz

Once a prospect has come in through your top of the funnel quiz, this next expert quiz is more specific and goes into more details.

This is primarily used by sales for lead qualification during discovery calls or meetings. At this stage, prospects are likely to share more openly and provide more details about their situation.

The intent at this level is to build trust by offering offer more detailed insights and advice on how clients can best achieve their objectives.

A good way to think about the expert quiz at this level is that you are drilling down into the dimensions you covered in the top of the funnel quiz.  Each question in the high level quiz becomes 2-4 additional questions. The subject area is the same, but with more detail.

Note: You can also use this detailed expert quiz at an existing client to identify areas of opportunity and engage the clients into a valuable conversation.

Type 4: The Account Growth or Relationship Growth Expert Quiz

The account growth quiz uses the same overall framework, and is much more tailored and personalized to your clients’ specific processes and systems. It builds in questions and terminology that is deeply relevant to them.

The idea for an expert lead generation quiz at this level is to serve as a baseline for the clients current maturity (a maturity model). Then you can collaborate with clients to identify areas where you can help them. You can also offer assistance with some identified opportunity areas as a way to build a base for future revenue by proving your credentials and building trust.

So an expert quiz used in this manner becomes a powerful account growth tool.

Use Your Expert Lead Generation Quiz for Content Marketing

content marketing & brandingYour expert quiz is a treasure trove of data. You have aggregated information on the various questions which can yield interesting patterns and insights.

Use these insights in blogs or newsletters to clients. You can even use these to host webinars and get clients & prospects to share their thoughts.

Consistently sharing valuable content and insights based on your expert quiz will result in positive brand benefits as well. You will start to becomes known in the market as an expert in that areas. More content would also mean better SEO and more ways to engage clients.

See this blog on getting started with authority marketing.

Next Steps

An expert quiz funnel supports lead generation and also client lifetime value growth.

Go ahead and create one now. There is a 2 week free trial.

There are several templates available for experts and you can use them as a starting point. These can be used for lead generation, for consultative sales, and needs assessment, and also for account growth.

Once you subscribe, let us know if you’d like to discuss your strategy. We’ll be happy to help!

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