Jennifer McLean is the CEO behind McLean Masterworks – a multi-million dollar wellness organization. Jennifer uses quizzes as a powerful top of funnel lead magnet – from ad click to quiz start, lead form to automated follow ups for sign ups.
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Transcript
Mike 0:02
Hello everybody welcome to this episode of the quiz makers. My name is Mike – I’m one of the co-founders over at Riddle.com.
Today, we have Jennifer McLean, who is the founder and CEO of McLean Masterworks. Really honored to have you onboard and I’m excited to have you talk about how you fell into quizzes and using quizzes for marketing within your business. So take it away, Jennifer…
Jennifer 0:32
Well, thank you very much for having me, Mike.
Yes, I’m a big fan of quizzes. Quizzes are a remarkable way to get people engaged in content. And so the quizzes that I put together really get people engaged with your brand. So it’s a really good branding exercises – the quizzes I do are actually related to the content that I’m going to be teaching in the course that I will eventually be offering through the funnel.
So it’s a great way to introduce them to content. And as I said, it’s a great way to introduce them to your brand. It can be light and funny and interesting if that’s what your brand strategy is. Or it can be really deep and profound if that’s what your brand strategy represents.
I love quizzes. Man, click throughs are huge on quizzes – the most for any lead magnet I’ve ever done. Quizzes get the most traffic.
Now, the challenge with quizzes is getting someone to convert from a quiz. Initially, it may be a momentary spontaneous thing that’s happening, and you’re engaging them in a very spontaneous way. For example, if they happen upon it usually through Facebook advertising, or if you’re doing affiliate marketing, each quiz taker thinks “Oh, that might be interesting. You know, I have, you know, yeah, 90 seconds to do this. That might be fun.”
The key is to generate a quiz that’s compelling enough. That kind of teases them so that they want more. And then the rest of your funnel takes the quiz deeper and deeper and deeper. So you’re taking them on a pathway to eventually giving them an offer.
But quizzes are extremely high-converting for traffic.
And if you’re really, really smart, you can sell them the current offer with that quiz, or use that list now to engage them. But you have to engage them in a very real conversational way, give them lots of material and eventually, over months, they will convert to something else.
So it’s a it’s a tricky audience once you get them in from a quiz, but they’re really really good audience – and you get a ton of ton of people with a quiz.
Mike 2:59
No, that’s fantastic. And that that bears out what we what we know.
And it’s great to hear, since you’re actually out there using quizzes, turning top of funnel quiz takers into committed active users.
Jennifer 3:27
Yes, my courses aren’t too expensive, you know, they’re anywhere between 100 and $300. So they’re not super-expensive.
But even that, you know, from a light breezy quiz to getting someone to spend 300 bucks. I mean, it’s a big leap. So, you’ve got to be really clever.
It’s not just about generating traffic, I mean, generating traffic is great. And if you want to generate traffic that you nurture over a long period of time, then quizzes are the absolute best way to go. If you’re generating traffic to move them through a funnel and sell them within a matter of seven to ten days, you’ve got to be thinking very much about what their experience is.
Versus like, for example, if you do a lead magnet have an e-book. Yep. Or a webinar – a classic lead generation tool. You know, where you’ve got a person that’s committing at a different level than they are with a quiz. So you already have a person that’s committing to “Oh, shoot, I really need this. You know, gosh, I really need to learn about this.”
They’ve already committed time, at least 40 to 50 minutes of time that someone is committed to to read a book or to watch a webinar. You’re not getting that with a quiz.
Instead, you’ve got to be really super clever and it doesn’t mean don’t do quizzes, it means really think it through.
Know what I normally do with the quizzes? I have an e-book on the other end.
So my quizzes actually have a lot of content. Two main quizzes that I use and one is “What kind of a healer are you?” – and I’ve got five healer types. The other one is “Which empath archetype are you?”.
Mike 5:09
Yeah, I just took that before our call.
Jennifer 5:11
You did? Which one are you?
Mike 5:13
I think I got the one with the unicorn.
Jennifer 5:15
Oh, you’re the unicorn? Unicorns are freaking awesome, man. That’s so great. So then I give them an E book, too. You know, I give them a little reading about what they are in the personality part of your Riddle quiz, which is awesome. I love the way that you guys have set that up.
And then, you give them more and then you give them more – and you keep dripping more and more and more content from the results.
Mike 5:42
Yes. You are actually probably like in the more online savvy of our spectrum of users. This is why I was so excited to talk to you is that there are people who use quizzes purely to take a quiz. They either opt in or opt out of the form. And that’s it.
And then there’s a spectrum of people and you’re actually on the far end – where you’re like okay, “That’s just the top of funnel. I’m going to capture data, I’m going to find out what they answered on question two, or what the archetype was. And then I’m going to use this information to start auto drip mail campaigns.”
It’s targeted and also you’re giving value at every step to the quiz taker. One of the big things we recommend is give something useful – don’t just say “Sign up for our newsletter”.
Jennifer 6:23
Like, why? I give a poop about you?
Mike 6:27
But instead you’re saying, “Hey, here’s a light and fluffy quiz.” And then – “Oh, that’s give me some insights. Yeah, send me a book” – so you start that conversation.
Jennifer 6:35
I actually made a bit of an error in when I first launched the Empath Quiz.
You know, there’s four kinds of empaths and one of them is a dolphin and dolphins are extremely sensitive to being sold to. They don’t like it. They don’t trust many people. And it’s just part of their nature. There’s nothing wrong with them. It’s just part of their nature.
I learned really quickly because it actually almost wrecked my email reputation. I’ve been in business for 12 years – I rarely get complaints because I try to be super transparent.
And these dolphins were having none of it.
So it wasn’t an audience I would normally attract because I tend to attract people who are okay being sold to. So I subsequently rejiggered it so that for every quiz. Every person who I knew was a dolphin personality type, I would send out a different message. Every single answer in that category would get their own email, because we know who they are, right?
If you’re doing a personality thing, you know who they are. So the first email that a dolphin gets is, “Look, I know you hate this. I’m only going to send you three more emails. That’s it. Everyone else gets a few more emails but because I know you really dislike this, I think it’s important we have this conversation.”
Mike 8:05
Awesome, you’re taking a negative a potential negative and turning that into a positive. That’s brilliant.
Jennifer 8:10
Exactly. Well, I learned that the hard way wasn’t so brilliant.
Mike 8:16
So much about marketing (and everything else) – Lord knows the number of mistakes we’ve made at Riddle. I mean, it’s learning by doing – and find out what’s not working.
How did you first hear about quizzes as potential lead magnets?
Jennifer 8:31
You know, I participated in a lot of high end masterminds. I’m in that internet marketing kind of community. So I’ve heard about quizzes for years and years and years. And I didn’t believe in them honestly. Because I thought they were frivolous. And I thought that they were exactly what we’ve been talking about.
How do you get something that’s frivolous to convert into a sale and without pissing them off?
That was until I actually came up with content that made sense to use a quiz. Before, I actually didn’t really use them. But once I came up with these five healer types, and then I started I partner with Anita Moorjani on the Empath Archetypes and she had four empath archetypes. This is her content. And I taught it with her because I do healing work with people.
Okay, and so with her content and my healing work, it was a really nice combination. But until I had that moment, for me it was a stretch. So if you’ve got content, really make sure that you deliver on the promise of what the quizzes deliver on it. And if you’re trying to move them into purchasing a product immediately, then make sure whatever you’re doing afterwards makes a lot of sense and is related to the content of the quiz.
Mike 9:59
Okay, you just read my mind for my next question. Now I’m not going to ask for “Hey, people who are new to the quiz marketing space, what advice would you give?” You just nailed it.
How about some more tactical advice. Have you had any learnings (which I hate that word) – you know, ideal number of questions, images, you know, anything like that you found has worked well?
Jennifer 10:32
Yeah, I’m not sure on that experience, too, because I’ve only done really two quizzes and they worked really, really well.
But from what I know about marketing in general, images are incredibly important. Y
You know, as marketers, we know that images get 70% more attention than words do. So images are real important. If you can go to like I-stock or Shutterstock. And there’s lots of free ones now that you can do to – Canva.com or any of those.
Think about what the question is. I put an image with each question and think “What’s the image that’s going to feel good for them?”
I mean, I use an image for each question. And I use an image to start the whole process.
The image that I started the process with matches the image of the product at the end. So there’s pre framing that’s going on there the whole time.
Nice.
And then the images that are in the questions – are also part of the sales page. So there’s a subconscious pre-framing that’s happening there as well.
Mike 11:45
So it’s a contextual experience…
Jennifer 11:48
Yeah, it’s parallel construction. So you’ve got the same kind of imaging and the colors are throughout their entire experience.
And then of course, you want to use images that match your brand. If you’re funny, use funny images right? If you’re more spiritual – use spiritual images like I use more healing images. For example with the Empath Quiz, there was a lot of people holding their heart, feathers, the color purple, and stuff like that. And that was throughout the quiz – and then all those same images appeared on the sales page.
Plus the main image for the quiz is the actual hero image for the product itself. So there’s some pre-framing there.
Mike 12:32
Perfect. No, that’s really cool. And you nailed it in terms of… it felt like a sharp well-done quiz; not just a random assortment of images. They all fed in well, together. You also kept it short and to the point.
Jennifer 12:45
I forget that there’s only four questions, I think.
Mike 12:48
Yeah. So it’s like, you know, you caught my attention, then click, click, click, click, 90 seconds.
There we go.
So we normally say a three minute rule is the absolute max but 90 seconds if you can get your message across there. That’s awesome.
Jennifer 13:01
One of the things that I added a little bit later that was kind of cool – people were telling me they were having a hard time answering because in my quizzes, it’s a personality quiz.
So they’re really trying to figure out what their personality is. And for empaths and for healers, you know, they’re extremely into embracing everything. So they’re very sensitive. They’re very open to all of it.
Now I say before the quiz that’s embedded on my page, “Just go with the one that feels right for you.”
And really notice that there’s going to be a lot of them that are the same. Yes. So there’s another pre-frame there. It’s not really a personality question. It’s a little pre-frame that says when they go to eventually go to the webinar, and the read the e-book, it tells them that you can be more than one.
In fact, to return to your healing modality. You’re all five but you have a preference for one, kind of like Myers Briggs.
So, yeah, you can leverage the quiz and ask questions that actually pre-frame what they’re going to be asking later.
In fact, as I’m talking to you about that, I should probably do more of that. Like “Do you feel like you’re overly sensitive?”. You could ask that because this is what an empath feels they feel like people have told them their whole life – that they’re way too sensitive, right? So especially unicorns, like you.
Mike 14:32
I said the same thing.
Jennifer 14:35
Unicorns. Unicorns do that all the time.
Mike 14:38
That’s really cool. We’re going to wrap this up because our quizzes are short and punchy, just like this. Like you optimize; you keep changing. You keep tweaking, and so I’m assuming you’ve been running this funnel for I think about a year now.
Jennifer 14:59
Yeah. Yeah, one of the fun. Yeah, most of the two funnels have been spent about nine months. Yeah.
Mike 15:05
But you’re still thinking, Oh, wait, I could do this differently, which is perfect.
Jennifer 15:09
In fact I’m doing a huge affiliate launch coming up in July and I am tweaking it once again. So yeah, I think I might add some of the things we just talked about.
Mike 15:20
Fantastic. Well, I’m happy. I’m happy that can help.
I guess one last question.
This has nothing to do with quizzes and marketing, but it’s more just about venting. We are all humans and you’re in touch with your your emotional side.
What is your biggest pet peeve and why?
Jennifer 15:38
My biggest pet peeve – and this is part of my healing work – is when people don’t take personal responsibility for their life and their actions and their circumstances. And that they claim to be the victim, where they judge and blame and point out what’s wrong constantly.
My teaching is about when you are pointing at what’s wrong. That’s what you’re creating. You’re directing your energy towards what’s wrong constantly.
When I’m coaching someone, and they’re sitting there saying, “But but but…they did that!” You know, that kind of stuff drives me insane because I know that one little different angle of perception can make a difference. And I can use that as a jumping off point to heal to transform to change. And when people aren’t doing that we have a lot of conflict, which is what we have in the world right now.
Mike 16:43
Well, that’s a great way to end it on.
Thank you, Jennifer, so much for your time – I really appreciate it. And it was was wonderful learning of how you’ve been using quizzes so effectively for your business.
Jennifer 16:54
Thank you so much, Mike. This has been a blast. And of course as you know, I love riddle.com.