Between a web page full of marketing blah blah blah and an online questionnaire, which medium will win the best conversion rate?

The questionnaire, of course!

If it is so popular, it is because it is fun, interactive and user-centered. It responds to the basic needs of homo sapiens sapiens: fun, relationships and navel-gazing! But to work, it must bring real value to those who play the game. You have to concede some of your expertise (the result of the quiz) in exchange for the information they will provide. If you can achieve this mix of playfulness and seriousness, then your quizzes and questionnaires will be a great way to capture the attention of your prospects, while gathering a lot of useful information to better transform them into satisfied customers.

An indispensable part of your acquisition mix

Because quizzes, calculators, comparators and other self-diagnostics are ideal for feeding the top of your conversion funnel. Why put them in the top-of-the-funnel?  Because they deal with general customer issues. They are aimed at prospects who are in the process of becoming aware of these issues. For example: how does my company compare to its competitors in terms of recruitment? Am I well equipped in digital marketing?

In exchange for the valuable information they will enter in the questionnaire, prospects expect neutral, objective and expert advice. Beware, they won’t like to see you come in with your big hooves to quote your offer as the solution to all their problems. You have to curb your urge to crudely promote your products and services. Your patience and neutrality will be rewarded in the medium term. You will position your brand as that of a credible expert, an ally who can be trusted.

These interactive tools can also be useful for existing customers. Offer them regular online quizzes and surveys to keep your data up to date and adapt your products and services. They are also a loyalty tool.

A choice of methods to start a conversation

Let’s go back to the top of the funnel. A good part of your future relationship with your customer is played out during this first contact. You need to start the conversation right away on the subject that interests the customer the most. To use an analogy we love (and abuse), that of romantic relationships, the quiz is the first date, the moment when you still have everything to learn about each other. The key word is interactivity! I reveal a little bit about who I am (but not too much right away), I ask you a few questions about yourself (but not too intrusive) and I share a little bit of my science (but not all of it).

Several possible methods:

• Calculators: a personalized numerical result calculated from the data provided by the client. Some examples of calculators: How much can you save by making your own questionnaires? How much should you invest in survey software? What is the ROI of marketing automation software? Calculators allow you to attract new prospects, qualify them but also segment them according to the answers provided to identify the hottest prospects. 
• Online quizzes or self-assessments: a recommendation or a diagnosis from a predefined list, proposed to the customer from a system of points generated by his answers. For example: what type of car is right for you? Where are you in your digital transformation? What is your management style? Quizzes can generate traffic on your web pages by offering customers a fun experience, loyalty and proximity. 
• Surveys or polls: collect the information you need to understand your targets and your customers. For example, satisfaction surveys, NPS questionnaires, needs studies, etc. They are obviously one of the foundations of your marketing and relationship strategy.

Why Merlin/Leonard fell for Outgrow

It’s no secret that we’re huge fans of Marketo. But we had to admit that Marketo forms were not made for creating quizzes.

Three main reasons:

• The user interface of Marketo forms does not allow for multi-page quizzes – without scripting. You can certainly create conditional questions, that is, questions that are displayed or not depending on the answer to other questions. You can even make entire blocks of questions conditional. But the layout of the form is then affected and, let’s face it, it is never as beautiful as you would like it to be for a questionnaire worthy of the name (even if it is largely sufficient for a registration or download form).

• On the data side, the answers entered in the Marketo form will feed a field in a table and overwrite the values previously recorded in these fields. It’s annoying, we would like to keep the history of the information entered in a quiz.

• The interactivity of Marketo forms is limited to the confirmation pages. The person who has completed the form can be redirected to a specific page based on the answers they have given. This does not offer the level of personalization desired, such as giving a score calculated from the answers, or adding up points to send the customer to the diagnosis corresponding to their score.

What we liked most was exactly what we missed in the traditional online forms.

We give you an overview of Outgrow in this video

The interface provides an unparalleled customer experience.

Outgrow offers a wide range of cool looking templates that you can modify to include your brand attributes (colors, fonts, logos). The Outgrow questionnaire layout is optimized for all devices. It offers all the response modes you could want, from traditional checkboxes to scales to clickable images. Advanced logic rules allow for conditional display of questions in a complex tree structure, with no limit to the number of conditions.

Outgrow allows you to keep a history of responses.

And not only the last answers of a given respondent! Its analytical features allow you to know your conversion rates at each stage of the questionnaire and to visualize all the answers in the form of tables or graphs.

Outgrow integrates with Marketo and Salesforce.

Outgrow’s integration with Marketo and Salesforce allows you to send your leads directly to them for nurturing or qualification campaigns. You can keep a history of responses, not just the last response to a question. Conversely, you can easily use Marketo’s smart lists to trigger quizzes to selected contacts.

Quizzes and questionnaires without limits.

The interactivity is optimal because the number of possible results to a quiz is unlimited. The results of the calculators are based on arithmetic formulas that you set up using the basic operators, but also by adding logical conditions such as “If, then”. As an added bonus, the results pages can display real-time updated graphs, custom videos, and share buttons to social networks.

To learn more about what this tool can do for you, take the Outgrow self-promotion quiz made by Outgrow on Outgrow!

A successful partnership

Outgrow is a company of about 50 people founded on the idea that to accelerate conversions on the web, you have to play the interactivity card. This fit perfectly with Merlin/Leonard’s credo that the experience we offer our customers is paramount. So we took the plunge and tested the tool: as with every new collaboration, the guinea pig was our own marketing.

Here are some examples of the online questionnaires we created with Outgrow:

• Assess your company’s digital maturity
• The Digital Marketing Maturity Gain Calculator
• Are you ready for Marketo
• The satisfaction questionnaire sent to our event participants was also done in Outgrow.

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  Example of a post-training satisfaction questionnaire – Merlin/Leonard

Delighted with the number of leads that these quizzes and questionnaires brought us and the positive feedback from our clients, we became an Outgrow partner. Since then, we have suggested to our most loyal clients to equip themselves with Outgrow and we have accompanied them in the implementation of online quizzes and satisfaction questionnaires. They quickly understand that quizzes are an ideal lead generation element. That’s why we typically recommend placing them as a preamble to an automated lead nurturing scenario.

If you want to discover how easy it is to create and analyze Outgrow quizzes, we’re here!

To discuss how to boost your conversational marketing, book your free 30-minute appointment with our expert.