How to Create a Quiz Lead Magnet for Your Blog

Everyone always says “you don’t own anything but your email list”. But that means very little if you don’t have anyone on that list.

And that’s usually where their advice ends.

I spent literal years trying all sorts of lead magnets: packing lists, checklists, itineraries, mini travel guides, even a free discovery call.

My list never grew. I was stuck at 74 people – 72 of whom worked with my mom, and 2 of whom were my mom and grandma.

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon quizzes and set one up, mostly on a whim, that I started getting 1,300+ new subscribers a month totally passively!

That list helped me grow my blog to my first $10k month in mid July 2022. So I want to share how I did it with y’all.

Step 1: Keyword Research

Open up Keysearch, my keyword research tool of choice, and start searching.

You want to look for the root keyword “[niche] quiz”.

This may or may not bring up relevant options. If it doesn’t bring up anything of interest, you need to zoom out or in further.

Another option is to do “[niche] trivia”.

Once you find a keyword that’s rankable and gets some amount of volume – it doesn’t need to be much – you’re good to go.

Step 2: Write an SEO Optimized Blog Post

I start with a blog post instead of starting with the quiz itself, because the quiz partially comes from the blog post.

So if our quiz topic is “What type of traveler are you?”, I would write a blog post about the different types of travelers.

I recommend writing at least 1,500 words. Make sure it’s valuable content and not just fluff, or the same thing restated 10 times.

Step 3: Make a Quiz with TryInteract

Try Interact is the best quiz software out there.

I’m a budget girl, so I tried to find a free alternative – I even learned how to code my own with ChatGPT, but ultimately the cost of Zapier for the number of leads I was getting would have been more than Try Interact – but nothing compares.

If you want to use a free alternative, that’s ok, but they won’t collect email addresses.

✅ Get Try Interact to explode your email list today!

Not sure how to make your first quiz? Here’s an easy step-by-step guide:

A) Create a TryInteract Account

For your first couple quizzes, you only need the $27/mo plan that allows 5 quizzes to start.

It doesn’t include analytics, but you can get these from your Google Analytics and email newsletter provider.

Once you’re in, it’s time to click “+Create New Quiz”:

B) Selecting a Template

It’s easy to work off a template with TryInteract. This will preset colours for you, so you don’t have to worry about them. Click “Preview” to see them in action or “Use Template” to activate it.

Or you can start from scratch to DIY it.

To DIY it, you’ll “Start From Scratch” and then select the type of quiz you’re making. You have three options:

• Assessment – Knowledge testings with a score out of 100%
• Personality – Tests of someone’s style or personality type
• Scored – Each answer earns the user a certain number of points towards a total score

Most bloggers will use a personality quiz.

Click on your type and now it’s time to customize.

You can select custom colours to match your blog theme, change the fonts, and decide whether or not to include images.

C) Name Your Quiz Something Catchy

Quizzes need to pop out to a user. The quiz can actually have a different name than the post it’s inside of, which will likely have a more SEO title.

You can advertise your quiz throughout your blog, so don’t worry about needing to stick with the exact same title as the post.

For example, you may go with “What’s your travel style?” or you could go with “Are you a point hacker or a budget backpacker?”

The second one is definitely catchier and attracts your ideal audience because they’ll know what those terms refer to.

If you’re not sure what to call it, Interact has a quiz title generator you can try. It’s one of their great new AI elements to help you build quizzes faster!

D) Write Actually Useful Questions

No one wants to know their travel style based on what onion they pick.

Or maybe they do, but they’re just bored at work if that’s the case.

My main quiz does so well and keeps people on my list for so long because I ask in depth questions that a travel agent would ask them before they went abroad.

So rather than asking someone about their favourite movie genre, ask about if they’ve been abroad before, what type of accommodation they prefer to stay in, and how much they usually spend on a trip.

That’ll give you a lot more helpful information to give them a relevant answer than just “does this piece of toast or this piece of toast look more burnt”.

I recommend having at least 10 questions to give you enough data to give a helpful answer.

E) Create Relevant Results

Now it’s time to decide on your results and write out a little blurb for them.

TryInteract suggests really long copy in their templates that I recommend cutting down to under 300 words.

Give them a quick rundown of “You are [x] and here’s why…”. Then I give them 1 action step to take.

This could be clicking to a blog post, directing them to a course, or directing them to an affiliate that is helpful for their unique needs.

Most people aren’t going to stick around very long after getting their result, so don’t waste their time. Instead, appeal to them in the next step which is the email welcome sequence.

Before we get to that, we need to connect our answers to the questions in our quiz.

Every question will have a multiple choice answer. Each of these choices will connect to one of your results via the “Result Correlation”. Basically you just click to connect the two with a line in TryInteract, and they’ll be connected:

Here are two examples: What’s Your SEO Spirit Animal? and What’s Your Blogger Personality?

Step 4: Set Up a Funnel

Now that the person has been through your quiz, they’ll need to input their email to get their results.

This is what puts them on your mailing list.

To make the most of these new subscribers, you need to send them a welcome sequence.

I recommend this free template from Liz Wilcox if you don’t know where else to start BUT your first email will need to be different.

The first email they get should remind them of how they met you (via the quiz), introduce yourself and how you’ll help them, and then show them how your email list will benefit them with a great tip or trick.

Have 4-8 emails for them to receive, and be sure to pepper in affiliate links, blog post links, and direct them to your products throughout.

Step 5: Keep an Eye on Your Email System

I didn’t realize how well my quiz would do until it broke my Mailerlite system because I’d exceeded the free plan in just 6 weeks after making my first quiz!

So keep an eye on it, otherwise you risk it pausing your sequences.

One easy way to do this is just to go in weekly and send your newsletter. This will get you in the habit of writing to these people more often, and it’ll mean that you check that things are being sent out properly.

It’s not the end of the world if an email is a couple days late, but it’s not great if it’s a month or two late.

Other Ways to Grow Your Email List

I’ve experimented a lot over the years with different methods of growing your email list, but nothing has been as consistent, low effort, and inexpensive as TryInteract’s quizzes (especially if you use all 5 on the account).

But if quizzes aren’t quite right for you or you want to diversify your lead generation, here are some other methods I’ve tried:

• Bundles – Relevant bundles in your industry can connect your with your target audience. You usually need to submit a product that you sell on your site for free, so it can be costly in terms of lost revenue. You then need to upsell those people or have other products to funnel them to long term to recoup your investment. My favourite bundle every year is Lizzy’s Christmas Party.
• Summits – Summits in your niche are a great way to connect with your target audience and let them actually see your face. Unlike bundles, they actually put a face to a name this way, which leads to a more warm audience. You usually still submit a freebie or a product for free to encourage the attendees to join your list.
• Podcasts – Podcasts are my favourite way, beyond quizzes, to get new people in my sphere. Unlike bundles and summits, you’re the only person on them usually, so you have people’s undivided attention. They also have a longer shelf life, as bundles and summits are for a limited time. And as a bonus, you get a backlink! I always offer a freebie of mine to the audience to encourage them to join my email list.
• Pop Ups – Pop ups on your site can advertise your freebie, but it needs to convert. I use my pop ups to show my quizzes. So while this is kind of a separate method, it all comes back to quizzes for me.
• Paid Ads – This had the lowest ROI for me. I spent 3 months testing paid ads with Facebook. I spent over $2k some months and still got less leads than with my free quiz, and most of those leads were garbage honestly. I don’t recommend paid ads for lead generation unless you’re willing to spend a ton of money on tests first.

I did a full review of how many subscribers and how many sales I made from a bundle, a summit, and a podcast here.

Need More Help Starting Your Email List?

If you’re struggling to set up your quiz and need a bit more help with how the heck you write the questions or SEO optimize a post to go with it, don’t worry!

I’ve created a Quiz Your Way to 10k Subscribers Masterclass where I walk you through all of it in detail.

We cover:

• Finding the right quiz idea for you
• Writing an SEO optimized blog post
• Writing quiz questions and results
• Setting up a welcome sequence step by step with Mailerlite
• Tagging your subscribers properly
• Using AI to automate your quiz creation
• And how to use quizzes for product sales

Ready to start exploding your email list’s growth? Grab your spot in Quiz Your Way to 10k Subscribers today!

Read More About Writing Blog Posts:

• Free SEO Content Writing Checklist for Bloggers: 25 Essentials to Include
• What is SEO Writing?: Beginners Guide to SEO for Blogs (with Examples!)
• 28 Best AI Copywriting Tools (SEO + Blogger Tested!)
• I Grew a Blog to 1.7k Pageviews with 12 Posts and 0 Backlinks. Here’s How!
• How Long Should a Blog Post Be for SEO?
• How Many Blog Posts Before Launching Your Blog?
• What to Do if Someone Copies Your Blog Post
• What is the Ideal Blog Post Title Length for SEO?
• How to Write SEO Blog Posts Title Your Audience Will Click

Like this post? Share it with others!