Here Shweiki teams up with Matt Coen of Second Street Promotions Lab to present steps for effectively selling quizzes…

Steps For Selling Quizzes

1. Start with a theme

The topic could either be seasonal ("What Should I Get My Sweetheart For Valentine's Day?"), locally focused ("Which High School Mascot Are You?"), or designed to achieve a specific goal for an advertiser ("What Kind Of Car Should You Drive?"). Here, the example used is "Which High School Mascot Are You?" quiz.

2. Identify the target audience

Who will want to take this quiz? It is important to determine the target audience for the quiz, because then one can more easily craft an effective prospect list of advertisers looking to reach that audience. For the "Which High School Mascot Are You?" quiz, the target audience would be high school students, teachers, parents and families.

3. Create your prospect list

Which advertisers would find that the quiz content or quiz audience aligns with their goals and audience? For an example, here’s what a prospect list for the "Which High School Mascot Are You?" quiz might look like, and why each is a good fit for the aforementioned audience:

-Pizza Restaurants (popular with a family audience, mass appeal)

-Movie Theaters (popular with a family audience, mass appeal)

-Shopping Malls (popular with a family audience, mass appeal)

-Banks (interested in reaching an audience of college-bound students and their parents)

-Car Dealers (interested in reaching a family audience)

4. Build a sponsorship package

It is especially important to be creative when promoting a quiz, so one should be sure to use all assets when building a quiz sponsorship package. Here are a few ideas for elements to include. (A dollar value should be assigned to each one.)

-Email to promotional database

-ROS ads

-Tags to the quiz in related content on one’s website

-Social media posts (and the ability for participants to share their results on social media for more reach)

-Am opt-in and/or registration form to collect email addresses and other data from participants

-The option for an advertiser to add a prize to incentivize even more people to take the quiz and, in turn, be exposed to the advertiser

-The option for an advertiser to add a coupon to drive foot traffic for the advertiser

5. Identify specific advertisers and go sell

Here are some talking points to include in a pitch when selling quiz sponsorships:

-Advertisers will be aligned with an entertaining quiz that is going to be popular with the target audience.

-Quizzes spread like crazy on social media and all of those shares will be lots of great exposure for them!

-Quizzes are an ongoing promotion that will continue to raise brand awareness for advertiser.

-By participating, advertisers will get a lot of value out of the promotion.

-Sign-up is urgent for seasonal quizzes. One should get on board now! (This increases excitement for sponsors.)

Finally, the most important thing is to remember to ask for the sale!

The Follow-Up

Once the sponsorship has been successfully sold and the quiz launches, there is still one more step. One should follow up with the advertiser once the promotion is over. Here's what should be accomplished in this meeting:

1. Review the results with the advertiser

One should do a recap of the promotion that ran, highlighting all of the special, unique opportunities where the advertiser was mentioned. Go over the value delivered.

2. Discuss next steps