Feature: Want more sales leads? It’s easy if you ask the right questions

Daniel Priestley of Scoreapp quizzes channel marketing. 

 

You’ve probably found securing high-quality leads can feel like an uphill battle – and if you ask any IT reseller they will say that it’s one of the biggest challenges they face. But it’s also necessary for companies to grow, to interact with and understand their customers, to get a steer on the solutions that are top of mind right now, and to gain strategic advantage in a highly competitive space.

Channel marketing has had to adapt to the industry shift to XaaS models and filling the funnel quickly and effectively is necessary to drive pipeline velocity. It’s no wonder that research by BT Wholesale recently found that the top business priorities in the channel over the next twelve months are generating new leads and attracting new prospects and increasing revenue from existing customers.

Marketing approaches to lead generation in the IT channel are changing. AI is playing a significant part in automating time-consuming, resource-heavy tasks but it’s also being used to improve interactive experiences on websites which are helping IT resellers to better connect with audiences.

In fact, according to a recent HubSpot report, outbound lead generation is becoming less popular as a marketing tool, with only 18% of marketers feeling that their outbound lead generation efforts provided valuable leads, while web conversions have grown by 11% and inbound leads by 6.66% over the past year.

Transforming the website experience

Clearly, websites are more crucial than ever, but what resellers do with them is what turns them from a static source of content, a useful tool for providing product or service information, into an experience that visitors willingly embrace and engage with. The secret is finding the right kind of lead magnet.

Most lead magnets are used to convert website visitors into newsletter or email subscribers. This gives resellers a ready-made, almost qualified audience, ready for nudging along the sales funnel towards placing an order. PDF downloads are a typical example, but they’ve become ubiquitous, and this has lowered their value as a valuable source of information. Nor can a PDF provide the kind of personalised response that buyers are now looking for – over three in four consumers are more likely to buy from brands that personalise. Other examples of lead magnets include buyers guides, webinars and whitepapers.

Of course buyers are human, they like to learn about themselves and their situation and most welcome an opportunity to interact. So why not try a different lead magnet – a quiz?

Firstly, a quiz is not a survey. It is short and snappy; the questions are often personalised, and it can be presented in the form of a scorecard. Participants get results based on their own situation, so they are immediately relevant. Quizzes give a wide variety of results, so they avoid being generic. This is why they convert prospects into warm leads, and ultimately clients.

A quiz can be run on a reseller’s website. It can be positioned on the home page, or via a dedicated landing page so it doesn’t get buried in a prospect’s inbox or forgotten in their download directory. It also delivers a wealth of valuable insights that can be used to get closer to the prospect and provide them with what they need.

Lead generating quiz format

There are a variety of ways to format a quiz, but it’s important to remember that the main function of it is to provide insight into what the prospect wants or needs. By its nature, the format is a series of questions, and these can help to determine the issues that the prospect is struggling with, the goals they are trying to achieve, the journey they have already been on, their budget, and the specific help they are looking for.

The interactive element that makes quizzes more interesting for participants is where it provides them with a ‘score’ or some kind of result and personalised feedback. The quiz assesses the prospect and gives them valuable insight on how they can quickly address their needs. Part of this process is making the prospect realise that the reseller has what they need to solve their challenge.

An example of this would be a potential customer who is considering a move to hybrid cloud. The reseller could ask six quick questions such as: ‘How do you currently manage your data storage?’, ‘What do you have in place to combat cyber-security threats?’ and ‘How do you manage your cloud spend?’.

If these questions are based on a pre-determined score, the reseller can then give the participant a scored result based on their existing arrangements and then tailor guidance in response to the score, focusing on how it can be improved. Tailored communication in follow-up emails can also be created based on the answers from the quiz.

Building a quiz

Resellers should think about what their customers are most likely to want from them. If their quiz software or tool allows, categories can be added which help to evaluate how well a participant performs in each one and indicate to them where they need to focus most. Creating the questions is challenging, but perhaps the best approach is for resellers to put themselves in the shoes of existing customers. They should think about the challenges they faced, and how the organisation was able to help them meet those challenges. With the questions written, an attractive landing page should be built, and many quiz platforms can provide templates to make this easy.

Top tips for making quizzes stand out

So how do resellers get started? Here are some simple tips to attract prospects to their quiz:

• Hero Button – Include a link to it in the hero section of the website. This the first thing visitors see when they land on the website and usually includes tabs to the Contact, Services or About Us sections. They should make sure the Quiz link is prominent and will attract attention from visitors before they scroll down the page. A quiz is interesting and fun and will probably stop a visitor in their tracks with curiosity particularly if it’s bold, or includes tantalising copy: ‘Want to get 20% off your first order? Take our quiz to find out how.
• Notification Bar – Like a ticker, the notification bar appears at the top of the home page and is usually reserved for announcements or special offers, but it can also be used to promote a quiz. Resellers should be concise and to the point, use a colour scheme that will be noticed and add some animation to differentiate the quiz.
• Full page popup, slide-in box, or full page banner – Not everyone loves them, but they work. A full-page popup, for example, takes over the entire page so it’s a great place to promote a quiz and is likely to convert at around 5-10% compared to a standard web page which is usually between 1-3%. If a full page is too much, resellers can try a slide-in / scroll box or a banner across the width of the home page, both of which are more subtle but still effective. A bold headline, a relevant image to indicate it’s a quiz is helpful, and a button to direct the visitor will send them straight to the quiz landing page.

These are just a few examples of ways to promote a quiz using the website, and we have found them all to be useful in terms of creating closer connections with prospects. Even if they’re not quite ready to commit to a contract or purchase from a reseller, at least the quiz will allow them to learn more and crystallise their thinking if they do get in touch later.

Quizzes can also be used for existing customers. An assessment quiz, for example, allows customers to diagnose certain technical or service problems and provide them with help quickly. These also can help to increase a resellers authority and expertise around the subject.

A dedicated quiz platform reaps dividends

Getting off the ground with quizzes is most easily achieved by using a dedicated software platform specifically designed to set up, create and run quizzes. These can provide the quiz questions to fit the audience and analyse the results. Our AI quiz builder can create a quiz in three minutes, and a monthly or annual fee ensures this lead magnet can be used repeatedly to engage with prospects. The best aspect for resellers is that once they make the changes to their website, they can leave it and start letting the leads roll in automatically. Whenever they need a refresh, they can build a new quiz.