Owen leads the global quiz revolution. Before joining Qzzr, Owen founded and led Fit Marketing, one of Utah’s fastest growing companies. He’s also worked in sales and marketing roles at SpinGo, Digis and as the President of an international student exchange program.
Read on to learn more about Owen and get his take on quiz-making!
Q. As one of the marketing speakers at the upcoming Content Marketing Conference, you’ll be speaking about making one of those “insanely viral quizzes.” Why are people drawn to online quizzes?
A. Quizzes are inherently engaging, nurturing, and most importantly, they are all about you! People love quizzes because we never tire of learning more interesting and useful things about ourselves.
Q. Why were you passionate about the quiz-making scene?
A. Before helping to launch Qzzr, I was the president and founder of Fit Marketing, an inbound marketing agency. The first quiz that we launched at Fit was shared by 68% of the people that completed it. The second quiz generated hundreds of leads. I became passionate about quizzes by seeing the remarkable results that they produce.
Q. Did you ace quizzes back in school?
A. I’ve always had a knack for cramming for quizzes. The sad part of that approach though is that while you might get an A, it gets pretty hard to recall anything that you learned that way years later. :)
Q. What’s one of the most common mistakes you see content marketers make when creating an online quiz?
A. They try to make the quiz hard – like the ones they hated to take in school – rather than making their online quiz a fun, snackable, meaningful experience that is frictionless for their audience to consume.
Q. What’s the first step any company should take before setting out to create a quiz that has a good chance of being successful?
A. Decide what your primary goal for the quiz is – such as driving social traffic or generating leads. Knowing what you want to accomplish will inform the decisions you make the rest of the way.
Q. Do visuals help boost the chance for a quiz to go viral? If so, by how much?
A. Yes – every test we’ve run has shown a significant increase in share rates and conversion rates when the quiz includes rich visuals.
Q. So, let’s say someone creates the most awesome quiz in the world. How can they be assured anyone will bother taking the time to take it? What are a few best practices for ensuring it gets passed along and shared?
A. First, make sure you are sharing it in all of the right places (blog, social platforms, email, etc.). From there, you might reach out to some other communities or influencer who could be interested in the quiz. And to top it off, try some targeted facebook ads focused on audiences that will love your quiz content. The better engagement you see with your facebook ads, the lower your cost per engagement will go.
Q. What quiz topics seem to do the best and why?
A. Rather than topics, there are a few simple title formulas that really seem to resonate with people, like:
- which ____ are you?
- what kind of ___ are you?
- the world’s hardest ___ quiz
- can you pass the ___ test?
Q. Which topics are pretty much destined to bomb and why?
A. 
Q. Can you briefly walk us through the reverse engineering process you’ve used to examine a multitude of quizzes from some of the most popular quiz sites?
A. You can do some great sleuthing with tools like BuzzSumo. They help you see which quizzes and topic have been most successful, both generally and then on specific sites. Beyond that, at Qzzr we love to dig into the data behind what makes quizzes work. For example, we found out 45% of shares on graded quizzes come from people that score 100%. So, if you want to get shares on a graded quiz, you should consider giving people a pretty clear path to a perfect score.
Q. Congrats on you company of Qzzr being named the Best New Startup in Utah for 2014. You’re listed as the Chief Qwizard. We love the title – any story behind it? What does a day in the life of a Chief Qwizard look like?
A. There is a bit of magic to it – but mostly my day revolves around helping all of our customers and prospects to be successful creating and sharing quizzes. This effort encompasses traditional business areas like marketing, sales and support.
Q. Qzzr is billed as the world’s simplest quiz tool. What makes it the simplest? How are other tools more cumbersome or complicated?
A. Try it and let me know! J
Qzzr makes it intuitive to create and customize your quiz, and it is as easy to embed as a YouTube video. And it is responsive off the shelf, so it instantly looks stunning on basically any device.
Q. We must also comment on your speaking Czech and being from Alaska. Has either aspect played a role in your success as a Qwizard or in other aspects of your career? If yes, how so?
A. Both. Everywhere I speak around the country I tend to run into friends from the Alaska or the Czech Republic – we always have stories to swap and often end up doing business together.
Q. Will you be making the rounds speaking at other marketing conferences 2015?
A. Yes, I usually speak at a few conferences each quarter, including events like Inbound in Boston and Social Media Week in NYC.
Q. Can you provide a sneak preview of a takeaway that your session will include at CMC?
A. The world’s best quizzes are remarkable. What does that mean? It means people can’t resist talking about them. If you show people something cool and help them learn more about themselves and their place in this world, you’ll be well on your way to a viral quiz hit.
And with quizzes, the proof is in the pudding – nine out of the top ten most shared stories on Facebook in January were quizzes. Why can’t your quiz generate a bunch of shares next month?
Q. Anything else to tell our readers?
A. I can’t wait to meet you and learn from you when we get together in Las Vegas!