Start with your theme.
Your 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?”). In this article, let’s look at how we would go about selling a “Which High School Mascot Are You?” quiz – an evergreen topic that would work in every market.
Identify your target audience.
Who will want to take this quiz? It’s important to know who the target audience for your quiz is, because then you can more easily craft an effective prospect list of advertisers looking to reach that audience. For our “Which High School Mascot Are You?” quiz, the target audience would be high school students, teachers, parents, and families.
Create your prospect list.
Which advertisers would find the quiz content or quiz audience to align with their goals and audience? 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 target audience we identified:
| Sample Prospect List |
|---|
| 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 college-bound students and their parents) |
| Car Dealers (interested in a family audience) |
Build a sponsorship package.
It is especially important to be creative when promoting a quiz, so be sure to use all of your assets when building a quiz sponsorship package. Here are a few ideas for elements you could include (remember to assign a dollar value to each one):
| Sample Sponsorship Package |
|---|
| Email to promotional database |
| ROS ads |
| Tag the quiz in related content on your website |
| On-air mentions from talent (or have your talent take the quiz on-air and share their results) |
| Social media posts (have your talent share their results on social media for more reach) |
| Include an opt-in and/or registration form to collect email addresses and other data from participants |
| Add a prize to incentivize even more people to take the quiz and be exposed to the advertiser |
| Incorporate a bounceback coupon on the results page to drive foot traffic to the advertiser |
Develop a quiz bundle to maximize revenue potential.
Quiz bundles are sets of 3-5 themed quizzes that are run as part of a package deal. Each quiz runs for about 7-10 days, one right after the other. Creating a quiz bundle extends the life of this one promotion into a campaign running at least a month long. Quiz bundles are a great opportunity to leverage with advertiser who will get their branding out in front of their target audience for a long time.
Identify specific advertisers, and go sell.
When you go out to sell the quiz sponsorship, here are some talking points to include in your pitch:
| What to Pitch to Advertisers |
|---|
| Remind advertisers they will be aligned with an entertaining quiz that is going to be popular with your audience. |
| Quizzes spread like crazy on social media, and all of those shares will be lots of great exposure for them. |
| These are ongoing promotions that will continue to raise brand awareness for your advertiser. |
| Emphasize the value of the promotion they will receive by participating. |
| If your quiz is seasonal, be sure to create urgency with your advertisers - the more urgency you create, the more excited they will be to sign on as a sponsor. |
Finally, don’t forget to ask for the sale!
Once you successfully sell the sponsorship and the quiz launches, there’s still one more step. You need to follow up with the advertiser once the promotion is over. Here’s what you should accomplish in this meeting:
Review the results with your advertiser.
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.
Discuss next steps.
How can your company continue to deliver value to the advertiser? This could be another quiz, or it could be a sweepstakes to help the advertiser continue growing their database, or they could continue in the high school sports vein and sponsor a high school sports ballot. In the follow-up meeting, take some time to review the advertiser’s goals and determine the right promotion to run next to achieve them.
Now you are prepared to sell a quiz sponsorship like a pro!
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Liz is the Senior Director of Customer Success and has an extensive background in media. She is a huge advocate of the power of promotions for every department within an organization, including sales, marketing, audience development, and editorial.