Why personality tests in marketing connect with customers
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When it comes to marketing and external communications generally, you’re speaking to an audience who owes you nothing.
Whether you’re promoting a new release, trying to raise awareness of a key issue, or just trying to create some excitement around your brand, the person on the street is quite within their rights to ignore you and go about their business.
They’re the main character in the movie in their head. Everyone is. When someone closes their eyes, you don’t exist to them.
It’s dramatic, but it’s true. Not many people are telling anecdotes where they’re actually in the wrong. Everything that happens at any given moment, everywhere, is all from a certain point of view.
So, if we accept that as a near universal truth, what’s a logical external communications approach that tackles that very blocker?
The answer is personality tests, and in this article, we’ll run through use-cases of how personality tests are unique in gamification marketing.
Even in their most seemingly frivolous forms, they’re offering audiences an element of self discovery, and more than the interactivity of gamification alone, they’re making about the participant as much as the branded messaging.
Benefits of using personality tests in marketing campaigns
Personality tests are a form of gamification.
The basic mechanics are that a player will answer a series of questions, and depending on their answers, they will be assigned a personality profile. This works because answers are assigned to the different profiles, so which profile is attached to more of a player’s answers is the one they’ll be awarded.
Even if it’s something as silly as “Which Avenger are you?” fans, or would-be fans, can’t help but answer a few questions to find out. A “Which primate are you?” game at the zoo is a great way to build a personal connection with the zoo’s messaging, because it takes a minute or two to complete, and the perception as some one plays is that it’s all about them.
The classic approach to making new friends as an adult is to get people talking about themselves, or get them talking about their interests as they pertain to them. The personality test is this concept in digital marketing form.
It’s also a really easy way to collect customer data.
On an enterprise grade personality quiz maker like the Drimify gamification platform, you can include and customise intermediate screens, including data collection forms where you can define demographic data and preferences, as well as optional marketing newsletter opt-in forms.
Because they’re playing a fun marketing game that’s all about themselves, they’re more likely to submit data and opt-in than through more traditional advertising means.
Marketing use cases: How personality quizzes create connections
“OK, personality tests tap into the innate human sense of self, we get it, but how do you properly tie that to concrete business goals?”
Check out the following use cases with pro tips to get the most out of your personality tests for marketing.
Personality quizzes for creating customer buy-in
Let’s pretend you’re a video game studio. You’ve produced a spinoff game of a well-known IP. The challenge is creating buy-in and intrigue around new characters and new groups that are different to the original ones that players/ customers were used to.
With a personality quiz, you can ask various questions and ultimately assign them a faction or a character, give some information about said faction or character, and even use the end screen call to action button (CTA) to link them to strategic web pages – be that buy, or to more promotional material for the new game.
You could apply this logic to homeware, to TV, to food, or to any number of other industries.
Personality quizzes for eCommerce sites
You could customise personality quizzes around your brand, or brands, and host them on your site, or have them as pop-ups on your eCommerce homepage.
These would not only gather customer preferences, but could lead to a profile page where they’re linked to a custom collection’s landing page.
For examples:
- What sort of reader are you? This could be used by online bookstores to introduce people to new genres of books, like true crime, classics, or sci-fi, or go a little deeper and introduce them to author collections.
- Which Olympic sport will you be competing in at Brisbane 2032? This could be used for an online sporting goods retailer to capitalise on the Olympic fever and “What if?” attitude that grips nations every four years.
Personality quizzes for creating awareness
From a non-profit perspective, you can use personality quizzes to connect people to a cause.
For example, your personality test could ask questions around sustainability, and assign them a profile based on the environment, then use the CTA button to link to a donation page, or a resource for further learning.
This could also work in education or for governments in helping children and young people find career ideas to pursue.
Are personality tests a must have for the modern marketer?
As the marketing landscape becomes more and more segregated and competitive, the onus is on marketers to adapt, to be better, and to be cleverer.
Gamification in the form of marketing games will likely play a huge role in engaging audiences and cutting through social media noise, and personality tests are an incredibly effective and compelling component of that package that’s been evolving with advances in technology – moving from glossy magazines as a self-marking questionnaire, into the autonomous Buzzfeed personality quiz format that still resonates to this day.
No other digital engagement tool is quite as effective at appealing to a target audience segment’s sense of self, and connecting that to a business objective.
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