Marie Forleo | Quiz Critique

Quiz Strategy and Tips

Welcome to my quiz critique of Marie Forleo’s quiz, What Type of Entrepreneur Are You?

I’m Melissa — a Brand Voice & Quiz Strategist. I help copywriters and introverted women in business create wild brand love with evergreen quizzes, email sequences and jaw-meet-floor Brand Voice Maps that uncage your true brand voice.

Marie Forleo Quiz Critique

#50Critiquesin50Weeks Challenge

If you know me personally, you’ll know I’m the ā€˜marathon-runner’ flavour of ambitious. 

I set myself lofty goals with cooking experiments and reading novels… and then quietly conquer them. 

What can I say? I love giving my brain challenges to unpuzzle. 

Enter my new lofty goalā€¦āœØ 50 Critiques in 50 Weeks ✨

Each week, I’ll be donning my detective suspenders and a monocle (okay, blazer and glasses) to investigate a quiz and/or a brand voice. 

Inspired by email strategist Eman Ismail’s epic teardowns, I’ll share the highlights of what a brand is doing right with their voice or quiz, what needs a little bit of improvement or tweaking, and illuminate any missed opportunities.

Let’s make one thing clear right now. 

I won’t be churning out critiques every.single.day for 50 weeks. I have clients to care for and pierogi to eat.

I’ll focus on creating just one critique per week. Two at most if I’m on a roll. 

*Ahem* Let’s get started, shall we? 

Watch the video

YouTube video

The good (yay!)

Good #1: The quiz intro has a strong hook

The quiz start page paints an alluring picture of the audience’s ideal future: ‘When you discover the special gift that only you have, you can create a business and a life you love.

This ‘dream state’ (as it’s called in conversion copywriting) includes the promise of a clear and compelling transformation.

Behind the scenes, Marie’s copywriter will have collected interviews and surveys to validate this core value proposition. It’s a theme that runs through her entire business.

And it works. This message absolutely appeals to B-School’s audience of beginner entrepreneurs.

Good #2: Compelling visuals

Question 1 and Question 4 have compelling visuals. Brilliant, I can immediately imagine myself in each answer scenario.

I would like to see visuals appear more consistently throughout the quiz. Think emojis, GIFs that display her wit, and inspiring images alongside the question copy to create a fun vibe that echoes Marie’s voice when it’s most playful and lively.

Good #3: Social sharing

I love that she includes an easy social sharing button so her audience can easily share their results. This one’s a no-brainer.

The less friction to share, the more likely her quiz takers will share the quiz with their business friends. Especially if the quiz result makes them feel good about who they are.

Good #4: The quiz results showcase Marie’s personality and her understanding of her audience

The quiz result is where the copywriter starts to shine by empathising with the audience and showing more of Marie’s personality. This copy is excellent — engaging, funny and understands the audience’s psychology.

A quiz should always make the audience feel good about themselves. The Gifts section feels tailored to each quiz result and help the audience imagine future possibilities.

Good #5: The quiz results strategically reframe the audience’s beliefs about themselves to improve their self-efficacy

Check out the Multipassionate Entrepreneur quiz result. Specifically the uplifting message at the end of the copy:

“Realize that you get to choose how you position yourself and your journey. You get to frame your experience both for yourself and for the world. So what’s the story you’re going to tell?”

Marie Forleo, Multipassionate Entrepreneur Quiz Result

She’s actually doing something really important here. She’s reframing a belief this audience holds about themselves (that having multiple passions is a weakness) and transforming that perceived limitation into a strength (you can combine your multiple passions into something unique and powerful).

This earns trust points for her AND helps them trust in themselves enough to figure out whether they should invest in her program.

What could be improved (& recommendations)

Let’s see if I can whip up some suggestions to improve Marie’s quiz.

Recommendation #1: Make the quiz title more enticing

This quiz is targeting people who don’t yet know what kind of entrepreneur they want to be, or haven’t yet decided on a direction for their business. This premise matches the audience for B School. 

With this in mind, the quiz title could be working harder to make me feel special, excited and invite me in. It’s simple and clear, but it’s unlikely to captivate me to take the quiz.

I want to see something more like, ‘What’s your entrepreneurial calling?’ Something that makes me feel excited to discover my result.

Recommendation #2: More empathy on the quiz start page

What am I feeling right now and how will the quiz help me? Make it clear how this quiz will help me solve my problem: Perhaps I’m feeling confused or frustrated or procrastinating about what entrepreneurial path to take.Ā 

Recommendation #3: What can I expect from taking this quiz?

Beyond knowing what my special gifts are, what else can I expect to receive in the quiz results? Can I expect a game plan for starting the business of my dreams? Can I expect a cheat sheet of affirmations or mindset advice to help me tackle the challenges or fear I’m facing?

Starting a business is a huge deal and I want to see a glimpse of more voice-of-customer research here that shows she ‘gets me’ and where I’m at.

Recommendation #3: Make the quiz questions more engaging

The quiz questions are okay but not amazing. They show a decent understanding of her audience, but lack the spark, crackle and pop that make a quiz so fun to take.

She might like to play with the copy a bit to show off Marie’s characteristic wit and… maybe even more importantly, invite the quiz taker to share their own personality.

A good quiz feels like a conversation where the quiz taker can express their personality through their question choices.

I mentioned earlier that Marie could add in fun emojis, GIFs and more images. But equally important here is making sure the question copy is enticing and invites immersion through concise but powerful description. This will draw the quiz taker in and get them visualising their dream and goals.

Marie could also use subtle psychology in her quiz questions to reinforce a healthy self-concept and help her audience start to build self-efficacy.

Recommendation #4: Include actionable advice

I love that Marie empathises with her audience’s major Roadblocks to entrepreneurial success in the quiz result.

To strengthen the impact, I recommend including immediate steps her audience can take to knock down these obstacles, i.e. quick valuable wins.

Missed opportunities

Missed opportunity #1: Share curated resources — for every result

Marie shares resources (a link to curated articles on her blog) to help the Multipassionate Entrepreneur on their business journey.

But I’m a little perplexed why this kind of curated advice isn’t offered to every other quiz result?

It’s a smart move to use the resources she already has handy to connect in a deeper way. But it’s an even smarter move to hook each segmented audience up with a customized stream of advice and blog articles that feel like they’re written just for them.

Ideally, every quiz result should include unique curated resources to help the audience overcome their Roadblocks.

She could really highlight the blog articles as a selling point of taking the quiz: that you will get custom advice and read inspirational stories from women like you detailing exactly what worked for them and why.

Missed opportunity #2: The mystery of the missing welcome email sequence?

I waited a little while after taking the quiz for her welcome email to arrive. And my inbox continued to feel lonely for a whole day.

After 24 hours, I received the latest email from her email newsletter. No welcome email sequence in place to introduce me to her brand, celebrate my awesomeness, or invite me into her community.

No segmentation to show she cares about who I am and what *I* want. (Yep, that means no invite to opt into MarieTV videos or hearing about B-School. Everyone who opts in joins her newsletter).

Nothing tailored just for me.

I was pretty disappointed.

I’m assuming that in the back end of her system, my email address has been tagged as needing help with XYZ challenge and she’ll maybe nurture me with relevant content over time. 

But not sending an immediate follow up email to celebrate my quiz result with me? That’s a valuable missed opportunity for connection.

Why? Because email turns the interactive experience of taking a quiz into a REAL two-way conversation.

For example, Marie could use her emails to invite her new email subscriber to ask questions and share the why that’s driving their ambition to start a business.

Even better, she could create a strategic welcome email sequence that continues to lovingly reframe each segmented audience’s negative beliefs about themselves (also known as a ‘problem-soaked narrative’).

Ideally, this welcome email sequence would nurture trust and gradually build up her audience’s self-efficacy, so that by the time the next round of B-School drops, they’re able to decide for themselves if they feel ready for the transformation that Marie’s offer promises.

Also, I’ve come to expect that if I give someone my email address, they will show up in my inbox to welcome me. 

I want to feel special. Just saying.

That’s all for now, folks

If you like what I did here, feel free to share this article with someone who’ll find joy (and maybe courage) in these brainy quiz insights.

If you need some help with your business’ quiz lead magnet strategy and copy, drop me a inquiry.

Thanks for following along this journey with me!

All quiz content is copyrighted to Marie Forleo.

Hey, I’m Melissa

I help copywriters and introverted women in business create wild brand love with evergreen quizzes, email sequences and jaw-meet-floor Brand Voice Maps that uncage your true brand voice.

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