The real trick, of course, is harnessing AI. How can it be used to make your service more efficient, your productivity greater or your offer more powerful?
Getting signals back
Our experience with AI was born out of a need to close the loop with customers. We were running events and podcasts across the world, but all our signals were being broadcast out, and we weren’t getting enough signals back. How could we know if the people we were reaching were right for us, what were their needs, could we help to fulfil them?
So, we built a digital scorecard with around forty questions which helped us to determine who amongst our audience were ‘key people of influence’. The higher their score, the more likely we could work with them. By doing this we generated 75,000 completed scorecards, or ‘warm leads’, and knew exactly who we were talking to. We could then focus on those that were right for us and deliver for them. It cost us £8000 to develop and we made over £10M in sales from that first scorecard.
It sounds simple and it is. But not everyone has £8000, so we decided to expand the platform and offer the scorecard model as an app to other entrepreneurs. We now have 16,000 users who run scorecards and quizzes every month and generate hundreds of leads for their own businesses. We call it ScoreApp.
AI at the heart
The simplicity and effectiveness of ScoreApp wouldn’t be possible without AI. It lies in the Quiz Builder at the heart of the app and streamlines the quiz creation process of researching, writing, and editing quizzes. Give it a few simple instructions and it will create quizzes that audiences love to engage with and are happy to complete. Survey fatigue is a thing of the past. What previously took days or even weeks to produce can now be done in minutes and that’s thanks to AI.
Powering your brand
Small companies, contractors, consultants and start-ups are among the users of ScoreApp and many of them are taking a creative approach to the scorecards – and quizzes – they develop to generate leads.
Hannah Power is a personal brand specialist, and she helps entrepreneurs to develop so they can be regarded as leaders in their field. She wanted to create a strong lead magnet to differentiate herself in the market and loved the idea of enticing people using the scorecard system. She had written a book on building a powerful personal brand and decided to use ScoreApp to bring her audience on a journey. A crucial element of her scorecard was to determine the stage that people had reached in terms of their personal brand development. The responses to this were insightful for Hannah, but they also encouraged participants to delve further into the scorecard quiz so they could see what stages they could aim for next. Not only did Hannah get 800 leads she also got a deep understanding of her customers’ needs, preferences and challenges. The impact of this on the service she offers has been hugely valuable to her business and her customers.
Not all scorecard quizzes are for leads
While lead generation is often top of mind for people when they think about scorecards, or quizzes, businesses also need to create valuable content, devise relevant products and services and attract customers that are right for them.
For companies that run events, for example, it can be useful to run a pre-event quiz. At the point of registration when people are at their most excited, or interested in the event, they could be asked to answer a few questions. This will provide insight into what they’re expecting and hoping for, and it could inform the programme and content that you share.
Another idea is to offer information back to your audience in return for charging a small fee to take the quiz. ScoreApp can provide specific, tailored information based on the answers to a scorecard quiz, such as offering a diet plan or a fitness programme.
As entrepreneurs, we believe it’s important to spread the love and we also think most businesses would benefit from an AI driven scorecard or quiz. You can sign up for a free trial here and see for yourself just how transformative AI can be in moving you closer to your customers.
Daniel Priestley is the cofounder of ScoreApp.