Maxwell Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp, joins Mike to discuss quiz marketing and how businesses can engage potential customers through interactive quizzes that not only entertain but also provide valuable insights into their needs.
Maxwell shares his thoughts on the evolving marketing landscape and emphasizes the importance of personal connections, as audiences increasingly seek authenticity and transparency from the brands they engage with.
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About ScoreApp
ScoreApp is a lead generation and customer engagement platform that helps businesses create interactive scorecards to capture valuable data, qualify leads, and personalize user experiences. By using tailored assessments, businesses can gather insights about their audience, streamline onboarding processes, and enhance marketing strategies. This data-driven approach empowers businesses to convert leads into loyal customers effectively. ScoreApp is widely used across various industries, including coaching, finance, and fitness, to boost engagement and drive results
About Maxwell Nee
Maxwell Nee is the Chief Revenue Officer of Scoreapp, a Quiz Marketing Platform with 6,800 paying clients. He’s also a multi-award winning entrepreneur, bodybuilder & dancer. He’s been featured in TV, Radio, Forbes, Singapore’s The Business Times & The Australian Business Review.
Time Stamps
00:00:42 – Maxwell Nee’s Career Journey
00:01:43 – What is ScoreApp?
00:02:23 – Quiz Marketing Explained
00:06:17 – Setting Up a Campaign with ScoreApp
00:09:41 – Balancing Brand and Lead Generation
00:12:04 – Future of Marketing Tools
00:12:57 – The Importance of Personal Connections
00:17:06 – Actionable Advice for Quiz Marketing
00:18:42 – Key Marketing Advice
00:20:46 – Advice for Young Marketers
00:21:55 – Contact Information and Book Reminder
Quotes
“I totally burnt out, realized I hated it, couldn’t be an employee anymore, and jumped into the self-employed world.” Maxwell Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp
“It uses quiz marketing. So uses the engagement of filling out like a quiz or like a personal assessment.” Maxwell Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp
“Our internal mantra is that we’re here to force our customers to be successful.” Maxwell Nee, Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp
Follow Maxwell:
Maxwell Nee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwellnee/
ScoreApp website: https://www.scoreapp.com/
ScoreApp on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scoreapp/
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
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Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
Transcript: Interview with Maxwell Nee at ScoreApp
Speakers: Mike Maynard, Maxwell Nee
Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today.
Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. I’m Mike Maynard, and today I’m joined by Maxwell Nee, who’s the Chief Revenue Officer at ScoreApp. Welcome to the podcast, Maxwell.
Max: Hey, Mike. Thank you so much for having me.
Mike: Well, it’s great to have you on. I mean, the first thing we’d like to do is let you tell us a bit about your career and how you’ve got into the role that you’re currently holding.
Max: Yeah, good question. So I started off my career in corporate banking for Australia’s largest bank, and then totally burnt out, realized I hated it, couldn’t be an employee anymore, and jumped into the self-employed world. Started off by launching a digital marketing agency that then evolved into an online education business where we were selling online courses. And, you know, Score app was actually one of the tools that we used to use to help generate leads and sales for our business. So one thing led to another. I invested in the company, you know, was a bit like of a strategic advisor, you know, making introductions to the company. And then most recently came on to the team to help us scale. I live in Singapore, but to help us scale around this area, Asia Pacific.
Mike: Interesting. So, I mean, I think the first question I really need to ask is, you know, what does ScoreApp do? Can you explain what the product offers people?
Max: Yeah, great. So it helps small, big, any size type of business collect data and generate highly qualified leads. So it’s a lead generation tool that you can use to generate leads for a personal trainer, for a big enterprise company, for an accounting firm, financial services, all that type of stuff.
Mike: I mean, I’ve had a play with it. I love the way it works. You know, basically, it does it by doing these rate my activity, whatever it is. So, you know, whether it’s looking at energy efficiency for potential enterprise customers or fitness for a personal trainer, I mean, it really is a simple quiz with a ranking at the end. Is that a good summary?
Max: Yeah, so it’s a, it uses quiz marketing. So uses the engagement of filling out like a quiz or like a personal assessment. So like a very, very common one is like, find out which Hollywood movie star, your personality is most like, right? Which ones most you that pulls people in because there’s a lot of curiosity, there’s a lot of intrigue, there’s a little bit of vanity. So you know, if you’re that person, who am I, right? So there’s like a self identification process. And so we offer all of your clients that engaging process for them to become a highly qualified lead for you.
Mike: But as I understand, it doesn’t have to be pure fun, you can actually help people assess where they are with, you know, for example, particular processes, Napier could assess, you know, how well potential clients are doing marketing, and then use that to not only drive leads, but also, you know, initiate that discussion. Is that right?
Max: Yeah, 100%. So there’s a few different use cases. One use case is using it for lead generation and sales. We have one client testimonial who is a personal branding expert. And branding is, as you would know, a very intangible thing. You can’t just walk around saying, oh, your brand is crap because it’s a very subjective thing. But she’s found a way to help people measure the effectiveness of their personal brand so that she could then go help them. And that’s her lead generation and sales tool. And then you’ve got people that use it as a customer progress thing. So if you work with your customers or your clients, say over a 12-month period, you might give them an assessment at the beginning, middle, and end to track their progress as they move through their work with you.
Mike: That sounds great. I mean, I love that idea of quiz marketing. I’ve not heard that term before. And I think it’s interesting. I think a lot of people, and particularly our clients in the enterprise space, it’s harder and harder to do the classic content marketing, offering a white paper behind the registration wall. It sounds like this is a, you know, not necessarily a new approach, but certainly a different approach that could be quite intriguing and also quite fresh from the point of view of prospects.
Max: Yeah, it’s, you know, we had one person that was doing something very similar in the States, and we’ve recently acquired them. So as a result of that, and even before that, there’s not many people doing quiz marketing and offering it as a service so other people can use it as well. So it is refreshing, it is unique, and it is, you know, quite special.
Mike: So in terms of actually using the product, I mean, is it a complicated thing or do you literally, you know, just come up with a set of questions and score them? I mean, how does it work?
Max: Yeah, so it used to be quite complicated. You know, the average time it would take someone about a day and a half. That’s a bit like setting up a new website, playing around with all the buttons, tools, moving things around, colors, fonts, and all that type of stuff. But now we have plugged in an AI wizard that you just answer a quiz and the AI wizard takes your answers, then comes back and writes six or seven hours of copywriting and writes a whole marketing campaign for you. Now, that’s like having your first draft of your assignment, you know, university assignment written for you, then you should go back in there and polish it up.
Mike: And you said there’s a broad range. So, you know, I mean, a lot of the people listening to this enterprise marketers in the B2B tech space, you know, presumably, you can offer functionality that large enterprises can’t build easily on their website.
Max: Yeah, well, we can, you know, and we’re very nimble, nimble, fast, and it’s so cheap for what it does. You know, there’s there’s a free version. There’s £29 a month, £59. I think it goes up to about £99 by the end of it. Right. So there’s there’s really an option for everyone. You could step your way into it as well.
Mike: And can you just walk me through, I mean, what someone might do? I mean, let’s say they’re trying to build a campaign. What would be the process and how straightforward is it using ScoreApp?
Max: It’s just like setting up a Facebook profile, you know, Facebook profile, LinkedIn profile, a website for the first time. You create an account, you jump in, you could use AI wizard or you could set it up yourself. Either way, if you get stuck, our head of customer success in the UK, she does a session every Tuesday, where she sits on Zoom, helps people five to one, 10 to one, sometimes one to one, and helps you to get set up. So, you know, our internal mantra is that we’re here to force our customers to be successful. So we’re really leaving nothing off the table.
Mike: I love that. That’s a great approach. I think there’s a lot of customers that love to be forced to be successful.
Max: Yeah, exactly. Right. And especially, I think it’s also quite refreshing in the enterprise, you know, software world, right? Because it’s very rare, you might get to talk to someone on a zoom call, it’s very rare, you get to see the face of someone, you know, on a chat on a webinar or whatever. But we’re doing webinars for new existing clients every other week. And plus, we have the setup and score webinar every week.
Mike: One thing I’m interested in is the promotion of these tools. I mean, we see, you know, these kind of quizzes a lot on social. Is social the most effective way or do you see clients or customers of yours, you know, promoting through email or other channels?
Max: I get, you know, this question is more about, you know, what’s your business model? You know, is your business model trying to appeal to the masses? Then yeah, you know, the masses aren’t social. But if your business model is a little bit more laser focus, you know, one to one type of thing, then that’s also very, very, you know, powerful as well. So I’ll give you an example. Really high-end personal trainers use their own quiz funnel where, for example, they’ll take you in. You say, hey, look, here are my fitness goals. They’ll take you in into a body scanning thing, which is basically a quiz funnel, right? And then that body scan will give you a result, and then they’ll sit there and work out a really tailored plan for you. And that’s very, very one-to-one and high-touch, right? They don’t give out the free scans to everyone. Where you promote it comes back to where’s your audience? You know, where’s your clients? Where’s your target audience?
Mike: That makes a lot of sense. And I think, you know, let’s switch gears and talk about how you’re promoting a score out now. So I guess quiz marketing is one of the ways you’re doing this, but can you talk about what your marketing strategy is for score out?
Max: Yeah, so we have a few, right? So we’re very effective on YouTube. You know, we’ve got a lot of YouTube videos that the views on all of them, like the minutes that people are watching them and getting value out of them is compounding, you know, every month, growing by, you know, say 2 to 5% every single month. And then, you know, we’ve obviously got written articles, because this product is very educational. And we have this book The founder’s written a book called Scorecard Marketing and it breaks down why this works, how it works, the psychology of it. So if you’re into marketing psychology, it’s a great read. And then it gets into the tangibles of what you need to do to make this thing go.
Mike: Awesome. That’s really interesting. It sounds like you’re actually striking quite a big balance. You’re a product that fundamentally is a lead gen product. But it sounds like a lot of what you’re doing is around building the brand. So you’re getting that balance between brand and lead gen. Is that your goal? Is that what you’re trying to achieve?
Max: Yeah, so let me share with you our brand guidelines, you know, like our values and that type of thing. So it’s three words. The first word is elegant. The next word is powerful. And the third word is fun. So we want everything we do to be elegant, powerful and fun, you know, so elegant in the terms of Yeah, we want an ecosystem of our brand and our service and everything else. We want to be on YouTube. We want to be on podcasts. We want to be on LinkedIn. We want to be face to face. I’m going to be bringing the brand to the world’s largest affiliate marketing conference in Bangkok next weekend. So we want to be at physical events as well. We want to be doing our own events. So, because our product has so many clients, more than 6,500 clients, I picture it as like a waterfall. And then you have the water dripping down into the correct places, right?
Mike: And that’s interesting. I mean, you talk about clients and the way you’re dripping them down as a waterfall. But I think one of the interesting things is, fundamentally, you’re a B2B product. You’re selling to other businesses. But your pricing is certainly not at the level that a lot of enterprise products are. So do you think, you know, your approach is somewhat B2C in the way you approach people? Are you seeing people, you know, bringing in ScoreApp into an enterprise almost without permission?
Max: Yeah, you could say that, you know, the vast majority, I’d say at least 90% of our clients make less than half a million dollars a year. Right. So that’s, you know, just how the numbers have landed the threshold. You know, it is a very dynamic and malleable tool. It’s a bit like, you know, MailChimp or like an email database tool. You know, who can use that? A mom and dad can use that. If you’re selling cookies, you could use that, you know, HubSpot can use that, right, or Salesforce. Our tool is a little bit like that. It’s up and down the ladder.
Mike: And I think it’s interesting as well. I mean, not only is there a trend to kind of treat this B2B sales process a little bit more like B2C, but also I think in B2B customers are spending less time, you know, talking to salespeople, more time doing their own research. And that seems to be driving a big uptake in SaaS tools like ScoreApp. I mean, do you think, you know, your sales process really is taking advantage of the fact that people quite like self-serve today?
Max: I think that people want a choice, to be honest. We have a lot of clients that come in and they say, who could I pay to just set this up for me and I’ll pay the money to be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone. So I think that people always have their personal preferences. Me personally, I’m a bit more of a who can I pay type of guy. As long as the price isn’t unreasonable, I’m always happy to pay more but just take the problem away because I want to move on to the next thing. Right. So I think that you want to be able to cater to you want to have a service offering that’s like, you know, low, medium and high range. Right.
Mike: And do you see those low, medium, high range, do you see them almost stretching across the customers? So any size customer could pick any one of those three options, or are you thinking more like small business, medium business, and enterprise?
Max: No, no, 100%. I think even a small business might just say, I’d rather just pay someone to take this off my hands type of thing. And a big business might say, we’d rather just do it ourselves, right? So it really just comes down to personal preference.
Mike: That makes a lot of sense. One interesting thing, I mean, obviously, you know, you’re part of this technical change we’re seeing in marketing. I mean, the rise of MarTech has been phenomenal. What do you see happening over the next five years in terms of marketing tools? And how is that going to change the role of people that are, you know, actually leading marketing organizations?
Max: I think that we all know where it’s going. It’s going to this almost dystopian, ultra-digital, ultra-personalized… What’s the most effective? The most effective is when I log into Amazon.com, and you log into Amazon.com, we both see completely different websites because it’s got 10 years of your buying history, 10 years of my buying history, and our buying histories are different. So it’s ultra personalized and that’s the most effective because they want to get as many sales out of me as possible and so they should. So they want to personalize my experience. So that’s one element. Ultra personalization, AI doing a lot of the administrative heavy lifting, we all already know that’s coming. It’s actually been here for a while. What I do think that people don’t really have an eye on is Donald Trump just won the election, right? And he won it by less than 5 million votes. A few days before voting, like the week before voting week, he was on a few key podcasts, including the Joe Rogan podcast, which got 50 million views within 72 hours, just unheard of. And not a lot of those were from America, but you could say and you could infer that the marketing of the presidential election was swayed. was swayed by one podcast, which is a free piece of media, not controlled by a news corporation, but controlled by just some entrepreneur. How crazy is that? And then if you go deeper into how that works and why it works so well, I think that a lot of people like, yeah, you can watch Donald Trump go at it with Kamala Harris at the debates. Or you could sit there and watch Joe Rogan connect with him as a human being and get to know who the guy actually really is out of the hot spotlights and out of the rehearsed question and answering. I think that’s totally underrated.
Mike: I mean, that’s fascinating. That again is, you know, to some extent looking at the, if you like the consumerization of B2B marketing, you know, it’s becoming, I think if you extend the analogy to B2B, it’s important that you get to know the personalities in your supplier and building those relationships, even their parasocial relationships. I think what you’re saying is going to be more and more important. Is that right?
Max: Yes, I think that the numbers, those numbers I just shared about Donald Trump winning the election, prove that if the world’s making a big purchasing decision, like the decision of who’s going to be president, they want to know who that person is, what are they like, outside of all the rehearsed questions and answers. And wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t I? I do. So that’s one example of a purchasing decision. I think that filters down to all purchasing decisions. If someone is buying an enterprise SaaS thing, they want to know, okay, what type of company is this? Is this a company that doesn’t care about their carbon footprint? Is it making an effort? Is it a company that’s leading that space? It’s not. Is it a company that has equal employment rights? It’s not. Who’s the CEO? Is there a company that represents that they care a lot about this stuff, but the CEO actually doesn’t? I think people want to know that stuff and there’s not enough urgency on that stuff really matters. It’s not nice to have, it matters now and people care about it now and Donald Trump demonstrated that.
Mike: And again, I think that applies to a lot of B2B companies that think it’s purely the specs of their product that matter, where actually there’s a lot more behind that. I mean, Max, this has been really interesting. One of the things we’d like to do is give listeners something, you know, actionable they can take away. So I’d like to ask you, you know, a couple of questions to get your advice. I mean, the first question I’ve got to ask is if you’re thinking about doing a quiz marketing program, I mean, what would be your advice to create a really effective quiz marketing program?
Max: Well, I can give you something. So this book, Scorecard Marketing, if you go to scoreapp.com forward slash book, we’ll get you out a physical copy whilst we can. If you live in the UK, we can. We definitely can. If not, you get a PDF. So that book is a real deeper dive. And some people like to get very technical, really like to understand what’s underneath the surface. So that helps you to get what’s underneath the surface as to why it works, how it works, and how you can execute it the best way possible. And then, yeah, you know, jump on one of our weekly, bi-weekly webinars so that you can start to see, you know, why we’ve got, you know, more than 6,500 clients that are winning with this thing. And we know that because they’re high paying and long term clients.
Mike: Awesome. No, I think that’s good advice. And certainly, you know, getting the book seems like a great start. If we look more generally, though, and let’s move away just from quiz marketing, to marketing in general, I’m interested, what’s the best bit of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
Max: Oh, good question. So I think that a lot of businesses, you know, overcomplicate things, or they overestimate things. And what I mean by that is, you know, typically all the answers to how to market your business, what to do and that type of thing, they’re already out there. right? And sometimes I think we can get a little bit caught up with trying to find the answer on our own or trying to reinvent the wheel a little bit. When if you just look at some of the big businesses and if you look at them really closely, they found out what works and they do the same thing over and over and over again. I’ll give you an example. Apple releases the same products every year. They look a little bit different, there’s different colors, but it’s the same thing. And everyone knows it’s coming, it’s no surprise. So there’s no need to be constantly painting a new Mona Lisa every year or whatever. It’s just repeat what works. And often, you’re not special, I’m not special. Our businesses have been invented before, maybe in a different shape. But just take the shape of what worked before and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. Another example is Tesla. Whenever Elon launches a new product, he does the same thing. He launches a wait list, gets some expression of interest, and I’m sure he takes that expression of interest wait list, then goes to the bank, then gets it funded, then builds it. He doesn’t build a million road suits, which none of us have one yet. You know what I mean? And that was launched five years ago. He gets the interest, He gets the waiting list, he gets the deposits, and then he works it out after. And he keeps doing that because it keeps working and it’s the smartest way to do it. You know, so there’s a, there’s a smart way that someone’s already figured out how to market your business. So I would just take that and run with it.
Mike: Awesome. I think that’s great advice. And then the other question we like to ask for, you know, people who are listening, if they’re just starting in their careers is what would be your advice to a young person right at the start of their marketing career?
Max: Oh yeah. I left my corporate life in my mid-twenties and chased the entrepreneurial thing. And I’ve got all these friends that are multi-millionaires, large numbers in front of me. And they all started five years earlier, six years earlier. And so I wish that I jumped into what I really wanted, which is to be an entrepreneur earlier. And yeah, you know, it’s hard to do that if you don’t have a mentor, like a lot of them had their dads are entrepreneurs. So that was easier. Mine, mine sort of wasn’t right. But I wish I had the foresight to just find one, you know, find a mentor to just stick to, which is a challenger within itself. But at least that that makes the action is clear in that case, right?
Mike: Absolutely. I think that’s that’s great advice. I mean, go for it, I think is the summary there. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Max, I really appreciate your time. I know you’re busy. I’m sure people will have questions here, either about marketing using Score app or more general marketing questions. What’s the best way for people to contact you if they’d like more information? And maybe you can also throw in a reminder of how to get the book as well.
Max: Yeah, so we’d love to get your copy of the book. You know, you can do physical or digital. It’s SCOREAPP.com forward slash book. And then if you want to get a hold of me, I’m addicted to LinkedIn. So Maxwell Knee on LinkedIn. You’ll get me there.
Mike: Max, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. I really appreciate it. It’s been fascinating.
Max: Perfect. My pleasure. Thanks, Mike.
Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you’d like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.
