The Importance of Incorporating Interactive Content to Engage with Your Audience

60% of B2B Content Marketers find that producing engaging content is their biggest challenge. Are you one of them? Although video is one of the more popular media forms used in content marketing today, interactive content marketing is another successful marketing method, often resulting in direct sharing and engagement.

The Benefits of Interactive Marketing

Did you know that 90% of consumers report that they want more visual and interactive content? By interacting with you, they will feel motivated to go further on the buyer’s journey, from a lead to a customer, and then a promoter of your product or service. Interactive content is loaded with additional benefits including:

• Improved Customer Education—Teach people about possible solutions to their problems (with your products, services, etc.) and your business becomes valuable to them.
• Increased User Engagement—Your content becomes more interesting and intriguing, so they want to stay connected to your brand, which increases your brand engagement and overall visibility online.
• Better Conversions—Once they begin participating, ask them for their email address (which adds their contact information to your CRM). Once you gain their permission, you can then provide them with future valuable content as a follow up, such as regularly sharing newsletters and promotions.
• Differentiation—Your interactive content will stand out from the crowd as your content will be dynamic and creative and will fill their need for engagement.
• Knowing Your Customer or Prospect Better—By interacting with them, you can better optimize your offerings and better understand their problems and pain points.
• Sharing—Great content will be shared with their network, generating more page views, traffic and followers for your website or social media channel.

Examples of Interactive Marketing

Interactive content refers to digital content that a user engages with. Unlike reading an article or watching a video, they have to click, drag, or otherwise interact with the page or content to see the full information. Here are some methods to encourage interaction:        

• Assessments or “personality tests” where the user provides answers to a few questions in order to learn something interesting about themselves. You’ll also receive insights based on their answers, continuing to refine your information about their “buyer persona.”
• Quizzes and surveys/polls can test your audience’s knowledge or opinions on a relevant topic, then generate a shareable report card so they can compare and share their results with their peers.
• Games allow your audience to see themselves in your brand’s experience, which offers the potential to deepen engagement and drive greater satisfaction.
• Configurators can help customers evaluate the benefits of purchase options they may be considering.
• Calculators can be used to calculate a price, quantity required, or an ROI of a product.
• Infographics turn data into easy-to-read, shareable and hopefully helpful content.
• Have a Contest like a photo contest, art contest, caption contest or a selfie campaign to help boost traffic.
• Multi-Touch Photos/Videos allow consumers a virtual view of the goods or services you offer so they can try before they buy, making the experience more tangible.
  • And just for fun, here is my favorite interactive content video. It’s a gamified interactive recruitment experience by Deloitte.
• Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality can take your audience into the world your brand creates, letting them experience something in a different way.

Best Practices to Develop Interactive Content

Incorporating interactive marketing methods into your strategy is simple if you keep a few things in mind. First, you don’t have to start from scratch—consider changing up the content you already have and redesign it to make it interactive while staying on topic. You’ll also want to make sure to always measure and monitor your results.

Test your content to experiment with what your audience prefers. Try different headlines, different questions, etc. to see what works better, then adjust future content to fit what you’ve learned.

Once you have a great piece of interactive content you’ve created, be sure to promote it. This will ensure it spreads across the Internet, helping you to discover your true audience and properly engage with them.

Lastly, just remember, this is only one type of content marketing. The strongest strategies include a variety of content types based on your target audience. Test the waters with a social media survey to your audience to learn what kind of content your audience likes best. It may be the easiest way to begin a little interactive content marketing! Based on what you learn, think about re-evaluating your marketing approach to see what makes sense to further engage and perhaps jump start your content marketing.

You can also download our free Guide to Recession Marketing to help you assemble a winning strategy!