With over four million blog posts published each day, creating content that will attract and hold the attention of your target audience can seem like an impossible task. To boost impact and engagement, many marketers have enhanced their passive content by adding interactive elements. SnapApp defines interactive content as:
“Content that requires the participants’ active engagement – more than simply reading or watching. In return for that engagement, participants receive real-time, hyper-relevant results they care about.”
Some common examples of interactive content include quizzes, games, and calculators.
Audiences prefer interactive content because it’s fun, compelling, and provides immediate, insightful feedback. The popularity of interactive content spills over into the B2B market with a whopping 91% of B2B buyers indicating they prefer content that is visual with an element of interactivity. As marketers, we like interactive content because it gives us the opportunity for improved engagement with our target audience while also providing many other valuable benefits:
Drive brand engagement: Not only does interactive content drive engagement with your content, it also drives engagement with your brand. Interactive content such as solution builders or recommendation engines allow your audience to try out the services and products that your brand offers, and see what’s it like to be your customer by searching options and choosing personal preferences.
Generate data on your target audience: To participate in interactive content, your audience sometimes has to share personal information, which you can then use to shape your marketing and sales efforts. For example, you might run a quiz titled “Do You Need On Premise, Cloud, or Hybrid Solutions?” and the quiz results will provide you with insight into each contact’s IT environment and needs. This ultimately allows you to be more targeted with your marketing efforts towards each quiz-taker, and pitch specific products or services to them.
Differentiate your business from the competition: By interacting with your content in a memorable way, your target audience will associate your brand with a unique experience that is exclusive to your organization. For example, you might publish an interactive calculator on your website that allows prospects to calculate the cost-savings of hiring your company for your Managed IT Service. The calculator would show them how much money they could save annually by reducing the costs of having their own personnel manage their IT systems.
Improve retention and loyalty: Interactive content can provide your customers with additional information about the products/services they’ve purchased to strengthen their understanding or troubleshoot issues. It can also provide them with the opportunity to share their experience with your brand with others. For example, prospects that can easily navigate through your service offerings in an interactive PDF briefcase may keep a copy of the file on their hard drive, as a reference document. They may even share the document with other interested parties.
How to Get Started with Interactive Content
We’ve put together a list of compelling interactive content ideas that you can incorporate into your next marketing campaign:
Marketing Games create a way for your target audience to interact with your brand via a gaming experience. They are typically used as contests or sweepstakes where the participant plays for a chance to win a prize. This allows you to:
Promote your brand in a unique and memorable way.
Build up your email list by collecting contact information and CASL / CAN-SPAM opt-in. Participants will be required to fill out a form and subscribe to your emails in order to play the game.
Scratch Off Image Example
Quizzes are ‘snackable’, fun, and very popular. Quizzes ask questions and provide immediate results which feel specific and personal to the user.
Users often need to provide contact information in order to participate, enabling you to follow-up later with a more targeted email.
Results can identify what the participants know and don’t know about your product, allowing you to recommend subsequent content to further educate them during their buyer journey.
Increase a quiz’s interactivity by creating a video quiz - integrate questions throughout a company promotional video with the results revealed at the end of the video.
Calculators are frequently used as tools to help buyers estimate and compare costs of various product features or evaluate purchase options. They are also used to illustrate how your product or service can help buyers save money or improve their ROI.
Drive traffic to your website as potential buyers search for advice or tools to help them make a purchase decision.
Users can be asked to complete an opt-in form, which will provide you with lead generation data and contact information for follow-up targeted offers.
Adding a calculator to your content would require a custom plugin.
Solution Builders allow potential buyers to navigate their way through existing solutions by answering specific questions about needs, pain points, and business challenges. Based on their answers, users receive detailed and personalized advice with recommended solutions.
Build trust and helps to establish you as an industry thought leader.
Enable you to personalize the recommended solutions based on your product or service, promoting your brand while explaining how these solutions can help the potential buyer.
Users can be asked to complete an opt-in form, which will provide you with lead generation data and contact information for follow-up targeted offers.
Interactive eBooks or White Papers create navigable versions of existing passive content and include interactivity such as graphs, videos, quizzes, and polls. While eBooks are still one of the most popular forms of content, interactivity helps to increase engagement and ensure your target audience keeps ‘reading’.
Improve completion rates by shortening the length of traditional static eBooks.
Personalize the eBook to match buyer personas.
Enhance reader’s sensory experience with built-in touch screen capabilities.
Collect insights on your audience based on their views and clicks. You can also create a lead form for your audience to complete in order to receive the eBook, which will provide you with valuable contact information.
Interactive Flipbooks are online publications that have the look and feel of real publications, complete with page-turning sound effects. You can use existing PDFs such as product brochures and convert them into flipbooks by including interactive elements such as quizzes, videos, games, calculators, guided selling, and even lead forms.
Improve completion rates by shortening the length of traditional static product brochures or catalogues.
Enable instant online viewing unlike a PDF that requires the user to download the document before they can see it.
Collect insightful statistics and analytics on the flipbook’s performance allowing you to make improvements or changes.
Interactive Videos build on the increasing popularity of video content by incorporating interactivity to increase engagement and differentiate your brand.
Increase awareness by enabling your audience to click on a product or service to learn more or to potentially purchase.
Gain insights into your audience as user interaction is recorded.
Examples include video quizzes, branching videos (“choose your own adventure”), product training videos, and interactive demos.
Event Marketing Interactive Concepts either on site at your booth or online, can help you connect with potential buyers before, during, and after an event.
Entice your target audience to attend the event with pre-signups that integrate a competition.
Provide a downloadable event overview that includes practical information that will help guide event-goers through the event.
Maintain contact with potential buyers by sharing event videos or sending follow-up feedback surveys post event.
GamePlan Marketing can help you create impactful interactive content or revamp your top performing content into interactive elements.