This article was first published on April 12th, 2019, and was last updated June 2022.
The content of the past has been replaced with a new form of interactive content. This one-to-one approach, for marketing, focuses right on the customer and their needs. Rather than selling to people directly and with purpose, interactive content marketing addresses how a company will solve a specific problem someone experiences.
Many online marketers find it difficult to create content that’s engaging. But, with ever decreasing attention spans, it’s important to create content that grabs the attention of your audience quickly and holds it.
Table of Contents
What is Interactive Content Marketing?
Why Is Interactive Content So Engaging?
Why is Interactive Content Important?
The Different Types of Interactive Content
What is Interactive Content Marketing?
Interactive content marketing involves utilizing interchangeable content that your audience and customers can engage and interact with in a way that resonates with the customer individually. In a way, it’s similar to creating a conversation between a business and the customer, but gives the opportunity for the customer to engage with the content while gaining insight, information, or further interest with a business.
Interactive content helps take your content a step further by giving customers an experience to say, do, see, act, feel, and connect with your business content. Interactive content marketing can be extremely beneficial and help your business connect more with audiences.
Why Is Interactive Content So Engaging?
Interactive content is diverse, fun to connect with, and can bring valuable information to your audience. Here are a few reasons why interactive content is so engaging for readers:
- Personalized: There’s a high level of personalization with this type of content. It’s created to speak directly to each audience member and meant to sound like a conversation one-on-one.
- Community: It’s interactive, stimulates conversations, and allows others with the same interest to engage with one another. Examples like Facebook quizzes allow people to share information and begin conversations.
- Engaging: Interactivity gives consumers more of a reason to stay on a page when they have to respond to actions and questions. While these types of features can be fun, they’re also educational and help people understand your business a little better.
- Unique: Having the ability to interact with content on your website can help it stand out against competitors in your industry. Movement on a page can catch customer’s attention. When done properly, can be the reason customers keep coming back to your business site. Interactive content is unique and it alone helps it stand out from the rest of the content that’s out there.
Why is Interactive Content Important?
As we’ve mentioned, interactive content can help be a powerful tool to help improve certain areas of your marketing and business strategy. Here are a few benefits of utilizing interactive content:
Helps Attract Future Buyers
Interactive content helps keep customers engaged and interested in your website for longer. For strategies, such as a sales funnel, keeping customers on your page longer is what helps your sales funnel succeed over time. When your content is optimized, effective, and understood by the customer to help them make a purchasing decision, both sides win. Sometimes finding the right balance for this content can sometimes come as a challenge. However, when it’s done right it can bring profitable results over time.
Social Media Sharing
More individuals are likely to share content through social media platforms that is interactive for others to engage with it. Instead of directing followers to blog posts, share something new with them such as a survey, quiz, or video. The more diverse content you share on social platforms, the more opportunities you have to connect with your audience’s interests. Over time, your audience will know what type of content they are expecting and they will most likely keep coming back to it.
Helps Increase Brand Exposure
Interactive content helps increase your marketing chances of gaining more exposure. When you’re able to deliver consistent content that fits your audience’s needs, people will continue to follow your business. Whether you deliver informational, commercial, transactional, or entertaining content to your audience, having consistency will show positive results from your audience over time.
Generates More Traffic
When you find the right audience and the type of interactive content they like, you can add elements, such as a CTA or ads, to help generate more traffic back to your website. Interactive content can help start the conversation between you and a new customer. Adding internal links and showcasing what your business can offer them will help keep the conversation rolling and potentially ending in a sale.
The Different Types of Interactive Content
There are all kinds of formats that interactive content can take. Here are just a few of the most common types:
1. Quizzes
This is probably the most popular form of interactive content marketing. They seem like a fun way to pass the time online, but what they really do is collect loads of information that helps you find out more about the type of audience you’re attracting. Did you know that 96% of consumers who start BuzzFeed quizzes do end up finishing them? If you’re having a hard time keeping readers on your blog, look into implementing quizzes to help them stay on your content longer.
2. Surveys and Polls
These can both be extremely helpful in collecting data on specific issues or problems that people may be experiencing. You’ll be able to devise specific marketing and content strategies to help decide what steps your business needs to take in order to meet their needs. From there, you can discover your audience’s interests about your business and create initiatives that help them keep coming back. To help gain more insight, keep your surveys short and provide multiple choice answers. People will be more likely to complete them when they are formatted like this. Surveys and polls not only help your customers be heard from their feedback, but also benefit your business in learning how you can improve.
3. Interactive Calculators
An interactive calculator helps individuals obtain specific information they’re looking for. Whether it be a mortgage calculator, currency exchange calculator, or any type of calculator that helps total specifics up. If someone is looking to get an exact answer on something, you’ll be giving them the information they need which is of great value to them. These can be great lead generating tools for marketers.
4. Videos
Videos and interactive websites are wonderful storytelling tools, as they are highly engaging. You can pack a lot of information into a short video while creating a positive user experience. You can choose to create highlights of your services and products, give them a walkthrough of experiences you have to offer, and informational videos that help answer customers questions. As long as it’s engaging and interesting, you’ll be able to hold your audience’s attention for the duration and help them make purchase decisions.
5. Interactive E-Books
When it comes to long-form content, turning it into an interactive e-book can be very beneficial for your business! Repurposing old white papers or research reports can be the perfect opportunity to make it interactive content for your customers. Having the content be more customizable, such as locating the content section easier, helps make your content more relevant and accessible.
6. Live Chats Bots
Having a chatbot on your website has become increasingly important and popular over the past few years. While you want to make your site easy and accessible, sometimes it’s nice to have a chatbot there to answer your customers’ questions. Having a personalized response to issues and questions helps reduce wait times for technical support by phone or in person. It can also help your customers feel valued knowing that there’s someone there ready to help answer their questions.
7. Interactive Infographics and Data Visualizations
Having customized and dynamic visuals through infographics and data visualizations can be a beneficial interactive content method. It helps position data in an easier way for customers to digest and understand.
Taking Your Content to the Next Level with SEO
Interactive marketing content has evolved the way of digital marketing. Rather than telling the audience what they want, interactive content instead asks what problem they are facing. Then presents them with a way to solve that problem. Using these different forms of interactive marketing content, you’ll be able to create content that captures your audience’s attention and effectively gets your message across.
SEO is another effective way of learning about your audience and having them find you online. If you’re interested in adding it to your business lineup, take a look at our SEO Reseller Plans that will help fit your agency’s needs.
