In 2022 and the years that follow, to beat your competitors and impress your target audience, you’ll have to create superlative content. Focusing on interactive content is one way to do this. Right off the bat, you can double engagement with this approach. Also, 79% of marketers opined that interactive content draws repeat visits.
So what is interactive content? Unlike reading text which is passive in nature, interactive content requires active participation from the recipient, and hence is more compelling, easy to understand and memorable.
Here’s everything you need to know to get started.
Interactive content hinges on audience understanding
Creating interactive content without understanding who it is being created for will not give you the desired results. So, before you build an interactive content marketing strategy, pay attention to the following:
- When, where, and how does your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP) find and consume information that leads them to a solution?
- What platforms, topics, content types, and length does your ICP prefer?
- On what device does your ICP typically consume content?
- What drives your ICP towards a purchase decision?
Since interactive content is centered around the end customer, doing your homework helps create content that isn’t just interactive for the sake of it, but actually elevates the customer’s experience, and translates into tangible benefits for your organization.
Benefits of interactive content
In a nutshell, here are the benefits that you can look forward to.
- Boost brand awareness and build a long-standing rapport with your target audience.
- Engage for longer durations, thus creating interest as well as a recall for your business and its products/services. As time spent increases, you can also expect a boost in your SEO performance, especially in search rankings.
- Interactive content, owing to its novelty, entices people adequately to share their contact information. This means that you can leverage such content to bolster your lead capturing efforts.
The truth is that today, a B2B buyer has also begun to expect a B2C-like experience. With interactive content marketing, you can deliver on this ask, build a distinguished voice for your organization, and also create snackable, shareable content that augments discoverability.
Interactive content ideas
If you’re wondering what makes content interactive, here’s a quick breakdown.
- Animations, motion graphics, and short videos
- Text or image appearing on a mouse roll-over
- Images with a slider function
- Automated pop-ups and speech bubbles, triggered by clicks and mouse roll-overs
- Clickable and expandable tabs and sections
- Interactive maps
- Interactive videos that utilize AR and VR
- Polls and quizzes, where participation (selection of an option/answer), has a visual impact. For instance, a quiz where every right answer earns you a green tick on a report card, whereas every wrong answer earns you a cross.
- Audio—in the form of music or sound effects—that aligns with your content and visuals
You can use a combination of these elements to make all forms of content interactive, from website content and blogs, to infographics, e-books, reports, case studies, and most importantly, landing pages!
Types of interactive content for each stage of the purchase cycle
Now that you know how to make plain content interactive, here’s how to put it into action, at various stages of a prospect’s purchase journey.
For those who are at the top of the funnel
Generate awareness, build interest around your products and services, and cultivate a need via interactive:
- Landing pages
- Infographics
- Contests/Quizzes
For those who are in the middle of the funnel
Establish trust, develop purchase intent further and establish your credibility via interactive:
- Brochures
- Surveys/Reports
- eBooks
- Whitepapers
- Microsites
For those who are at the bottom of the funnel
Prospects at the bottom of the funnel are considering making a purchase, but evaluating which product/service provider they should opt for. Hence, it is crucial that your interactive content enables the purchase and eliminates any doubt. With this in mind, you can opt for interactive:
- Case studies
- Testimonials
- Product/service guides
- Blogs
It is important to note that creating interactive content incurs greater expenditure when compared to normal content. However, with improved awareness, discoverability, and traffic, as well as superior customer experience and a shorter sales cycle on the horizon, it’s clear that the costs outweigh the benefits in the long run. If you are still not convinced, take a look at these statistics:
- 75% of marketers feel that non-gated interactive content provides a ‘taste’ of the company, which further enables lead nurturing.
- 81% of marketers said that interactive content is effective in grabbing prospects’ attention.
- 62% of B2B marketers have already employed interactive content in their marketing strategy.
- 88% of marketers said that interactive content distinguishes companies from their competitors.
So, incorporate interactive content tools into your digital marketing mix today. For assistance with conceptualizing and creating impressive interactive content, lean on our experts at Resolute B2B.
