The digital landscape continues to provide users with so much content that, in the end, it reduces the average person’s attention span. Businesses have to come up with innovative ways to capture the attention of their audience and increase audience engagement. One of the strategies that have proven to be highly effective is the use of interactive content.
Content is slowly shifting from their role of informing and entertaining the audience to actively involving them. By involving the audience in your content, you create a more engaging and personalized experience.
Some of the ways that businesses create interactive content are by using infographics, quizzes, polls, and assessments among others. These types of content have benefited brands in various ways including enhancing audience interaction and enhancing their digital marketing strategies.
In this article, we’ll discuss what interactive content means, examples, and the benefits they provide to brands like yours.
What is Interactive Content?
Interactive content is a type of content that encourages users to take an active role while interacting with their favorite brands. Users get the opportunity to engage, interact, and make choices that enhance their experience.
For example, users take part in company surveys, answer quizzes, participate in polls, and carry out assessments among others. Interactive content allows your audience to take a more active role while interacting with your business.
The content satisfies the increasing consumer demand for more engaging, personalized, and dynamic experiences. Businesses that have already turned to interactive content are able to stand out from their competition by capturing the much-coveted audience’s attention.
Types of Interactive Content
Businesses can use various types of interactive content to engage their audience. Each type comes with its unique advantages:
Quizzes and Polls
Quizzes and polls are the most commonly used forms of interactive content. The business comes up with quizzes and encourages users to answer them based on their experiences, preferences, or interests.
The quizzes can be in the form of trivia questions or personality quizzes. The answers usually lead to decision-making that may lead the business to provide more personalized results.
Polls can ask users to give feedback or opinions by choosing one option over another. In the end, businesses get one-time results that they can share across social media platforms and improve their services.
Assessments and Surveys
Businesses use assessments and surveys to gather data from their audiences and at the same time encourage them to offer meaningful engagements. These forms of interactive content can help collect customer feedback, carry out market research, and generate leads. Answering a series of questions helps users gain insight into their behaviors or preferences. Assessments and surveys are especially helpful for B2B and B2C interactions.
Interactive Infographics
Businesses use infographics to simplify complex information. Interactive infographics go a step further to help businesses click, hover, and scroll to access additional information. The content can be used to tell a story about the business, offer visual data, or help break down complex concepts in a more interactive and friendly way.
Interactive Videos
Interactive videos go a step further from traditional video content into more clickable ones. These videos allow users to choose their own adventure and influence the storyline. Interactive videos are fun, enhance user experience, and drive engagement. Through these videos, businesses are able to provide a much deeper connection with their audience.
Calculators
With calculators, users can input data or make selections to get more personalized results. A good example is using a loan calculator to allow users to collect the exact features they want based on their budget. With this, businesses get to engage customers and guide them toward making a more personalized purchase decision.
Benefits of Interactive Content
Here are some of the benefits to expect if you incorporate interactive content into your digital marketing strategy.
Increased Audience Engagement
Interactive content has a unique way of prompting users to take action and get more involved. Users are able to actively participate in a given activity, hence, spending more time on the website or platform, which leads to higher engagement.
Interactive content is able to boost audience engagement rates up to 3 times higher than traditional content. It helps businesses build relationships with their audience leading to higher chances of conversion.
Data Collection and Insights
Businesses that use interactive content get valuable insights into their audience’s behavior, preferences, and interests. They use quizzes, surveys, and polls to gather real-time data that help them understand the needs of their customers. With the data, they can segment their audience, come up with more refined marketing strategies, and create more personalized content.
For example, creating a quiz that asks users to choose their product preferences can help the business come up with more targeted campaigns that offer relevant recommendations. Polls can also help determine the level of customer satisfaction or gather opinions about a particular product.
Personalized User Experience
With interactive content, businesses are able to deliver a more personalized user experience. They can collect data to help them offer tailored content, recommendations, and product suggestions. Customers value personalization rather than getting generic messages from their chosen brands.
Businesses that provide personalized experiences are able to improve user satisfaction and convert leads to loyal customers. Their customers feel that their needs are being addressed, which in turn enhances trust and long-term relationships.
Improved Lead Generation
Businesses generate leads with interactive content. Users can readily share their contact information if they get more valuable and engaging experiences. Businesses can come up with an interactive quiz that asks users to share their contact to get a more detailed report based on their needs.
Such businesses have mastered the art of offering value in exchange for customer information. The content can deliver personalized insights or offer rewards for participation, which is effective for attracting quality leads.
Higher Shareability
Interacting content is fun and offers interesting results that encourage customers to share. For example, when users take part in a quiz and receive personalized results, they’re likely to share it on their social media platforms. This in turn helps the business increase its engagement and expand its content reach.
The viral nature of interactive content helps amplify brand visibility and attract a broader audience. It’s extremely valuable for businesses looking to increase brand awareness and attract new customers.
Implementation Strategies for Interactive Content
Consider the following strategies to incorporate interactive content into your content strategy.
1. Align Content with Goals
First, ask yourself what your marketing goals are. Do you want to generate leads, build brand awareness, or get customer insights? When you understand your objective, you can choose the right type of interactive content and get an experience that aligns with your goals.
2. Integrate with Existing Marketing Plans
If you already have marketing plans, your interactive content should seamlessly integrate. The content should perfectly complement your other content and align with your messaging strategies.
3. Focus on User Experience
To be successful with interactive content, your users must have a smooth and enjoyable experience. Your content should be fun, easy to navigate, visually appealing, and mobile-friendly. Users should not encounter any difficulties while interacting with your content because that can result in disengagement, which is detrimental to your brand.
Ready to Go?
Interactive content is the current state of businesses that want to take their marketing efforts to the next level. Consumers are looking for more personalized experiences and increased audience engagement. Interactive elements like quizzes, polls, surveys, and assessments lead to increased engagement, improved lead generation, and enhanced customer relationships.
Looking to get started with interactive content? Penmo is here to help. Get in touch with us and let’s help you implement the most successful interactive content strategy that will see your business attract, engage, and get more customers.