Interactive content has been growing steadily in importance for brands and businesses of all sizes. 

Yet many brands continue to believe that they don’t have the resources to produce it consistently, so they are tempted to diminish its value.

In this post, we’ll show you how interactive content helps you achieve your marketing goals. But first, let’s define our terms.

In the context of digital marketing, interactive content is any digital content that requires active participation from its audience: clicking, dragging, tapping, answering, and so forth.

The term is a way to distinguish interactive forms of content from passive or static content that users simply consume, like text and images.

Interactive content, then, is an integral part of a robust digital marketing strategy. 

Here are 8 ways that it can help you achieve your marketing goals.

6. Boosts Sales

Interactive content can boost sales in two ways, one direct and one indirect.

First, we’ll cover the direct boost. Go back to the example of an interactive quiz paired with a long-form blog post.

Let’s say the topic is “which is right for your style?”. Don’t stop with answering that question for a user.

Keep the sales funnel going by providing a link directly to the item that the person landed on with their quiz results. 

You can even double down by providing a discount code on the results page.

So interactive content can be used as part of a sales funnel in this way. 

It can also provide indirect boosts to sales, especially for businesses with more complex sales processes. Here’s how.

Interactive content isn’t always a straight-up sales play. Sometimes it’s a data-gathering tool. (More on this in the next point, by the way.)

There’s also just something inherently more memorable about interactive experiences. When someone spends even a minute or two engaged with a quiz, a quick calculator, or a product recommender, it tends to stick with them a bit longer than just reading another bland paragraph. That extra touchpoint burrows your brand into their mind, so when they’re ready to buy — maybe not today, maybe weeks out — you’re at least on their mental shortlist. It’s subtle, but it works, and you can see it in returning visitor metrics or even longer times on page in your analytics dashboard.

For businesses that don’t have gigantic marketing budgets (most of us, honestly), this can help level the playing field. Creative, well-built interactive content is often shared organically, drawing in curious people who’d never find you otherwise. A playful little poll or even a simple interactive infographic sometimes spreads further than another paid ad ever could, at least if you hit the right note. There are quite a few case studies showing exactly that, including brands who nearly doubled engagement rates with a single interactive tool — though, to be fair, YMMV depending on the niche.

As users mess around with your interactive content, they offer useful data about where they are in the sales journey and what their needs or pain points are.

Their current interaction on your site may not lead to a sale. It may not even be designed to do so.

But if you can gather valuable data on what your customers’ struggles and needs are, you can route that data to your sales teams. They can be more effective as a result.

7. Helps You Collect First-Party Data

As we alluded to above, your interactive content pieces don’t have to be purely for your customers’ education or entertainment. 

They can also be tools for data collection.

By gathering data on what your leads, prospects and customers think about issues or what items they tend to prefer, you can make better data-driven decisions about products you release or features you add.

How do you actually execute this kind of strategy? 

The area of data collection through interactive content is a bit more complex, and we don’t have the space here to get into the specifics.

We’ve put together a more detailed post on how interactive content can help your data collection efforts, so be sure to check it out to learn more about this strategic approach.

Also of note: depending on where you’re located and where you do business, you may face additional regulations on data collection. 

We get into some of those in the post linked just above.

8. Makes It Simpler to Collect Feedback

One piece of interactive content that many larger businesses have had in place for many years is the humble feedback survey. 

Businesses know the value of collecting user feedback, and this kind of pop-up survey is one effective way to do so.

Feedback surveys can make users feel a measure of control and independence, giving them a chance to speak their minds about what is or isn’t working on your site.

And, most crucially, they do provide genuine customer feedback you can use to improve your business.

Wrap Up: Marketing Goals are Easier to Reach with Interactive Content

Whatever your current marketing goals may look like, there’s an excellent chance that adding more interactive content to your site will help you achieve one or more of those goals. 

It may take a little more effort (or a strategic partnership with a content experience company like ours), but it’s an investment that will reap dividends both now and for years to come.

If you’d like to learn more about interactive content and how it can transform your marketing efforts and meet your marketing goals, check out our full guide to interactive content!

 

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