Want to engage with consumers online in a way that’s memorable, entertaining, educational and/or helpful? Interactive marketing is a smart way to do it. Interactive marketing engages the consumer in some way. It encourages consumers to interact with content like quizzes, contests, polls, assessments, calculators, games, ebooks or infographics.
Interactive content marketing is different from other types of content marketing because it involves consumer participation. The audience is not the passive viewer of the content but is actively interacting with it. They feel a greater sense of control because they’ve made the decision to engage with it.
The Benefits of Interactive Content Marketing
The advantages of interactive content marketing stem from the fact that consumers are responding to your content. You’ve grabbed their attention, and they’ve decided to interact with your brand. Take a look at these other benefits, too:
- Creates Higher Engagement: A consumer who’s interacting with your content is one who’s highly engaged. Out of all the possible online distractions they could choose, they’re taking the time to focus on your promotion. It’s an excellent opportunity to make the most of their undivided attention.
- Raises Brand Awareness: When a consumer has fun or learns something from engaging with interactive content, this creates brand awareness and a lasting positive impression of a brand. Giving consumers valuable content that they can engage with also builds trust for your brand.
- Fosters Brand Loyalty: Interactive content can grow brand loyalty, such as when it’s used in conjunction with customer feedback. When customers feel that they have a voice in decisions made about a product or service, they may develop more brand loyalty.
- Drives Shareability: Think of how tempting it is to take a quiz on Facebook that your friend has already posted results for. If you have any doubts about the popularity of online quizzes, here’s a number that could persuade you. Buzzfeed’s “What State Do You Actually Belong In?” quiz snagged more than 40 million views. When consumers share your interactive content, it extends your brand’s reach. It also boosts the numbers for everything else that comes with reaching more consumers.
- Generates Data: When consumers engage in interactive content like quizzes, they answer questions about themselves. These provide a brand or marketer with data. Content can also generate customer feedback that you can pull data from.
- Generates Leads: The questions that you ask consumers with your interactive content marketing can provide information for you to prequalify leads.
- Boosts Conversions: Prequalified leads generated by interactive content marketing are likely to lead to conversions. If someone has already shown interest in interacting with your content, there’s a good probability they’ll like what your brand offers.
- Boosts Traffic to Other Content: When you link your interactive marketing content to other content, it boosts views. It also helps establish your brand as an expert in its industry or field. Interactive marketing can give consumers a better idea of the range of products you offer and boost your brand image.
Who Can Use Interactive Content Marketing?
If you’re wondering who can use interactive content marketing, it’s not as high-tech as it might sound. Any size business or organization can use interactive content marketing. There are numerous inexpensive online tools that let you do things like create surveys, quizzes and videos consumers can interact with.
The target audience for interactive content marketing is the specific market that your brand wants to reach, whether it’s consumers or other businesses. It’s the market that you’ve discovered through research is most apt to buy your product or service. It’s important to note that younger generations like Millennials and Gen Z-ers often respond well to interactive content like quizzes.
Examples of Interactive Content From Top Brands
Take your cues from some of the top brands when it comes to interactive content marketing. They’ve discovered creative and compelling ways to engage consumers — and these techniques can pay off with impressive results.
HBO: TV network HBO created an interactive website for its popular Game of Thrones series. There, viewers could vote for the characters they wanted to be featured prominently in the storyline. Fans responded enthusiastically, casting more than 1.6 million votes and creating an enormous buzz about the series in the process.
Maybelline New York: Makeup brand Maybelline New York teamed up with fashion influencer Kelly Framel to create content for an interactive makeup tutorial video. They came up with four different looks with names like “rebel chic” using Maybelline’s Big Eyes mascara. Videos showed viewers how to achieve each of the looks. The interactive content campaign snagged millions of impressions, and most viewers spent more than five minutes engaging with the video.
Tourism Australia: With immersive, 360-degree scrolling videos on its website, Tourism Australia puts viewers right in the middle of the action in Australia. It also makes consumers feel like they can reach out and touch all the sights. From surfing to helicopter rides and swimming with sharks, the videos immerse viewers in thrilling experiences and gorgeous scenery to entice them to visit Australia. Most viewers spent more than eight minutes on the site. Intent to visit Australia was three times higher for viewers of this particular campaign compared to similar campaigns.
Pew Research Center: The website of the non-partisan Pew Research Center is packed with interactive content covering topics like politics, social trends, science, religion and news. Users can test things like how much they know about science and compare their results with responses to Pew’s polls of U.S. adults.
They can also search to learn things like how religious a particular country is and how their views on certain topics compare with others’. One quiz lets viewers see how proficient they are at identifying statements as fact or opinion and encourages them to share their results on Twitter.
Heineken USA: Heineken USA successfully tapped into the power of interactive content marketing to recruit new employees. The company created an interactive video to show how much fun it is to work there. Prospective employees answered 12 video questions to see if they’d be a good fit for the brewing company. The result was impressive; the number of applications Heineken received increased by 300 percent.
Airbnb: Airbnb’s Trip Matcher quiz helps travelers decide where to go by revealing their travel personalities. It asks questions like “You’re headed for an early morning flight. What are you wearing?” and “If you could have dinner with one historical figure, who would it be?” Consumers can select from answers like “Workout clothes, just in case there’s a yoga room somewhere” and “A decadent socialite.”
Quiz answers determine consumers’ travel personalities. Then, Airbnb selects a destination, creates an itinerary and provides a selection of accommodation listings to book there.