Content marketing has become an important pillar of digital marketing. It serves many purposes, with businesses using it to build customer relationships, ensure customer loyalty and build brand awareness. The problem with content marketing is that so many businesses use it now that it is becoming increasingly difficult to be heard beyond all the virtual noise marketers are creating. The solution is creating content that grabs and retains customer attention, i.e., interactive content.
Interactive content marketing is a strategy that uses content that your audience can interact with. Its main benefit is improved participation and, thus, improved conversions.
Understanding what it is, let us now look at the most impactful interactive content ideas you can use on your website.
The demand has been growing for video as more people have come to expect video rather than textual marketing content. Some reports show that the number of hours an average user spends watching videos has doubled in the last few years. Every marketer knows this and so they all use video content in their marketing. So, what can you do to make your videos stand out? Create interactive ones.
Interactive video allows the user to play on the clip, scroll back and forth, or play and pause the video as you would expect. However, the video has embedded interactive elements that users can click on to get information about a product or service. They can also be redirected to a landing page or offered the option to purchase the product right on the video using modals and other elements.
Businesses are also experimenting with 360-degree video in niches like sports and real estate, where users can have a much better video of the action or have a feeling of walking through the property as they view it on a website.
Another valuable type of interactive content is calculators. There are numerous options to choose from depending on your niche, and the main advantage is that they solve a problem that a user has. Let’s take a financial website, for example.
A user might want to invest in stocks but might not know how to calculate their profits. You can provide them with a calculator that helps with calculating stock profits so they can make the best investment decisions.
Calculators can be great lead magnets because businesses can ask users to provide an email address to receive a report that contains the results. Once a business has the email addresses, it can use them in its email marketing strategies.
Another benefit of using calculators is that it helps with SEO. If you have a useful calculator that is perfect for your niche and that solves a problem, other websites will link to it. These links will be free backlinks that can increase your authority and give you a ranking boost.
These types of interactive content have been around for over a decade but still produce incredible results. All are very engaging for visitors, but they also help businesses collect data and learn more about their visitors.
Businesses can use the results in additional ways, such as using feedback to create better content or to find out why someone has opted not to complete their order. Exit-intent polls are the best example of the latter.
Chatbots have evolved from being the question-and-answer resources businesses once used to fully interactive agencies of business. With the improvements we have seen in AI in the past few years, visitors can interact with your chatbots as they would a real person.
The good news is that the growth of the AI and machine learning markets has led to numerous free and cost-effective chatbot options, so you have numerous options for your business.
Once a visitor lands on your website, you want them to interact with it and possibly become a subscriber or customer. Interactive content provides these and other benefits and does it much better than other content marketing strategies. Businesses can pick from several interactive content ideas and options depending on their needs and target audience to ensure the best experiences for customers and best marketing results for themselves.
