Digital Marketing is all about customer engagement. To drive the leads throughout the sales funnel, you need to create experiences that meet the 4.0 consumer demands.
In other words, your company must create content that, in addition to being relevant, is capable of keeping the audience’s attention and interest.
Due to the fierce competition in the digital sphere, that’s a task that can be challenging. After all, with the vast collection of available alternatives, the customer will prefer the brand that can stand out. To do this in the context of Content Marketing, investing in Interactive Content is a must.
To guide your strategic planning, we’ve prepared this post highlighting tips on how to use Interactive Content for engagement.
Keep on reading!
What is the role of engagement in a Digital Marketing strategy?
How many blog pages do you, as a user, access daily? Probably impossible to keep track of, right?
Of these contents, how many do you share, comment on, or simply react to?
Probably just a small fraction.
That’s the reality of the internet environment, and it also applies to your strategy. Many people visit your content, read your blog posts, and even learn something, but don’t bother to interact.
So, as much as you’re getting good results in attracting traffic, you’re not exploring the full potential of Digital Marketing.
Audience engagement works as a thermometer for the success of your content strategy. From the number of interactions, you can get a better idea of how many people were really impacted by your post, but that’s not all.
When you create an engaging experience, you establish a dialogue with the audience. They perceive the possibility of a two-way relationship as far more enjoyable than consuming a monologue by the company.
In this way, the users see themselves as an integral part of the buying journey, which increases the credibility of your efforts.
More than that, engagement can generate valuable data to amplify the success of your strategy.
Content such as quizzes and interactive calculators, for example, are excellent means of getting more information about the pains, needs, motivations, and desires of the consumer.
The result, as you can imagine, is the increase in the conversion rate. By better understanding the customer and encouraging engagement, you can improve your approach and focus on producing content with the greatest potential to convert the customer.
As a way to improve engagement, many companies already adopt so-called Interactive Marketing.
In the next topic, we’ll show you how Interactive Content can help your company achieve this goal.
How can Interactive Content help you engage readers?
Once again, it’s important to remember that your company’s marketing strategy must be designed around your target audience’s characteristics.
Therefore, it’s essential to create a buyer persona, which is nothing more than a semi-fictional profile representing your ideal customer.
To create the persona, you must gather specific data. This is where Interactive Content can be useful for the first time. The engagement promoted by the possibility of interaction generates valuable information about the user. And the best thing is that you have power over what kind of data should be produced.
Want an example? One type of content that could enhance your blog is the interactive quiz.
In these questionnaires, users answer questions developed by your team, which can be more general or focus on a particular aspect. From the answers, it is possible to understand, for example, what kind of content generates more engagement with the audience.
Information gathering is just one of the advantages of such a strategy. The fact is that Internet users no longer feel so attracted by traditional static content, giving clear preference to pages that enable their interaction.
So, besides all the strategic benefits brought by interactive content, you’ll generate more satisfying experiences for your persona. This positively affects your authority and creates bonds with visitors, who can become loyal customers.
As with any strategy involving content creation, it’s important to use various formats to reach all sales funnel stages.
We’ll talk about this in the next topic.
What are the best types of Interactive Content for engagement and how can you use them?
In addition to showing you the most relevant types of Interactive Content, we’ll provide tips on how they can fit into your strategy. Keep up!
Videos
Videos are already a consolidated format in Digital Marketing. However, they can be even more effective if they include elements of interactivity. Several advertising campaigns have already proven these benefits, such as the famous Honda interactive video.
Investing in such audiovisual pieces is an effective way to provide a valuable user experience and keep them on the page for longer.
However, a simpler way to use videos is to offer live broadcasts. With simple features that can be found on all of the most relevant social networks, it’s possible to live-stream webinars, lectures, and even tutorials.
Live videos allow the participation of the viewer, who can interact with questions and comments.
Interactive landing pages
Landing pages are fundamental elements of any Content Marketing strategy. They are generally used to provide more advanced materials in exchange for visitor contact information.
However, many people realize that the traditional landing page is losing its appeal.
When the potential consumer arrives at your page, they expect to find resources that confirm your brand’s credibility.
Therefore, it’s no longer enough to describe the material and offer a questionnaire for the customer to answer. The landing page needs to be interactive.
That way, you can add elements to your page to optimize the experience. Testimonials from other customers, for example, are useful for communicating the benefits of your brand to the visitor, encouraging them to take the decision and become a lead.
Interactive quizzes
We have already talked about how interactive quizzes can be instrumental in gathering information about the audience. Based on the user’s answers, you can estimate, for example, the level of knowledge they have about a subject. Based on this, you’ll find out what phase of the funnel they are at.
However, this feature can also be implemented in the conversion phase. Imagine you manage an e-commerce site that sells a wide variety of items.
The leads at the bottom of the funnel have already decided that they’ll buy a solution, but they don’t know which one yet.
At this point, you can offer an interactive quiz to help the persona decide. That’s what Soccer Loco, a sporting goods store, did. The results of this quiz tell consumers which model of soccer boots is most appropriate for their characteristics.
Interactive calculators
Interactive calculators work very well in the stages closest to the purchase.
The bottom of the funnel is the stage in which you need to use practical resources and show the benefits of your product or service — directly or indirectly.
Symantec, for example, offers an ROI calculator. Using it, the users can figure out the return on investment they’ll earn when acquiring the company’s solution.
After imputing their own customized information, the potential buyers gain access to a page detailing the expenses and returns involved in the operation.
This is a simple and efficient way to convince the persona about your solution’s benefits.
Interactive ebooks
You probably already use ebooks in your strategy, right?
Advanced materials are useful from the middle to the top of the funnel.
They’re a perfect opportunity for you to further elaborate on what was discussed in your blog posts and provide more valuable information. To make sure they are even more effective, turn them into interactive content.
An interactive ebook is excellent for facilitating the reader experience. Instead of a PDF document, the user can access the page and navigate more freely, choosing the topics they think are most important. The content can also count on other interactive features.
A good practice is to insert calculators and quizzes throughout the interactive ebook. Such features can support what is said in the text and, in the case of quizzes, collect quality information about the user experience.
An excellent example of an interactive ebook is this one from Right Source Marketing, produced on the Ion Interactive platform.
The user can freely browse the content, which is divided into different steps.
To access each step, you must complete the previous one or fill out a form with your contact information. Also, a quiz inserted in the content collects data to customize the experience.
Now that you know the advantages of interactive content for engagement generation, as well as the main formats available, you can optimize your Digital Marketing strategy.
Interactive features are great for engaging your audience and creating profitable connections for your company.
