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How To Use Interactive Content To Improve Engagement

If your top business priority right now is to improve […]

Interactive Content

If your top business priority right now is to improve engagement with your audience, have you considered using interactive content?

There’s no denying that a solid content marketing strategy drives organic traffic and builds brand awareness. But what it also does is encourage engagement between brands and their audience. High-quality content created for the right audience garners loyal readers and, eventually, loyal customers.

Interactive content is any content that requires participation from users. It could be surveys, polls, quizzes, calculators, infographics, diagrams, and more.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 60 percent of marketers say that producing engaging content is one of their significant challenges. Without a solid content marketing strategy, it’s challenging to reach your business goals. It updates readers on your company, teaches them new things, and invites them to engage with your brand through likes, comments, and shares.

Why use interactive content?

The first reason to consider using interactive content is that it’s what people want. A whopping 91 percent of buyers are looking for more visual and interactive content. Customers want full involvement in the journey they take with brands, and this gives them options to do so.

Interactive content is useful to boost business efforts as well because it lets you collect feedback and data from your audience. Static content can only be read and analyzed, but users can’t give their opinions or make decisions. With interactive content, you gather honest, relevant feedback from your customers to see where there are cracks in your marketing strategy.

When you give customers something different to engage with, it prolongs and improves engagement. It’s a better way to educate and entertain your visitors while getting to know them better so your business thrives. Content that’s compelling and unique is sure to grab your audience’s attention and increase conversions on your website. 

Let’s look at a few ways you can use interactive content in your strategy to improve engagement with your visitors. 

Align content with the buyer’s journey

It’s important not to haphazardly throw content at your visitors and expect them to engage. Just because it’s statistically more engaging than static content doesn’t mean you’ll still garner substantial results. Instead, you must align your interactive content with the buyer’s journey of your customers so it matches their process.

Everyone’s buyer’s journey is different, so it’s essential to follow your customers as they make their way through the sales funnel. Using the right pieces of content generates leads and nurtures prospects during their progression to paying customers. 

There are three steps in the buyer’s journey:

  1. Awareness: Prospects experience symptoms of an issue and recognize the need for a solution.
  2. Consideration: Prospects identify their problem and begin searching for solutions.
  3. Decision: Prospects decide on a strategy or approach towards a solution.

Each step requires different types of content because prospects in each category are at various stages of their problem. People in the decision-making stage don’t need information on the awareness stage because they’ve already passed that part of the journey. You must provide interactive content relevant to the prospect’s buyer’s journey so they’re one step closer to becoming paying customers.

In the awareness stage, users haven’t yet identified their issue and are using research, reviews, feedback, and more to determine the best course of action. Resources with useful information like interactive videos, infographics, and self-assessment tests work best during this stage.

Column Media Five uses an interactive infographic so visitors can play around with different cocktails and analyze what ingredients make up each drink:

Clicking on a cocktail brings users to another page that lists its details, such as alcohol content and calories.

During the consideration stage, users have identified the problem they’re facing and are now searching for specific solutions. Content that provides more detailed information, such as interactive guides and whitepapers, are best for this phase.

The Geek’s Guide to London gives users different tech-related spots to check out in the big city:

Clicking on a specific location gives users more information on each destination so they have a better idea of what the experience is like:

In the decision stage, users have chosen a solution and are sticking to it. Now, they need to solidify their strategy with interactive calculators, maps, emails, and more. These details give them the final information they need to make it through the sales funnel. 

ModCloth used an interactive email in its spring campaign to promote its new seasonal line. Since email produces a 4400 percent increase in ROI, you must equip your email marketing strategy with interactive content from time to time. 

As images in the email change, users can click through to the brand’s website to check out its latest arrivals and shop around, improving engagement and building brand recognition. Interactive emails offer unique, fun experiences subscribers can enjoy straight from their email browser.

Leverage conversational surveys

Interactive content is beneficial in multiple ways, but there’s something about surveys that hits different. Even if people don’t like to admit it, they enjoy interacting with content that tells them something about themselves. A massive brand like Buzzfeed wouldn’t be where it is without interactive content compelling users to fill out quizzes and surveys.

Surveys are one of the more popular types of interactive content that brands use to engage their audience. But, what if you could spice them up a little while simultaneously providing a better user experience?

That’s where conversational surveys come in. Unlike static surveys, they improve the UX visitors have with your content by imitating a face-to-face conversation. Instead of asking the same questions to every user, they change based on users’ answers. 

Interactive surveys improve your customer service efforts by collecting accurate, relevant information about your audience and making it easier for them to answer your questions. When you simplify the process, it increases your audience’s willingness to engage with your content.

Implement it in your website design

What better way to engage your audience than to implement interactive elements into your website design?

Your website is the hub of all information regarding your brand. It’s the primary resource your audience has to learn more about your business, its products and services, and solutions for pain points. The better the experience it provides, the easier prospects will move along the buyer’s journey. 

Interactive design boosts engagement with visitors because it creates a unique experience. Few websites use this type of design to market to their target audience, but when you do so in an insightful way, you’re guaranteed to prolong the interaction.

Daesk is a time management tool that lets users track where their time goes so they’re aware of how they spend it. Its interactive design uses bright colors and parallax scrolling to grab users’ attention and tell them why they need this software. It also uses visual components to show users their results in a simple, yet effective way.

Wrapping up

If you’re new to interactive content, don’t fret. There are several ways you can implement it into your content marketing strategy so you’re closer to achieving your business goals. Interactive content encourages prolonged engagement with your audience because it provides a fun, unique experience. It helps you collect information on your target market that’s relevant so you can continue to cater to their needs and relieve their pain points. How will you use interactive content to improve your brand’s engagement?