5 Compelling Benefits of Interactive Content

A lot of brands and marketers are at a crossroads right now. They need to be able to stand out with more competition and yet, consumers are busier, attention spans are shorter, and there’s more content being produced than ever before.

So, there are really only a few choices here.

Either, keep plugging away doing the same thing and hope that it works over the long run, maybe grabbing a few extra readers or consumers here and there.

Or, embrace a marketing plan that takes a different approach, one that offers content that is fun, that increases engagement, and that drives clicks.

The answer seems pretty clear, right?

Enter interactive content.

We’ve talked about interactive marketing a few times before, but today, let’s specifically take a look at the special benefits of interactive content.

1. Increases Active Engagement

One of the metrics that is really gaining steam among marketers is engagement. This matters a lot more than website visits or even time on a site. Active engagement means that a consumer is actively interacting with the content that means they are participating and getting involved.

Now compare that to passive action, which is simply reading an article, or watching a video. Sure a consumer is doing something, but their actual participation is minimal.

So why does that matter?

Well, the big key between passive and active engagement is that active engagement brings consumers into a deeper relationship, raising brand affinity and purchases over the long run. And as research has shown, the more of a relationship a consumer has with a brand the more likely they are to be loyal long term customers.

Take Contently, for instance. They did a case study on their 60,000+ newsletter subscribers to find out if engagement truly did lead to brand loyalty. They found that:

Higher engagement with content led to a lift across every nearly every KPI we sought to measure, including: brand awareness, brand opinion, brand associations, brand trust, likelihood to purchase, and net promoter score.

Interactive content is one of the best ways to easily drive consumer engagement.

2. Data, Data, Data

We’re living in a big data world, and it doesn’t look like the importance of data is going to be slowing down any time soon, so brands might as well embrace it.

Here’s one place where interactive marketing, and interactive content specifically can have big benefits: data collection.

One of the biggest reasons why marketers try to collect so much data is they want to be able to know their customers better. And consumers today expect that, they want more personalized services, they want content that speaks directly to them and fits their needs.

The great news?

Example of an assessment that creates valuable data from NetProspex Data HealthScan

Interactive content allows brands to do just that. With content like quizzes, assessments, and calculators brands can collect data that is absolutely crucial to building an in depth customer profile. That data can then be used to build better products or services and improve content so it focuses on what the customer wants and needs.

3. Educate vs. Pitch

Consumers are savvy, they know when they are being straight up pitched, and most of them don’t like it. Much of the time it can be because they aren’t quite there in the buying cycle yet, maybe they are just trying to find out some info, maybe they are poking around to take a look.

There is one area where interactive content marketing stands out.

Image: brafton.com

We know that the internet is now one of the first places consumers go to educate themselves before making a purchase. They don’t need (or want) to spend time being pitched before they’re ready.
A study from the Acquity Group found that 94% of B2B buyers first research online before making a buying decision. And another study from Mintel found that 69% of respondents (and 81% of 18-34 year old respondents) seek out the opinions of others before buying something.

Interactive content can be the perfect took to educate consumers through interactive videos, infographics, and interactive whitepapers, allowing consumers to move through a story and be educated rather than pitched.

4. Remarketing

Remarketing is one of the hotter marketing concepts out there. In short, remarketing allows you to reach back out to the consumers who have already visited your website or app. It helps you convert potential warm leads.

Many brands might already be doing this with segmenting. But, interactive marketing and content lets you take it a step further.

Why?

Because of something we touched on a little bit earlier, data. The data that that gets collected from interactive content can be used to develop brand new content that is much more deeply personalized.

And that’s exactly what consumers want:

Consumers want more personalization, but they don’t want to give away their details (in the traditional sense) to get it, but by using interactive content brands can gain all the insights they need to create new content that will get those consumers who were already interested excited to buy.

5. More Clicks and Conversions

Let’s face it, it’s great if a potential customer visits a website, but what happens if they never actually click anything? Chances are, it’s a lost opportunity for a brand to engage with a client.

Interactive content helps to reduce that potential problem.

Qzzr, a brand that helps users create interactive quizzes boasts some incredible numbers:

• 81% quiz completion rate
• 5% lead conversion rate
• 2:27 average time on quiz/site

Demand Metric found that “interactive content such as apps, assessments, calculators, configurators, and quizzes generate conversions moderately or very well 70% of the time, compared to just 36% for passive content.”

The Content Marketing Institute highlighted three case studies of brands that each saw upwards of 50% click through rates when they used interactive content like digital whitepapers, interactive infographics, and calculators.

More brands have click through rates that are only a fraction of that.

The Benefits of Interactive Content

It’s easy to see why more and more brands are looking to embrace the benefits of interactive content into their overall marketing strategies. Not only does it help to bring a little bit of life to the same old blog posts and ebooks, but it also adds quite a bit more.

Interactive content engages consumers, educates them on their buying purchases, and can be personalized to speak directly to them, vastly improving the quality of content they’ve been getting the past few years.

Finally, interactive content can go a long way towards helping brands generate more excitement, learn more from their customers, and increase those conversion rates, helping the bottom line.

And what brand doesn’t want that?