Have you used interactive content on your website? If not, it could take you one step closer to reaching your marketing goals and growing your business.
Interactive content is anything that requires the action of the user. Rather than passively reading a blog post or staring at images, it makes visitors get involved as they answer questions, take part in games, and more. When they finish, they get access to personalized answers and insights based on their choices.
A whopping 93 percent of marketers see interactive content as effective. Yet, not as many incorporate it into their marketing strategies for fear of difficulty. The good news is that adding interactive content to your website doesn’t need to be a hassle. And there are so many more reasons to use it than not.
Why Use Interactive Content?
There are many reasons why adding interactive content into your content marketing strategy is good for your brand.
Collect Relevant User Data
For any business to thrive, it needs to know its target market inside out. To serve your customers, you need to consistently collect user data that gives you further insight into their behaviors. When you understand the motives behind your audience’s actions, you’ll be able to create relevant, high-converting content.
For many marketers, collecting enough data to pinpoint solutions is difficult, but interactive content makes it easier to do so. People want to take quizzes and fill out fun surveys, which gives you access to more useful information.
Generate Leads
The whole point of interactive content is to engage users and encourage them to act on your website. If they have a good time, they’re likelier to do what you want them to, such as sign up for your newsletter or take part in your online contest.
For new businesses especially, generating leads can be challenging. You start with a clean slate and need to build your customer base from scratch. But interactive content makes it easy to do so, which must be why 53 percent of marketers use it in their lead generation efforts.
Increase Engagement
People get bored easily, and the same goes for those who browse your site. If there’s nothing there to grab their attention and keep it, they’ll bounce from the page and go elsewhere. With any type of content, it’s crucial to captivate your audience so they want to return.
Static content like blog posts are great for their own purposes, but sometimes you need to go the extra mile to interest users. With so much competition, anything that makes your website stand out will earn you increased engagement.
Interactive content makes it exciting to engage with your brand and feels less like a task and more like fun. It’s easier to improve lead generation, build an email list, and make sales when your audience feels like you’re giving them value.
Build Brand Loyalty
Having the same content as everyone else doesn’t help you stand out, nor does it attract visitors to your site. To reach your marketing goals, you first need to develop trust between your brand and its audience. A great way to achieve this is through interactive content.
The more effort and thought you put into your content marketing strategy, the easier it’ll be to grow an audience. When you add different elements into your content, it positions you as a thought leader and someone they can trust.
Users say that finding entertaining and funny content is one of the primary reasons they use social media. When you add it to your website, it’s much easier to grow your business, cultivate a loyal following, and build brand awareness.
Now that we know why interactive content is great for your brand, here are X types you can use on your website. Let’s get started.
Infographics
Did you know that 41 percent of marketers believe that infographics are the most valuable of all visual content? Whether you believe that or not, they’re still a great way to reel in your audience and keep their attention.
Infographics use creative design to showcase statistics, case studies, and other useful information for visitors to engage with. Interactive infographics take it a step further by requiring users to interact with it.
For example, it might make users click on a box to reveal a statistic or scroll down for an animation to appear. Unlike a regular infographic, it encourages users to act if they want to learn more, making it great for improving your engagement rate.
When creating interactive infographics, make sure to include user-friendly design that engages visitors and encourages them to browse further. If it’s difficult to click and receive information, it won’t improve your conversions.
Surveys and Polls
For years, marketers have used surveys and polls as interactive ways to collect data and user information. Because they’re short and easy to fill out, they’re a great way to gain deeper customer insight and improve current processes.
Surveys consist of multiple-choice and open-ended questions that require more complex answers, detail, and thought. Polls consist of only one multiple-choice question and need minimal user engagement.
For any survey form, you want to make sure it provides a positive user experience and keeps visitors on the page. You need to:
- Keep it short. People don’t want to fill out long surveys that take up a lot of their time. Around 27 percent of users abandon an online form due to its length, so eliminating the fluff will improve your conversions.
- Be straightforward. Avoid beating around the bush or using big words. Ask clear questions to guarantee that you receive easy-to-understand answers.
- Improve security. Almost 50 percent of WordPress sites are affected by a security vulnerability, so to put users at ease, make sure you secure all forms on your site.
Calculators
When users need to calculate something specific, usually numerically, they sometimes run into problems. They’re looking for a way to find that solution without having to figure out how to do the math. When you do the guesswork for them, they appreciate the convenience and feel encouraged to stick around.
Interactive calculators require little effort from the user in exchange for value, which makes them great for improving conversion rates. Make sure your calculator is relevant to your audience and is something they’ll find useful. Otherwise, it’ll sit on your site with no purpose.
Back to You
Interactive content is a great tool for brands to engage their visitors, collect relevant customer data, generate leads, and more. It sets you apart from the competition by requiring active user participation and garnering increased responses. What types of interactive content will you add to your website?
