What is interactive marketing? What are the interactive marketing best practices you should follow to drive engagement and execute effective campaigns? We discuss how you can use interactive marketing to transform your content and make each touchpoint with the user even more engaging.

Today, the world of marketing is all about customers’ wants. Serving content based on their preferences, tapping into their online behavior, and giving them opportunities to interact with content and related events is interactive marketing.

Read on to understand more about interactive marketing and the top tips to follow while implementing it into your business.

What is Interactive Marketing?

Interactive marketing is how a user is presented with content based on their preferences and actions. It is mainly event-driven, i.e., propelled by the user’s actions. It involves active user engagement and thus grabs their attention, improves their experience, and helps brands stand out among similar businesses.

There are many forms of interactive content, viz. interactive games, videos, infographics, emails, quizzes, surveys, assessments, calculators, etc. Interactive Marketing aims to take the audience beyond passive reading to create memorable and valuable experiences, improve brand awareness, and gather valuable insights on user expectations.

Interactive Marketing Best Practices

Interactive marketing is the way to go and is so effective, your competitors are using it too! How, then, do you stay ahead of the curve?

Also Read: How to Test if Interactive Fits Your Content Strategy

Here are some tips to optimize your interactive marketing strategies to garner more interactions, more engagement and create meaningful user experiences.

Personalize

Incorporating what a customer likes in creating a unique experience for them shows that you value your customer and that they are an essential part of your business. You can use insights from your interactive content to understand customer pain points and preferences, and to serve them content or offers that add value to them.

Segment

Interactive content like quizzes, assessments, calculators, etc. give insight into customers’ needs; this information can be used to segment your target audience and in turn, identify the right opportunities and type/s of content for them.

Incentivize

When a user interacts with your content, say he takes a quiz or an assessment on the whitepaper he read, you can add an incentive that motivates them to interact with you further, or provide more information about themselves or eventually buy from you. It could be an offer to get early access to your products or services, ability to view or download related informative content, entry to your contests, gift cards, limited period offers, etc.

Tell A Story

Everyone enjoys stories, young and old alike. They help you connect with your customers on an emotional level and influence purchase decisions. Create compelling narratives, use carousels, animations, etc. to enhance storytelling.

Also Read: 5 Storytelling Ideas for the Age of Interactive Marketing

Go Social

The social medium is reaching saturation. Interactive marketing on social media will help you fight through the clutter, and grab eyeballs in a sea of posts and videos. You can use a variety of features such as live posts, quizzes, polls, surveys, maps, comment reactions, interactive videos, etc. to engage your audience on social media.

Generate Curiosity

Reveal marketing piques audience interest and keeps them hooked. You can create a sneak peek video on an upcoming launch, include dynamic content (like scratch and win contests), or hide information in a mystery game.

Curiosity makes the customer journey more interesting, buys you time to plan your next innovation, and translates into increased actions (email opens, clicks, etc.).

Utilize New Technology

Invest in new technology and use it in the right places to increase audience engagement. Some tools to try include:

• Augmented and Virtual Reality: They make the user feel like they are a part of the action, so they understand your product better, which creates the opportunity for a conversion.
• Interactive videos: They help users interact with content at their own pace and according to their preferences.
• Data visualization tools: Using interactive infographics, GIFs, etc. help capture attention, simplify complex information, and help users remember you.
• Chatbots: They can be used for conversational interactions and provide prompt customer service.

Build Structure

Written content typically has a standard format, while interactive content follows a different framework. You need to choose the right type of content, ideal layout to simplify navigation, identify the call to action, and offer an enhanced experience. Also, you will have to choose interactive content aspects that fit your brand personality, and all elements should fit the overall structure.

Optimal Design

Sometimes interactive content can confuse your audience, which is why the design should be smartly planned and easy to use. Be sure to guide the viewer in their progress, update covered pieces, allow easy access to unexplored pieces, and prevent users from missing crucial components. Instead of building a complete interactive component, build essential elements and iterate over the primary structure to reduce complexity.

Measure

Interactive content demands significant resources; thus, you need to evaluate:

• How is it performing — is it engaging, entertaining?
• Is it driving conversions?
• What’s the quality of the insights it gives you on user preferences?

Also Read: How to Measure Your Interactive Content Marketing Efforts

Closing Thoughts

Interactive content is here to stay, and done right, it will give you a competitive edge. Follow these interactive marketing best practices to enhance your interactive marketing strategy in 2019.

What best practices are you currently following in your interactive marketing strategies? Tell us in the comments section below.