6 Types Of Interactive Content That Will Help You Stand Out

In this digital era, the online marketplace has become an overly crowded landscape. With billions of websites online, every marketer wants to beat the competition, attract more attention and, sell more products & services.

But nowadays when people are constantly overwhelmed with information every second, do you think, just putting the content on the website, would be enough to inspire, engage, and convert the prospective customer?

No, certainly not! Instead, to cater to the needs of modern online users and eventually benefits the business, we need to provide them with content that will resonate, and people can relate to.  

That’s where interactive content can help you!

Interactive content has caught the attention of marketers and businesses providing them all sorts of opportunities to engage and entertain their audiences.

So, what is interactive content?

Interactive content is the content that drives the audience to inspire, engage, participate, achieve result and share. Simply, the content with entertainment value is interactive content.

Interactive content is not on the rise, it’s thriving but how do you determine what type of interactive content will best suit your business needs and help you stand out?

In this blog post, I’ll be walking you through the 6 types of interactive content to supercharge your marketing. Let’s dive in!

1.  Online catchy quizzes

“Don’t tell me interesting things about myself”, said no one, ever. Have you said?

All of us loves to get real-time feedback, a score, a grade or a personalized outcome based on the answers we give to the questions.  That’s why online catchy quizzes are one of the most popular forms of interactive content.

When you think of quizzes, what do you think of? I am sure everybody relates them to their school and college days. A mix of fond and scary memories, isn’t it? But would you have thought, one thing that made many of us anxious in school or college, we are willingly doing in our free time?  

Interactive quizzes are engaging as readers are more prone to stick around to complete the quiz, instead of leaving without reading even half a sentence. It is a kind of two-way communication that serves as a great way to learn about your audience and bring them closer to you.

For example, check out the quiz Only 1 in 50 people can identify these 16 grammar mistakes. Can you?-Women.com.

To see another example, Knorr, a German food and beverage brand used quizzes as an interactive marketing strategy, wherein they asked 10 questions to the users. It proved pivotal in boosting brand awareness and improving customer awareness.

2.  Gamification

How many of you spent countless hours playing classic video games like Super Mario, Pac-Man, Road-rush, and Tetris? I am sure everybody does.

Playing and winning a game stimulates the creativity, playful and competitive spirit in all of us. This is the reason; gamification is gaining more attention to hold people’s attention on a massive scale. Including games, as a part of your marketing strategy, can increase the amount of time a potential customer spends on your website, which in turn can raise their engagement with your brand.

But, hold on for a sec! Do you think gamification is a top secret that only top companies know about? No, it's not. It’s actually very easy to weave gamification into your digital marketing strategy.

Let’s see two favorite gamification examples in the digital marketing sphere anyone can use:

A. The “Wheel of Fortune”: One of the fun games that every visitor love to play. Companies found it very useful as this converts visitors into the lead and encourage them to finish their purchasing journey. Because, if the visitor has earned 20% off a product, they might as well go ahead and buy it.

PS: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optin-wheel/ 

I’m sure, at least once you might have tried your luck on one of the wheels of fortune (online or offline)!

B.  The Completeness meter: Another effective gamified element is the completeness bar. Google, Dropbox and, LinkedIn are some of the top companies that are using it in their marketing campaign.

Allow me to give you a quick breakdown of the usage:

a)  Sending your customers down every step of their purchasing journey.

b)  Getting your visitors to complete set of questionnaires.

Below is the example of completeness bar used by LinkedIn:

3.  Interactive videos

With an increase in video usage and better technology, interactive video is the new marketing force that no marketer can afford to ignore. Content marketing statistics reveals that watching a marketing video on Facebook has influenced 64% of the consumers to make a purchase decision.

But, instead of simply just watching a video on YouTube or website, interactive videos always gave us the choice of interacting, say by clicking it for a product page or add it to your cart or even click to like the outfit model is wearing, with the video. For example, FlipSeek, a video production company has created a technology with the help of which you can add hotspots in your video.

The video by Allianz Global Investors will make you fall in love with interactive video! It is interactive as it pauses at predetermined spots and asks the viewer a question with the possible outcome.

4.  Polls and Surveys

As being a marketer, do you want a gate through which you can generate leads, but without feeling like that? If yes, then your search would end at polls and surveys.

They are probably among the oldest and simplest forms of effective interactive content aiming at getting feedback as well as finding new user data. A poll and survey make the audience pause, think, react and interact hence can create an interesting connection between them and the company.

Despite having many common elements, there is a clear difference between polls and surveys. A poll, less complex & requires minimal interaction consists of only one MCQ while a survey, more complex & requires greater interaction, contains multiple questions.

For example, below is the example of a poll by Oreo cookie, posted on Twitter:

Next, check the example of Castlight health survey, which looks great and drives people to complete it. That should be the quality of a survey, isn't it?

5.  Content for voice-search:

PS: https://www.forbes.com

Voice search, a more accepted way of accessing information online, has cemented its place in today’s digital society; thanks in large part to devices such as Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Echo, and Google Home.

Using advances like Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, voice search is going to rise in popularity and persistence.

But why people are choosing to engage with a virtual assistant rather than a search engine web page? They simply want a nugget of throwaway information instead of in-depth content experience, isn’t it? Think carefully!

So, does it mean we really need to change our content efforts as more and more users are using voice for searching?

Certainly yes, because there is a huge scope for voice search to work together with content marketing. Moreover, it’s not hurting your chances and could even propel existing SEO efforts further.

Let’s see what the content should have to work well as a voice search result:

a)  Long-form content: Longer the content, higher the chances for on-page text to “match” your user’s voice search query.

b)  Contained concise answers: The content should contain a concise answer because the typical voice search result is only 29 word in length.

c)  Highly shareable: The content should be highly shareable because the average voice search result has 1199 Facebook shares and 44 Tweets.

d)  Fast loading time: The average result page loading time in voice search is 4.6 seconds, which is 52% faster than the average page.

Let’s have a look, how some brand they have capitalized on the content marketing potential of voice search technology:

Burger King: One of the innovative examples is from Burger King when they released a TV commercial featuring the line, ‘Okay Google, what is the Whooper burger? Any voice search device would immediately read out the info on brand’s Wikipedia page. Cleverly the Wiki entry was changed. See this!

Tide Stain Remover: if you are asking Alexa, how to remove grass stain, you receive step-by-step instructions and product recommendations (of course Tide). Listen to this.

Uber: Now, you can ask Amazon Echo to book an Uber ride. Amazing!

6.  VR and 360-Degree Videos

Virtual Reality and 360-Degree videos are the new buzzwords in digital marketing!

The most significant reason for this hype by VR and 360-degree videos is due to its fresh, exciting, and entertaining nature. The market of 360-degree videos is expected to reach $9.4 billion by 2020, hence it gives an excellent opportunity for businesses and marketers to seize the immersive trend of video marketing through these videos.

PS: https://www.roadtovr.com

Moreover, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest have been consistently dominating the digital space as the boosters of immersive videos i.e. VR and 360-degree videos.

The real beauty of using VR and 360-degree videos is to provide a unique and impactful experience to the audience. For example, BMW has used VR 360 video for advertisement. Check it.  

I am leaving you with the roller coaster ride. Enjoy!

And that’s a wrap! Hope this article was insightful!. Looking up to building a full-fledged career in Digital Marketing? Explore Digital Marketing Courses offered by Manipal ProLearn to upskill in Digital Marketing.