Interactive content marketing is the future of online marketing. But that doesn’t mean it’s effortless to get right. Here’s a primer on interactive marketing: what it is and how you can effectively use interactive content in your marketing efforts.

What is interactive content marketing?

Interactive content marketing is the practice of using content to engage your target audience based on their participation. It can be something as simple as a quiz or something a little more complex, such as offering free instant quotes based on information.

Successful interactive content marketing engages the user without them feeling targeted. The beauty is in its subtlety.

It also requires a secondary focus on conversion rate optimisation. When developing interactive content, you’re better off measuring your success through total shares or average session time rather than your click-through rate. Your goal is to provide value to your audience rather than direct lead generation.

Keep it relevant

When developing interactive content, you want to keep it relevant to your company. If you sell sofas, there’s very little reason to run a quiz determining what car is the best choice for a consumer.

Sit down with your marketing team and brainstorm interactive content options. Concentrate on shareability and value but keep it relevant to your industry and service. If in doubt, look at what your competition is doing. Often, you can gauge what works and what doesn’t by what has come before. Just don’t out and out copy another company – that’s a bad look all round.

Prioritise user experience

Most interactive content marketing takes place digitally on the web. Like any web-based content strategy, you must prioritise your user experience.

Don’t skimp on the design or build of your experience. Use custom graphics and make sure to engage a UI expert in the process. If your content is clunky or hard to parse, you’re not going to draw your audience to engage with it.

 Make it easy to share

Shareability is paramount when it comes to interactive content. After all, this is one of the metrics you ought to be focused on when measuring your success.

When building your interactive experience, make sure it’s set up to be easily shared. Include share buttons for all social media and offer the opportunity to email a link to your experience to other users. Also, ensure your content is optimised for sharing on all major platforms. Check your tags and include relevant imagery.

Track your results

The metrics you measure will depend on the type of interactive content you build. What’s important is that you decide what metrics you will measure and follow through on that decision.

Don’t ignore your share rate or the information gathered. They will indicate the success or failure of your endeavour. If you’re gathering information from your users, that’s another gold mine you can make use of in the future. Developing user personas for other marketing efforts rely on knowing your base – don’t discard this vital information.

Use interactive content in your marketing

Interactive content is one of the best ways to engage your audience. Make use of it! Now you know a little more about interactive content, go forth and boost your marketing efforts.