THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO INTERACTIVE MARKETING

Our digital marketing experts have collected the best interactive marketing tips to help you make more engaging content and stand out from your rivals.

This guide will cover the advantages, real-life examples and most useful tools of interactive marketing in 2022.

Let’s start with an interactive marketing definition.

What is interactive marketing?

Interactive marketing is a dynamic type of marketing that engages your audience with visual and video content and requires some level of user participation.

Types of interactive content include quizzes, polls, surveys, maps, games and other visuals that involve some stage of input or action from the user. 

The advantages of interactive marketing 

According to research, interactive marketing creates twice as much engagement and double the conversions compared to static content.

Statistics like these speak for themselves, and that’s not all. Interactive marketing also helps you create more satisfied customers and stand out from your rivals.

Stand out from the competition 

As shifts in technology over the past decade have made industry competition increasingly fierce, brands have been forced to look for creative marketing solutions. 

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Sparking your audience’s curiosity with unique content ideas that require user participation in new ways can help you steal the show.

In fact, 88% of marketers believe that interactive content is effective in differentiating their brand from their competitors.

For example, Ikea made its crib ad (which also worked as a pregnancy test) unforgettable by using an extraordinary call to action – peeing on it. The ad received so much publicity it gained $12 billion worth of earned media. 

Increase engagement 

We all know people who only talk about themselves. First, you listen politely, but suddenly you realize you’ve been thinking about what would be the next show to binge on Netflix for the last five minutes.

The same goes for marketing. If your content doesn’t involve the customer, it’s difficult to keep them engaged. 

According to a survey by Content Marketing Institute, 66% of respondents say their audience engagement has increased after starting to use interactive content.

Adding interactive elements to your existing content and creating content such as interactive infographics and videos that require participation will keep your audience’s attention from drifting somewhere else.

Create warmer conversions

91% of consumers say they rather shop with brands that provide content that’s relevant to them.

Enter the stage of interactive marketing – creating interactive content that changes depending on prospects’ behavior opens a possibility for more accurate targeting and effective lead nurturing.

Take a look at our PR preparedness quiz for example. (You can find it by scrolling down to the bottom of this page.) Depending on your answers, it provides the most relevant content for your needs and therefore increases the chances for conversion.

Increase customer satisfaction

Learning about your audience through interactive content such as surveys doesn’t only help you to create more personalized offers, but can also help you discover other valuable information.

You might realize a weakness in your service or product that you never considered before or an easy to add feature that could attract a new profile of a consumer.

Using interactive content that allows your customers to voice their opinions helps to address the weaknesses of your products/services and increase customer satisfaction.

Types of interactive marketing with examples

Interactive content comes in many different types and formats. To get your creative engines going, here are some interactive content ideas along with real-life examples of interactive marketing.

Interactive content marketing 

Interactive content marketing is all about creating valuable content that engages your audience and drives them towards profitable customer actions.

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Depending on your objectives and the stage of the customer journey that you are targeting, consider creating the following: 

-Interactive quizzes

-Free instant quotes

-Interactive infographics

-Interactive Ebooks & Whitepapers

-Calculators & Diagnostic tools

-Interactive Emails

-Webinars

-Interactive Videos

-Assessments

Also,  you’re not only limited to targeting your customers. See this clever example of interactive marketing where Deloitte leverages interactive video in their recruitment process.

http://www.raptmedia.com/customers/deloitte/

Interactive advertising

Interactive advertising aims to turn the audience from passive viewers into active participants.

For instance, a beer company Budweiser sent people to Google in order to make sense of their “tag words” ad. The ad directed the customers to search for the keywords; 1987, california, hip-hop and budweiser. This then revealed photos of various iconic celebrities drinking budweiser. 

Source: The Medium

Here are some ideas for interactive advertising.

-QR codes

-Questions

-Virtual reality

-Quizzes

-Instant quotes

-Assessment

-Interactive videos

-Playable mobile ads

Interactive social media marketing

45% of B2B buyers say interactive content is one of their top three preferred content types and 91%  say they prefer interactive and visual content to static content.

Statistics like this clearly demonstrate the need for interactive content.

As customers today like to interact with brands before making a purchase decision, interactive social media content serves an important purpose by familiriazing customers with the brands in a fun and engaging way.

For example, interactive games, like this NY times ad which brought its famous crossword puzzle into an interactive online form, are an effective way to engage the users in social media.

Here are some ideas for interactive social media content:

-Quizzes/Polls

-Contests

-Games

-Live-stream video

-Interactive video

So there you have it. Possibilities for interactive marketing are endless. 

Now that you know what you want to create, let’s explore how to bring those ideas into life.

Best interactive marketing tools

Many marketers decide not to jump on the interactive marketing bandwagon just because they believe they don’t have the right technology or expertise for it.

It’s true that creating interactive tools from scratch requires a significant amount of effort and know-how, however, there are many interactive marketing tools that are designed for anyone to be able to easily create interactive content. Here is the list of our favorite ones:

• Outgrow (Calculators & quizzes)
• Typeform (Forms and surveys)
• Mind Meister (Mind Maps and presentations)
• Ceros (Add interactive elements to your existing content)
• Thinglink (Make your photos and videos interactive)

Wrapping up

Like William Comcowich, CEO of CyberAlert says: “Content marketing is becoming less about the words you put on a page, and more about the experiences you create for the consumer.”

No more passive users, but active participants.

Shifting consumer trends are causing marketing departments to pivot focus towards content that’s tailored to solving customer problems and pain points and shortening attention spans are creating a need for more engaging content.

Content marketing strategies need to reflect this shift which now makes interactive marketing a necessity rather than a luxury.