What is Interactive Content and 23 Reasons You Need It

Got Stale Content? Try These 4 Interactive Ideas

You know that hopeful feeling when you head to the donut counter and there’s one left, just for you? You excitedly grab it, get to your car, and take a big satisfying bite—only to find the donut is stale. Ugh! You’re eating exactly what you wanted but being denied any of the joy it should bring.

Readers feel this same disappointment when they click on a head-turning headline expecting to get good, valuable information, only to find themselves reading boring or outdated content that wastes their time.  

To prevent reader disappointment, be sure to give them interactive content that engages, excites, and even entices your audience to act.

What Is Interactive Content Marketing?

Interactive content marketing is relevant information that’s not static or passive (like written or video content). It’s information given in a fun, engaging way (like answering hovering or augmented reality overlays). Such tactics keep audiences from getting bored and clicking away (45% of these audiences say interactive content is a top preferred content type). Instead, they provide an entertaining way for your audience to receive relevant information and stay on your page longer. 

How to Create Interactive Content

Just like donuts, there are many varieties of interactive content available from which to choose. Here are some we want to talk about today:

Quizzes and Polls

Have you ever stopped to find out what flavor of donut you are? Because we have (chocolate here).   

Yes, quizzes and polls can be fun, but they also serve a purpose. They can determine your audience’s preferences, challenges, and personalities. All this information is helpful when creating customer profiles. Plus, this type of interactive content keeps customers on your page for a long time and has an excellent lead capture rate. 

Embedded Calculators

A simple, programmed calculator can help users determine their optimal caloric intake so they know if they can eat that second donut or not. (Wink, wink.) They can also predict how much money a service will save them over the long term or how much certain materials they should get to meet their home measurement needs. 

Calculators are effective at getting users to think about what they need and feel confident in taking the next step to purchase. 

Augmented Reality Ads

AR ads use a smartphone’s camera to superimpose 3D products onto a user’s real-world surroundings. For example, if you’re a furniture company, this AR experience allows a customer to see how your end table looks next to the sofa in their living room. 

Since visualization can be tricky for a lot of people, 71% of consumers prefer to shop using an AR experience. This type of interactive content can engage, educate, and persuade in all the best ways.

360-Degree Videos

Realtors have been using 360-degree videos for a while now when selling houses. It puts the audience inside a home environment so they can picture themselves actually there. Another example is a hiking boot seller that uses a 360-degree view of someone wearing their boots while overlooking the gorgeous Yosemite Valley.

These videos aid in spatial presence and can evoke emotions—especially when sound (like birds chirping or stirring music) is incorporated. Every good marketer knows that getting your audience to feel something is a big first step in solidifying their patronage. This is a good way to do it, considering 43% of consumers prefer interactive videos to other types.

Other Interactive Post Ideas

And just for the fun of it, here’s a baker’s dozen worth of other interactive post ideas: 

1. Assessments 
2. Surveys
3. Fill in the blank questionnaires
4. Games 
5. Contests
6. Giveaways
7. Multiple choice posts
8. Data revealed by a hovering cursor
9. Lookbooks
10. Product configurators
11. Funny or tear-jerking videos
12. Ask users to post GIFs or memes
13. User feedback

The Benefits of Interactive Content

You won’t believe the number of benefits you can gain from providing interactive content, both for you and for your audience. Just some of the powerful benefits include:

1. Giving your users a good experience 
2. Raising engagement levels twice as high as static content
3. Offering useful and relevant content to your audience
4. Educating buyers in an easy-to-digest way, even for technical topics
5. Making it easier for readers to recall what they learned
6. Gathering more information from your audience
7. Discovering your customers’ pain points
8. Creating stronger connections
9. Building trustworthy relationships
10. Making customers a part of your brand
11. Improving your site SEO
12. Increasing brand awareness through social media sharing
13. Improving the quality of your prospect profiling
14. Communicating more with your prospects
15. Establishing your authority
16. Increasing brand loyalty
17. Driving customers to recommend and refer 
18. Helping your business differentiate itself
19. Standing out from your competitors
20. Boosting traffic 
21. Gaining more leads
22. Bringing in more sales
23. Growing business revenue

Look at that impressively long list of benefits! If that doesn’t convince you to provide interactive content, there isn’t much hope for you. Just eat your stale donut, post your stale content, and convince your audience to go elsewhere. 

Reach Out to Big Leap

Big Leap is the baker extraordinaire when it comes to strategically optimizing interactive websites and multiple-channel marketing. We’ve got the knowledge, skills, and experience to succeed at even the most intense digital content marketing campaign. 

If you want to satisfy your customers’ craving for better content and so much more, contact us today.  

And just because we’ve been talking so much about donuts, please comment below with your favorites. We want to try some new flavors! The person who suggests the donut we love the most will get a free t-shirt.*

*We don’t actually have comments turned on, and this isn’t a real contest, but do you see what we did there?