Guide to Leveraging Interactive Content for Better Engagements

Ever wondered if and how you can make use of interactive content for your brand?

Innovation is the name of the game when it comes to expert digital marketing, and interactive content is your next best bet to get an edge over your competitors when driving engagements online today.

Interactive content refers to any form of content marketing used for engaging with audiences and encouraging them to relate with a brand. While daunting at first, this type of content is actually easy for anyone to access. When utilized correctly, it can reap a myriad of benefits for marketers looking to drive engagements with online audiences.

Though the meaning of interactive content is pretty straightforward, the benefits of it are exciting and endless. Curious to learn more about the benefits of this type of content marketing? Then keep on reading to discover ways to drive better engagement with audiences online right now.

Types of interactive content

There are actually tons of interactive content examples out there, some of which you might have already engaged with as an audience member or digital marketer. Here is a quick rundown of the most engaging types of content utilized by marketers like you today:

• Quizzes. If you’ve ever answered a Buzzfeed-style quiz online, then you’ve engaged with this type of content already. Quizzes are a simple, fun, and shareable form of marketing that are perfect for any brand looking to drive up their engagements.
• Polls and surveys. Polls and surveys, on the other hand, are a shorter-form type of content that help creators get quick answers to their questions, while making audiences feel connected with their target business’ process.
• Interactive photos. These can include photo galleries, lookbooks, and 360 degree photos that give potential customers more information and satisfaction regarding your brand’s products and services.
• Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Reality-bending VR and AR are a lot more common in digital marketing than you might think. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok marketing filters are just some of the ways in which experts use VR and AR to engage audiences in fun and new ways.
• Contests and giveaways. These last forms of marketing are an oldie but a goodie. Contests and giveaways give creators the chance to be infinitely creative in their engagement ideas, while also inspiring audiences to directly relate with brands for their own benefit.

This list only goes to show how ubiquitous interactive content really is, and how you can easily leverage it for your digital marketing strategies. So make sure to keep on reading to learn more tips on how to use it to engage with audiences today.

3 ways to manage interactive content

How do you manage interactive content in effective and actionable ways? Here are three big tips to guide you as you leverage this tool for your next digital marketing strategy:

1. Repurpose and reuse old content.

No, you don’t have to spend a gargantuan amount of resources to be successful at engaging with your online audiences. When it comes to content generation for the sake of audience engagement, you won’t need to start from scratch if you already have great stuff existing from past digital marketing campaigns and strategies.

Consider reusing old blog posts, images, and videos by repurposing them as interactive executions instead. You can easily turn old strategies into engaging marketing executions by turning static images into image sliders, or blogs into quick quizzes.

Repurposing old campaigns is easy, as long as you have the right curated content in your marketing arsenal. Breathe new life into old works and try things you’ve never done before when you repurpose it as exciting and new interactive content. 

2. Streamline your message.

When you’re working on marketing campaigns geared towards interactivity, then you should ensure that your message is clear, straightforward, and effective in line with your customers’ needs. 

The interaction aspect of your marketing should be there to enhance your message, and not substitute it. With Gen Z audiences especially, you need to ensure that your marketing execution is authentic and consistent with your campaign’s message, since they greatly value these traits from their target brands. 

If you’re looking to engage with one of the largest user populations online today, make sure to streamline your campaign message so that you don’t waste time on a complex but messy interactive marketing execution.

3. Strategize ahead of time.

Interactive campaigns succeed best when they are purpose-driven in format, message, and execution. Therefore, you need to really take time to strategize your ideas and understand why you’re using interaction to grow your audience and drive engagements. 

Strategize ahead of time so that you can measure the effectiveness of your newest campaigns with pre-set performance metrics, targets, and analytics. Start with a small group so that you can test it out and learn fast from your initial campaign iterations. 

Always weigh the pros and cons of your execution’s interactivity, to ensure the success of your campaign and the usefulness of interactions to your marketing mix this year.

Cases of interactive content generation

Take a leaf out of an expert’s book when it comes to content generation for your business engagement. Read up on these three cases to understand how this type of marketing can greatly benefit you and your audiences online:

Cheers’ Cheers to Mess campaign by Propelrr

2021 saw the completion of the “Cheers to Mess” campaign that Propelrr built for the party needs brand, Cheers. With this website, Propelrr toured audiences around an online kitchen to help them discover the many uses of Cheers products for their own households.

Creative Types quiz by Adobe Create

This visually exciting quiz by Adobe Create was made to help artists and designers understand and explore their creative personalities. It also gave Adobe Create an opportunity to promote their design tools to the same artists and designers who took the quiz.

Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

While this episode of Netflix’s Black Mirror is on the high end of the interactivity spectrum, it still stands as an excellent example of using interactive video to engage with audiences directly – especially as the popularity of VR and AR rise today.

Benefits for small businesses 

This type of content generation isn’t just for bigwig companies with tons of money to spend on their digital marketing campaigns. Interactivity can benefit small businesses in a myriad of ways too. Some examples include:

• Grabbing the audience’s attention in unique ways. If larger competitors already have the attention of your target market through traditional marketing, then the uniqueness of interactivity can give you a leg-up, even in the most cutthroat of environments.
• Increasing social sharing. Given how fun and engaging interactivity can be, you can easily drive up engagements by creating marketing executions that encourage your target market to participate in social sharing with fellow potential customers.
• Integrating lead generation and data collection. By producing interactive content like quizzes, polls, surveys, and more, you can also seamlessly integrate data and lead collection into your marketing efforts, thus killing three birds with one stone.

Static executions no longer work in today’s realm of digital marketing. As the future of online marketing, interactivity can revolutionize the ways in which brands and audiences can engage with one another, serving the needs of both at the same time.

In this way, interactive content can benefit all brands, big and small, and help in building more unique and genuine relationships with audiences that easily last in the long run.

Key takeaways

When it comes to innovating for digital marketing, interactive content is the edge that you need to successfully innovate and engage with audiences online today. Now that you’re equipped with this handy marketing tool, here are some final tips to take with you on your digital marketing journey:

• Find comfort in the familiarity of this type of content. Quizzes, polls, and online contests are all forms of interactivity in marketing, so fun fact – you’ve probably already used it in your content marketing at least once. Congratulations!
• You shouldn’t just use interaction at random. When you use interactive content without much forethought, you risk wasting a lot of resources for an execution that might just draw flak for your brand among today’s younger and more critical audiences.
• Work with a goal in mind. If you’re looking to engage with audiences through content marketing, then always be specific about your goals for this type of content. This way, you and your audiences can both benefit from the interaction you initiate through your digital marketing.

Looking for that necessary edge to drive digital marketing wins right now? Drop us a line at Propelrr and check out our newsletter for more expert advice today.