If one thing hasn’t changed in 2018, it’s that content marketing is still worth the hype. Content marketing can take your business from virtually unknown to straight on the map in front of your customers. It can help customers discover your brand and bring new business through the door, and create a dedicated following on social media.
However, your approach to content marketing needs to be a bit different in 2018. Information overload has become a serious concern to marketers, making it more difficult than ever before to cut through the noise. While there is no magic bullet for making your company an online superstar, you can enhance your content marketing efforts to include interactive elements.
What is Interactive Content Marketing?
Interactive content marketing is a method that literally interacts with your customers and enhances their overall experience with your brand. Interactive media can help influence customers perform a desirable action, such as submitting information for a lead or downloading a free eBook.
The concept of interactive content isn’t exactly new, but it’s also not widely used in the world of digital marketing—especially with small businesses.
If you’re looking to give your content marketing an overhaul in 2018, including interactive content marketing in your editorial calendar.
The Foundation of Interactive Content Marketing
Before you decide to move forward and produce interactive content marketing for your brand, step back and consider the action that you want your customers to take. What experience do you want them to get out of your content?
Here are a few examples of what interactive content marketing can achieve:
- Help new customers discover your brand
- Offer a new format of content over your competitors, making it easier for customers to remember your company name down the line
- Help customers learn something new or learn something about themselves
- Encourage your customers to think outside the box
Even if you are using interactive content for lead generation, keep in mind that it’s vitally important to craft your interactive content for positive user experience. This is your chance to tap into the lives of your customers and influence them in ways that traditional white papers and podcasts can’t.
Interactive Content Marketing: It’s All Fun And Games
Yes—we actually mean it. A big part of interactive content marketing actually is fun and games, and two of the most popular methods of interactive content marketing are games and quizzes.
For example, Buzzfeed is famous for producing wildly popular and interactive quizzes for their audience. One of the popular quizzes is “What City Should You Actually Live in?” The author took personality traits and broke them down into a series of questions, with the test-takers’ true city revealed at the end. It’s a fun quiz that racked up hundreds-of-thousands of shares on social media and generated a lot of attention.
But how is this relevant for business?
If you think about it, a “What City Should You Actually Live in?” quiz would be perfect for real estate agents. The agents could simply break down the results by neighborhood and ask questions such as preferred housing styles, transportation methods, etc., and turn their content into a user-friendly quiz. When clients are finished taking the quiz and receive their answer, they can be invited to contact the real estate agent to search for homes in that particular area.
The quiz is the perfect tool to draw in potential customers to a real estate agent’s website, encourage them to interact with their marketing tools, and create leads for new potential clients.
Interactive Content Marketing: Count on Calculators
Another popular content marketing tool is a calculator. Calculators can be used for a wide variety of purposes, making them relevant for all kinds of businesses.
Here are several examples of how businesses can use interactive content marketing calculators to drum up new business:
- A mortgage company can use calculators to help future homeowners predict monthly payments
- A replacement window company can use calculators to help homeowners determine energy dollars saved during the course of a year
- A computer repair company can use calculators to help businesses determine the cost of computer downtime
- Marketing companies can use calculators to help other businesses determine their ROI investment for trade shows, online ad campaigns, and more
As you can see, interactive content marketing is both fun and useful. It creates a powerful connection with your customer and helps you stand out from your competitors. Calculators, quizzes, and even interactive infographics can all take your digital marketing efforts to the next level—give it a try.
How is Your Business Performing Online?
Now that you know several new ways to boost user experience, don’t push your SEO efforts to the back burner. After you implement your interactive marketing features, keep an eye on your Google analytics to ensure that your new content is performing in terms of ROI and business growth online.
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