Which of these interactive contents would you do first?
- Join a contest to see which movie world you will survive living in; A Quiet Place or Bird Box?
- Take a quiz to discover which Hogwarts House you belong to.
- Vote on a poll for your favorite series between Game of Thrones and the vampire diaries.
If you answered, let us know in the comments. Now, let’s get into it.
If you’ve ever participated in any online quiz, test, game etc. to win something or learn something new about yourself like what color represents your personality or if you have ADHD, then you’ve encountered what is referred to as interactive content.
Interactive content marketing is all the rage right now because of how benefit driven and engaging it is. In this post, we’ll be covering what interactive content marketing is, examples of interactive content and how you can employ this strategy to boost user engagement with your own content.
What is Interactive Content Marketing?
Interactive content marketing simply means creating the type of content that your audience can actively participate in or interact with, while they read or view the content. It’s a strategy of using content types or formats that encourage your audience to take an action while consuming the content. This goes beyond scrolling or reading a blog post or web page. Here, they either click on something, answer a question, slide through carousels etc.
This immersive content strategy helps brands get valuable feedback from their customers and boost brand impression.
What is interactive content?
This is any type of content that goes beyond presenting information to evoking an active response from its viewers. It is carefully designed to transform the user’s experience from passively viewing to actively engaging with the content. If a user cannot fully enjoy or consume the content without performing some kind of active function like clicking, taking a quiz, playing a game, selecting an option etc., then such content is interactive.
If you’ve ever caught yourself taking an online quiz to check your IQ or participated in a poll/survey, then that was an interactive content.
The underlying goal of interactive content is to make the user’s experience more enjoyable and memorable, while putting the brand at the top of their mind. Interestingly, this survey shows that 60% of companies are ahead in measuring content effectiveness compared to 25% for organizations still relying on passive or static content that their audience merely read.
What are the Benefits of Interactive Content
It Increases Engagement
Interactive content captures attention more effectively than static content, encouraging users to actively participate through actions like clicking, typing, or answering questions. Studies show that it generates higher engagement compared to static content. Interactive landing pages have significantly higher conversion rates—up to 55% compared to the average 2.35% for static pages.
It Improves Learning and Retention
By requiring active participation, interactive content enhances comprehension and information retention. Users are more likely to remember and understand concepts when they engage with tools like quizzes or calculators.
It Personalizes the User Experiences and Enhances Social Sharing.
Interactive content formats adapt to user preferences, offering tailored recommendations based on input. This personalization increases relevance and customer satisfaction. Such content is more shareable due to its engaging nature. Users are more likely to share entertaining or informative experiences on social media, increasing reach and visibility.
It differentiates Your Brand
With millions of brands competing for attention online and producing a ton of content just to stay relevant, offering unique interactive experiences sets brands apart from their competitors. It showcases innovation and creates memorable impressions. The increased engagement and longer time spent on interactive pages also contribute to better search engine rankings.
It Boosts Lead Generation
Interactive content often requires users to provide contact information before accessing it, making it an effective tool for capturing leads. Also, quizzes, surveys, and polls collect valuable data about user preferences, behaviors, and pain points. This information helps refine marketing strategies and improve offerings.
Interactive content is a powerful tool for fostering engagement, building relationships, driving conversions, and differentiating brands in a crowded digital landscape. Its dynamic nature makes it invaluable for modern marketing strategies.
Examples of Interactive Content:
Contests: Contests and giveaways are great ways to spark interest in your content and inspire active participation. This is especially effective for two reasons. Firstly, it’s fun and exciting. Secondly, it feeds the inherent human desire to win.
Contests are a great way to enhance brand loyalty. They make customers feel valued. By offering rewards and incentives, it strengthens their emotional connection to your brand. This sense of exclusivity and appreciation fosters brand affinity, encouraging the audience to continue interacting with the brand.
Best Affordable Tools for Creating Contests
- ViralKit is an AI-powered contest builder that creates contests in seconds. All you have to do is tell the AI in one line what type of contest you want to run and it will deliver the rest. I love that it has 250+ entry methods and smoothly integrates with 60+ social media platforms, leaderboards, and CRM tools.
- SweepWidget: Building a viral contest or giveaway only takes seconds with SweepWidget’s drag and drop builder. With 40+ API integrations, you can host leaderboard competitions, offer instant coupons and rewards etc. in 103 languages. There’s also over a hundred ways of entry on 30+ social platforms.
- Woorise: This all-in-one marketing platform is designed to simplify your lead generation process and helps you build a variety of campaigns, from high-converting landing pages to detailed forms, surveys, giveaways and quizzes. Plans are affordable too.
Tips for Using Contests to boost engagement on your website, blog etc.
- Define clear goals for your brand: Identify what you want to achieve with the contest, such as increasing engagement, growing your audience, or promoting a product. Clear goals help shape the contest structure and metrics for success.
- Know Your Audience: Be sure to research your audience’s preferences and habits using tools like Google Analytics or social media insights. This will help you tailor the contest to their interests and platforms they frequent. Make sure to offer prizes that align with your audience’s interests and the effort required to participate. For simple contests, small prizes like vouchers work well, while larger prizes are ideal for more complex challenges.
- Keep contest rules simple and clear:
- Ensure the contest mechanics are easy to understand and participate in. Complicated rules can discourage involvement.
- Create a Sense of Urgency: Set a short timeframe for the contest to maintain excitement and avoid drop-offs in participation. Use countdowns or reminders to emphasize urgency.
- Follow Up Post-Contest: Share results publicly and thank participants to foster goodwill and encourage future engagement. Highlight winning entries or feedback from participants
Quizzes: This is one of the most popular interactive content because very few people can resist them. According to this post on Riddle, quizzes have a completion rate of 30% to 50% whereas emails pop ups have a fill-out rate of 0.5-5%. It’s not surprising though. People are drawn to quizzes because they offer insights into themselves, tapping into a natural desire for self-knowledge and discovery. Quizzes also tease our curiosity to see how we fit in with other like-minded people. It fosters a sense of belonging in society when we get instant results showing how similar or dissimilar we are to others, the percentage of coffee drinkers compared to tea drinkers and what not.
Essentially, the challenge offered by an online quiz is a thrilling escape from our routines.
Here are some exciting sites that offer quizzes for readers to participate in:
Buzzfeed: Known for its entertaining and viral quizzes, Buzzfeed offers a wide range of personality and trivia quizzes that are popular among users. It’s an online hive of entertainment with thought-provoking quizzes that will leave you humbled or feeling like a genius when the results are revealed.
16 Personalities: This site provides detailed personality assessments based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) framework, helping users understand their strengths and weaknesses.
Other honourable mentions are Visual DNA which offers quizzes that use images to help identify personality traits based on the OCEAN-BIG 5 personality model. There’s also HeyWise which explores a broad range of topics–from sports to history, language to pop culture, personality to health. Their quizzes motivate readers to test their knowledge and learn new and exciting facts.
Best Tools for creating Quizzes
Thrive Quiz Builder: This plugin is specifically designed for WordPress users, and integrates seamlessly with WordPress sites. Here, you can easily create engaging quizzes that will boost user engagement, drive more qualified leads to your business, and help you get robust data-driven insights on your audience.
Meiro: This AI-powered quiz creation tool generates quizzes from prompts or URLs. Hence, it is great if you’re looking for fast quiz creation using AI with unlimited usage capabilities. It offers unlimited quiz creations, views, completions, and leads.
Involve.me: It offers highly customizable designs with scoring options (including negative values) and conditional logic jumps. The quizzes are embedded directly into your website. It is an affordable quiz creation tool with extensive customization options.
Polls: One of the best things about polls as an interactive content strategy is that they offer real-time feedback. These immediate insights into audience preferences helps brands make informed decisions about their business, refine their marketing campaigns etc.
Netflix, Buzzfeed, Instagram stories and Twitter often utilize polls to gain insights on customer preferences.
When creating a poll for your audience;
- Avoid jargon. Use simple and specific questions/instructions that your audience can understand.
- Keep it short. Don’t overwhelm people with a range of questions. The shorter the poll is, the higher the completion rate.
- Tailor polls to your audience’s interests and preferences.
Best Affordable Tools for creating Polls
SurveyMonkey: It gives you customizable templates, real-time notifications, and audience engagement options. It also includes advanced features like automated consumer panels and analytics.
TypeForm: It has a drag-and-drop interface with customizable templates, multimedia integrations like images, videos, GIFs etc., as well as export options. It supports various poll types like political polls, customer satisfaction surveys, and brand awareness polls. If you’re seeking visually appealing and interactive polls, this is for you.
Other worthy mentions include Smartsurvey, Surveysparrow, Paperform, QuestionPro and OpinionStage.
Gamification: This means using game-like elements to elevate your content. It’s an effective strategy to boost engagement. By incorporating points, leaderboards and badges, you can increase engagement by up to 50% and browsing time by around 30%. Users are more likely to stay on websites or apps longer when they feel actively involved.
This study shows the impact of gamification on user experience, citing that gamification fosters a sense of belonging and community building among users.
Great examples of companies incorporating gamification in their marketing include Tito’s Vodka spin to win, McDonald’s Monopoly, M&M’s Eye Spy Pretzel, Duolingo’s streak etc.
Interactive Video: They can lead to engagement levels up to 10 times higher than traditional formats. And longer engagement times ultimately reduce bounce rates and keep viewers on the website for extended periods. According to this article, interactive videos enhance information retention by allowing viewers to interact with content at their own pace. Research indicates that interactive videos double recall rates compared to passive video formats, ensuring that viewers remember the brand’s message more effectively
Here are a few companies changing the game with this content format.
Firstly, we have Netflix’s Bandersnatch, a choose-your-own-adventure film where viewers make decisions that shape the storyline, leading to multiple endings.
Secondly, Sephora’s Virtual Try-On Experience is an augmented reality-based video platform that lets users test makeup products in real-time, showcasing shades and finishes.
Finally, we have the Nike ‘React Shoe Campaign’ where users test their reflexes through an interactive video while learning about the Nike React shoe’s features.
What industries benefit the most from interactive videos?
If you’re in an industry where a visual experience of your product or service provides a comprehensive understanding of the product, reduces uncertainty and increases the purchase confidence of your customers, then you have to start using interactive videos in your marketing. The following industries are key: Ecommerce, beauty/cosmetics, travel and hospitality, real estate and entertainment.
Best Tools for creating Interactive Videos.
1. Stornaway.io
If your goal is to create immersive videos and turn them into conversations, scenarios and guided interactive journeys using storytelling, Stornaway is a sure bet. It lets ANYONE up their web content game with zero stress. It’s beginner friendly with an easy-to-use visual editor, instant playback, collaboration tools, and publishing across platforms (including VR). It has a robust free plan and affordable upgrade plans worth checking out.
2. Mindstamp: This is the premier solution for creating interactive videos that prioritize viewer experience and participation. Mindstamp offers an affordable leeway to creating impactful videos for training, sales, education and much more. Its capabilities include video branching, lead capture, quizzing, analytics etc. It offers a free trial for individuals, teams and organizations seeking to embed highly interactive videos as part of their marketing strategy.
3. Spott.ai: This is an AI-powered interactive content creation tool that helps you create videos, images, catalogues, ads, PDFs etc. It offers customizable templates for you to work with. In as simple as three steps–Add content, customize and publish–you can have interactive content that boosts your ROI. Prices are tailored to individual needs.
Interactive Infographics: This combines visual storytelling with interactivity, allowing users to actively participate in exploring the content. With interactive elements like hover effects, clickable areas and animations, viewers tend to spend more time on the content, boosting retention rates and engagement.
Homes.com utilizes this very well using a map-based infographic that allows users to compare housing markets in different cities. This makes the home-buying process feel like an adventure while simplifying decision-making through immersive visuals.
Another good example is Sephora which showcases the best products for different skin types with clickable hotspots beside product images. Customers can click to learn about product benefits and purchase directly from links within the infographic.
Here are free and affordable tools for creating interactive infographics.
- Canva has an incredible user-friendly interface and vast template library. It’s suitable for all skill levels.
- Piktochart is an AI-driven infographic creation tool with a drag-and-drop interface. It’s a superior data visualization solution for education and marketing purposes.
- Infogram also excels in data visualization. It is perfect for turning data-heavy infographics and reports into stunning and interactive designs.
- Visme offers advanced interactivity like animations, clickable hotspots, and embedding multimedia.
Calculators: Calculators actively involve users by allowing them to input personalized data and receive instant results tailored to their needs. It’s a great interactive content as it offers users instant and accurate results without having them go through complex articles and boring data.
Financial planning websites often use retirement and investment calculators. The results are tailored to each user’s data (like age, income etc.) and this helps them plan their finances effectively.
E-commerce platforms also use calculators to simplify purchasing decisions. Fitness apps use it to help customers with determining their dietary needs and track their calories.
Here are some great tools for creating calculators.
- Outgrow: This is an AI-powered calculator builder with customizable templates and conditional logic for personalized experiences. It’s great for marketing teams looking for lead generation tools that integrate seamlessly into their campaigns.
- uCalc: This is great for beginners and businesses in need of simple calculators without coding. It is a user-friendly drag-and-drop builder with industry-specific templates (e.g., real estate rent calculators or construction floor plan calculators).
- Convert calculator is suited for advanced users in need of powerful calculations with extensive customization options.
- Shout.com: It’s a no-code calculator builder with unlimited impressions and submissions, making it ideal for businesses that want to avoid restrictions on usage. It supports lead generation, price quoting, and audience engagement. Best for businesses looking for a free tool without arbitrary limits on usage.
Quote tools: Who hasn’t encountered a great quote from a renowned figure or a compelling quote designed to stand out from other texts? Whether it’s a curated quote post, quote tweet, or a quote with visually appealing graphics, they grab our attention and that’s all that matters. We pay extra attention to them.
Quotes from respected figures instantly lend credibility to your message, making audiences more likely to trust and interact with your content. They can evoke strong emotions from readers such as empathy, nostalgia, FOMO etc. They can also inspire.
Their concise nature easily attracts clicks and shares online. Done right, they are a great way to hold attention and deliver impactful messages quickly.
Their psychological appeal, combined with practical ease of use and high shareability, makes them an essential part of any content strategy.
Note: To be effective, quotes should be relevant to your content, well-attributed to the original source, and visually compelling.
Here are some great tools for creating interactive quotes.
Canva, Photoroom quote maker, and Piktochart AI quote generator offer the best blend of ease, customization, and professional results for turning quotes into visually engaging graphics. However, if you want a rapid, no-fuss quote creation especially for social media, you’re good with tools like Stencil and Snappa.
All these tools are accessible to non-designers and support both original quotes and famous sayings, making them ideal for boosting engagement across digital platforms.
How to Effectively Incorporate Interactive Content into your Marketing Strategy.
Assess Your Current Marketing Strategy.
Before diving into interactive content creation, evaluate your existing strategy. Which of your content gets the most engagement and will benefit from interactive elements? Understand your audience and which interactive formats would resonate with them most effectively.
Set Clear Objectives for your New Strategy
Define what you want to achieve with interactive content marketing, whether it’s increased engagement, lead generation, customer education etc. Without this, you won’t know what metrics to measure for success.
Choose the Right Interactive Formats
Select interactive formats that align with your marketing goals and audience preferences. For example, Quizzes and interactive calculators are more suitable if you want to generate leads. However, polls and surveys, interactive infographics and videos will boost your audience engagement faster. That is why choosing the right format is very important.
Optimize for All Devices
Ensure your interactive content performs flawlessly across all platforms, especially mobile devices.
Talk to us! Let us know which of these content formats you’d like to implement first and why.