Digital Marketing Insights

Has your content marketing strategy fizzled out in the recent times? You aren’t alone as traditional content marketing strategies are increasingly becoming irrelevant in the modern context. Many brands and digital marketers are left puzzled with diminishing returns on traditional content marketing campaigns. After all long and informative posts were for years seen as a sure shot means to strike the perfect chord with the audience. So what’s changed? Well too many people are trying out the same thing which makes them sound boring; attention spans are dropping with few users actually reading through your blog posts. The greatest nemesis for traditional content marketing is the belief that one-size-fits-all. What your users rather expect is something tailored for their needs and one that can engage with instead of long paragraphs of text.  In one word they aspire to see ‘Interactive Content’.

What is Interactive Content?

Interactive Content goes a step ahead of traditional content by the means of facilitating users’ active participation while accessing the content. In simpler words users engage with the content actively and based on their engagement are presented results or hyper-relevant information. In the world of digital marketing where the bar is high for competition, Interactive Content offers you many vantage points over traditional content marketing techniques. The fact that you serve what users are looking for puts you into an advantageous position.

Interactive Content In Its Popular Forms

Interactive Content is used in various forms on web and mobile platform. Digital marketers have been experimenting with different types of interactive content over the last few years and here are the most popular among them.

• Quizzes – Quizzes are floating all around on the Internet. You offer a question with a set of answers where the user would have to choose the right answer. Based on their selection usersare introduced to the next level of questions, gifts or information. This is a wonderful way of hooking the user on your platform and passively promoting your brand.
• Forms– There is no better way to generate customer data than forms. They offer deep insights into the likes/dislikes, needs and aspiration of your users. Based on the data they share you would be able to offer tailored experiences to your users and also cater to their immediate information needs.
• Surveys – Surveys have for long been used as the best means of gathering valuable information from users and improving products and services. While this may sound similar to forms surveys take this information gathering to a broader level and involve the participation of many more people compared to forms.
• Polls – They are perhaps the easiest way to engage the user. You can run regular polls on your website or one of the many social media platforms. Once the user registers his/her vote you show them how others have voted on the poll. This lets the user feel part of a larger community and attracts them to take part in your future polls.

Why Make Interactive Content Part of Your Campaign?

• It Engages More Users –We have established the fact that most users don’t like reading long blogs anymore. In case of Interactive Content there is something for the users in terms of their activity at a personal level and hence this creates scope for more engagement.
• Know Your Users – There is nothing as important in a competitive market than having your hands on the pulse of the users. Using surveys and forms you would be able to gauge the mood of the users with respect to your products and services and also their future aspirations from your brand.
• Deliver Your Message – One of the core purposes of content marketing is to deliver your message to the users. But are you doing so with traditional marketing techniques? Interactive Content allows you to do this better and since it engages the user you would exactly know the reach and success of your strategy.

Ideal Remarketing Tool –Remarketing is the only way to stay afloat in a competitive market. You need to convert users who have shown interest in your products and services and Interactive Content allows you to offer tailored experiences to your interest users.

Managing A SuccessfulInteractive Content Campaign

The success of your Interactive Content Marketing campaign rests on the strategy you choose. Here we take look at some of fundamentals in managing an Interactive Content Marketing strategy –

Why?

Why are you running the campaign in the first place? Do you want more traffic to your site? Are you looking to increase newsletter subscriptions?You must have a clear idea about the goals of your campaign. Bits and pieces campaign or one that is driven by too many goals tends to fall out amidst competition. Define your goals clearly before you move onto the next stage.

What?

What is it that you are going to present to the users now that you know your goals? Are you planning to use surveys and polls? Do you wish to make use of slide shows? As in various other digital marketing strategies, content is the king. You need to work on content that immediately strikes the right chord with the audience. If the content doesn’t engage the users your campaign won’t meet your planned goals.

Where?

Where do you plan to run your campaign? The choice of platform is as important as any other aspect of your campaign. For instance if you wish to run polls platforms such as Facebook and Twitter may be ideal but in case of surveys you need to choose the best survey platforms in the world.

How?

How do you plan to turn this engagement into a conversion? This is the business end of your campaign where you need to work out a master plan that ensures that the interest you have aroused in the users mind doesn’t go to waste. Guide them to the right landing page to ensure the lead turns into a sale or any other goal you have in mind.

• To sum up there is no escaping from the fact that Interactive Content is a must have in your digital marketing bouquet. As we go along the importance of this type of content is all set to grow. If you keep in mind the steps we have discussed you will be on the right track to succeed.

Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson is the content marketing consultant at Opinion Stage. A self-taught digital marketing enthusiast he has managed content marketing campaigns for clients for more than a decade and worked with clients across different industries.