Interactive Content for SaaS: How to Use & Examples

Regular blog posts, videos, ebooks, and many other content types are still very effective, but there are other options available. Increasing SaaS sales using interactive content has become a fact for companies in the industry.

Different business areas require individual strategies to reach people. 

Consumers need to deal with unique content to awaken their interest. Otherwise, they will end up spending a lot of time trying to decide whether to make a purchase.

Interaction is essential to generate more engagement and drive leads through the marketing funnel. 

Sales cycles tend to become shorter when SaaS companies generate content that breaks out from the obvious templates. Therefore, sales are closed quickly.

Choosing interactive content has many benefits. It helps not only to generate sales but also to create a recurring customer base. Thus, the revenue will never suffer a decrease.

We gathered below some valuable insights and examples to help you build a solid strategy. 

In this article, you’ll find:

Why Use Interactive Content in Your SaaS Marketing Strategy

Content Marketing is no longer a mystery when it comes to strategy. 

Companies know they can get more leads and educate customers through the content they produce.

The problem arrives when traditional content formats no longer engage people. They will never stop being valuable, but it is always important to diversify them.

One of the best ways to engage consumers more quickly is to offer them interactive content. This strategy is effective for two reasons: it delivers immediate responses to people (every time they interact with it) and it captures personal data with their permission.

Interactive content is all over the internet. Have you downloaded an ebook, read an infographic, or played any quiz over the last few years? 

If the answer is yes, you have certainly interacted with this sort of resource.

We’re talking about digital experiences created for participation engagement rather than just passive consumption. There is an abyss between these two things.

Typically, one interactive experience has a feedback loop into it, so the user does something and gets something personalized in return. The point is interactive content grabs people’s attention way more efficiently than a typical blog post or just a PDF.

While a company helps a lead calculate the ROI of a marketing strategy using an interactive calculator, it can also learn more about these people.

The data collected from leads helps create a more qualified persona. If companies know their customers better, they can make more personalized offers. Thus, sales cycles are more agile.

Increased SaaS sales using interactive content is just at the end of the entire cycle. Before that, you can obtain many other benefits. That’s why it quickly began to trend among best practices of Content Marketing.

Enriching the user experience

Amidst a flood of information, people feel overloaded with information, which leads them to seek something that stands out amid sameness. That’s why 81% of marketers say interactive content grabs more attention from the public than regular content.

Interactive content for SaaS turns a monologue into a conversation. That specific quality makes it perfect for Digital Marketing. According to Ion Interactive, for example, 70% of marketers say interactive content effectively converts site visitors.

In fact, most marketing professionals consider engagement as their main goal. 

From this point, interactive content enriches the user experience — and that helps increase your conversion rate.

Improving the buyer’s journey

The time a person takes to decide to buy something is fertile soil for marketing actions. By adding interactive content to your strategy, you take advantage of this moment to get your customer’s attention.

The buyer’s journey goes faster in all its stages. In the first phase (discovery), interaction works as a powerful way of being attractive. Then in the selection phase, you can demonstrate the benefits of your products.

A significant differential of interactive content for SaaS, in that context, is the customization. That means giving your customers an example that perfectly suits their needs.

We will show in more detail how interactive calculators are notably useful to do that.  

Going beyond pure text

Interactivity combines a huge amount of information with a unique experience to optimize your content. That puts you closer to your buyer persona — and you are no longer the one who drives the conversation.

During those early stages, that means offering different options to each user. No matter who you’re talking to, the content must show directions in a more catchy way than pure text.

A study conducted by the Content Marketing Institute pointed out that marketing campaigns used 63% more images than the previous year. That means pictures, infographics, etc.

Infographics, quizzes, interactive white papers, and lookbooks are very useful for testing your customer’s knowledge and taking them to the next step: the evaluation phase.

In this stage, the goal is education and collecting more data. Here, you can use interactive ebooks, assessments, calculators, solution finders, and product configurators.

All of those interactive content, in their own ways, will show your customers how your product solves their problems in their specific scenario. 

In the later stages, when the customers are ready to buy and to act, you can go deeper into data collection.

So let’s take a look at how exactly that can be done!

Interactive Content for SaaS and Tech Companies: Is It Worth the Investment?

There are many reasons to invest in interactive content. Get to know why companies put a relevant piece of their budget on those strategies.

To better know their audience

Interactive content is an easy way to get authorized personal data from the audience.

People share their information, preferences, and other information to be allowed to interact with content.

For companies, having this data is essential to know more about their audience. Such information allows brands to create new interactive content even better segmented.

Data also helps create other precise marketing strategies, allowing brands to get closer to their audience.

To better invest their marketing budget

Marketing budgets are not always high.

Therefore, companies need to know which strategies have the best ROI. It also depends on deeply knowing the audience.

Through interactive content, leads share their preferences, allowing them to know which marketing strategies will be more effective in generating engagement.

This way, companies can better invest, no more putting money on strategies that do not generate interest in the brand’s persona.

How to Use Interactive Content for SaaS

You can find several types of interactive content. To choose the best ones, you need first to know your audience and develop your Digital Marketing strategy.

Start by elaborating on your buyer persona — more than one, if you have a plural public. This semi-fictional character is a crucial guide-star for your content.

Now, here are a few more insights that will help you achieve better results.

1. Focus on utility

Ask yourself: “Is this asking a specific question or addressing a recurring question from my audience?”; “Is this useful?”.

Don’t focus on what matters for your business only. You have to be in the customers’ shoes, to explore their doubts and their needs.

Create educational materials and give it for free. Firstly, users have to be interested in it — even better if they want to share it with friends.

The more valuable your content is, the sooner you will get visibility and impact the buyer’s journey.

Also, don’t make it too hard to get value. Big forms and lots of questions typically do not work.

2. Continuity and consistency

Focus on helping your customers achieve their goals. It’s important to keep mapping the next step they can take, so you leverage interactive content all the way.

The first stage is indeed crucial. However, your products must be considered as ever more appealing. Interactive content that appears at the top of the funnel but doesn’t go down tends to let the conversation vanish.

You have to be present there and keep adding new value with new experiences. 

Don’t forget that this relationship lasts longer than the buyer’s journey: you must reinforce its richness in the post-sale too. 

3. Turn data into experiences

Digital transformation means, among other things, data-driven strategies. SaaS companies are very familiar with this idea — so put it to work in your favor.

Collect data from your sales team to identify the public’s most common questions. That can be the foundation of your interactive content strategy since it helps you create unique paths for each customer.

Notice that you need to connect your marketing team to this idea, but not only them. Pass it along to sales, support, and any other department that may make good use of the data.

Also, data-driven content aims at capturing information through natural engagement. 

A form field is not exactly the best interactive tool to play that role — a rich assessment or calculator is more effective.

Interactive content is the highest quality data type because the user shares that data with you only. Turn it into valuable insights for your next materials, so you create unique experiences for each customer.

4. Put it to work on behalf of sales reps

Data is a real asset for companies, so extract the best you can from it. Interactive Content makes sales reps’ lives a lot easier by simply causing engagement.

Create triggers that turn data into notifications for your sales team. Let them know what the customers think. Show them the most potential leads. Deliver real-time recommendations to your customers.

Automation is essential to turn single insights into systematic use of data. Also, be simple, but sophisticated, not only helpful. Personalization helps your sales team to be more accurate and attractive to create dialogue.

Instead of “Hello first name of company X” — which is just boring —, take advantage of the data you have to create a personalized approach. Did the customer use your calculator? Here’s your message:

“Allan, I noticed you have 50 sales reps, you have this average performance for sales reps. We believe our solution can help you to increase this number to X”.

See below what we can do practically.

Regular blog posts, videos, ebooks, and many other content types are still very effective, but there are other options available. Increasing SaaS sales using interactive content has become a fact for companies in the industry.

Different business areas require individual strategies to reach people. 

Consumers need to deal with unique content to awaken their interest. Otherwise, they will end up spending a lot of time trying to decide whether to make a purchase.

Interaction is essential to generate more engagement and drive leads through the marketing funnel. 

Sales cycles tend to become shorter when SaaS companies generate content that breaks out from the obvious templates. Therefore, sales are closed quickly.

Choosing interactive content has many benefits. It helps not only to generate sales but also to create a recurring customer base. Thus, the revenue will never suffer a decrease.

In this content, we will approach the subject in more detail. We will go through the following topics: 

• How can interactive content benefit your sales cycle?
• Why should Tech and SaaS companies invest in interactive content?
• 6 ways to increase your sales with interactive content

Read on!

How can interactive content benefit your sales cycle?

Content Marketing is no longer a mystery when it comes to strategy. 

Companies know they can get more leads and educate customers through the content they produce.

The problem arrives when traditional content formats no longer engage people. They will never stop being valuable, but it is always important to diversify them.

One of the best ways to engage consumers more quickly is to offer them interactive content. This strategy is effective for two reasons: it delivers immediate responses to people (every time they interact with it) and it captures personal data with their permission.

While a company helps a lead calculate the ROI of a marketing strategy using an interactive calculator, it can also learn more about these people.

The data collected from leads helps create a more qualified persona. If companies know their customers better, they can make more personalized offers. Thus, sales cycles are more agile.

Increased SaaS sales using interactive content is just at the end of the entire cycle. Before that, you can obtain many other benefits. Let’s see the main ones below.

Buyer journeys get shorter

A short buyer’s journey represents faster sales cycles.

From the moment your strategy gets a lead to the moment you close a sale, there are many contact points. In these opportunities, companies must be precise when approaching customers.

What makes the buyer’s journey shorter is the quality of each contact point. The more accurate they are, the fewer of them it will take to generate a sale.

Content is highly effective when it comes to engaging a consumer and delivering value to them. Whether with an interactive calculator or an ebook of the same type, consumers aren’t limited to only receiving information.

When people have the power to control what they receive, the process becomes much more enjoyable. That is why interactive content engages better and generates sales faster.

Consumers are more engaged with your brand

People investing in interactive content strategies have the authority to talk about the effectiveness of these pieces.

That’s why we should pay attention to an interesting statistic: 81% of marketers say interactive content grabs more attention from the public than regular content.

Just look around, and you will see how much content companies are producing today. Brands have their blogs, YouTube channels, and post content on social media pages, like Facebook and Instagram.

On these platforms, sometimes, content is failing to be of interest to the public.

Amidst a flood of information, what catches the consumer’s attention? Being engaging is not as easy as it used to be.

This scenario shows us something important: interactive content may be a great way to generate engagement.

After all, people feel overloaded with information, which leads them to seek something that stands out amid sameness.

The need to differentiate from competitors is what has led SaaS companies to invest in interactive content.

Why should Tech and SaaS companies invest in interactive content?

There are many reasons to invest in interactive content. Get to know why companies put a relevant piece of their budget on those strategies.

To better know their audience

Interactive content is an easy way to get authorized personal data from the audience.

People share their information, preferences, and other information to be allowed to interact with content.

For companies, having this data is essential to know more about their audience. Such information allows brands to create new interactive content even better segmented.

Data also helps create other precise marketing strategies, allowing brands to get closer to their audience.

To better invest their marketing budget

Marketing budgets are not always high.

Therefore, companies need to know which strategies have the best ROI. It also depends on deeply knowing the audience.

Through interactive content, leads share their preferences, allowing them to know which marketing strategies will be more effective in generating engagement.

This way, companies can better invest, no more putting money on strategies that do not generate interest in the brand’s persona.

6 Ways to Increase Sales with Interactive Content

Increasing SaaS sales using interactive content is possible since companies choose the best formats. Here are six suggestions for the most engaging and conversion-generating formats!

1. Interactive ebooks

Ebooks can lead people to another level of knowledge about a specific topic.

Companies use this format to get leads, thanks to the forms used.

Besides delivering quality information, interactive ebooks can do this more engaging manner. They require readers to click on the information to expand and allow people to select which pieces of content they want to read.

Overall, these ebooks don’t need to be highly complex. Interactivity is a way to stimulate greater involvement and interest from the consumer.

Simplicity is enough to make all the difference for a more positive evaluation of the material.

2. Interactive infographics

What happens in ebooks can be replicated in infographics.

This format usually brings information on a timeline. There is always a lot of data and images to explore interactively.

Interactive infographics also capture leads through forms, which is the same strategic purpose as ebooks. However, it is a smaller content and brings information more quickly to the consumer.

Infographics are not so much about teaching, but instead, informing. It is a great tool to increase SaaS sales using Interactive Content.

3. Interactive calculators

When it comes to SaaS businesses, content needs to be more strategic. It is necessary to approach aspects of the customer work routine.

With interactive calculators, it is easy to offer a tool that is very useful in many moments.

For example, if your company offers a marketing service, you can develop an ROI calculator or an engagement rate calculator.

Interactive calculators have the purpose of delivering a quick answer to the consumer to solve a problem in their daily lives. If we talk about the SaaS market, marketers need to design these calculators for the realities of this segment.

A great strategy is to always keep an eye on the keywords that your audience usually searches on Google. These search trends indicate the consumer’s interest.

Working this way makes it easier to create interactive calculators that help people solve their problems.

4. Social media quizzes

You don’t have to create complex content from scratch every time you want to provide interactive experiences to your audience.

Today, social media platforms provide simple templates for interactive content that you can use. One of the best examples is social media quizzes.

These work like games in which you challenge your audience to answer questions.

For the strategy to be effective and generate value, it is essential to explore topics that make sense to the persona.

Increasing SaaS sales using interactive content also depends on creating a closer relationship with your audience. A little fun helps a lot with that!

5. Social media polls

Like social media quizzes, marketers create polls on Instagram with the help of the tool available for stories.

There are many interesting ways to use this type of interactive content. One of them is to better understand your audience’s opinion about a specific question about your business or solutions.

As we are talking about the SaaS market, you can also use polls to evaluate tool features or measure audience satisfaction.

6. Social diagnostics

Having originated in magazines, social diagnostics is probably one of the most popular interactive content formats.

BuzzFeed was responsible for popularizing this content on the internet and making it a fun model for social diagnostics.

In this format, people answer questions about themselves and, in the end, receive a diagnosis about their personality.

Social diagnostics are traditionally more fun. You can use it to get closer to your readers and build a stronger relationship with them.

People love to get feedback about themselves, which is why this model has been successful for so long. Taking it into the digital context is a great strategy.

You can increase SaaS sales using interactive content if you choose good formats that fit your company’s tone of voice and marketing strategy. This way, it is easier to get audience attention and generate more conversions.

Are you considering creating some interactive content? Get a demo of Ion and learn more about how the platform works!

Best Examples of Interactive Content for SaaS

ROI calculator

This content can take customers to the bottom of the sales funnel. The interactive calculator collects data provided by the user to generate solutions in a fully customized experience.

Symantec’s ROI Calculator is an interesting tool. It allows users to calculate how much money they can save by acquiring Symantec’s services.

It takes less than one minute to enter your number of users and the number of tokens. Then you see what your potential results are, every single metric, and how it works.

Why should you do it? 

The biggest benefit is capturing accurate information about how much your customers spend on tools, their challenges, how much time they spend doing manual processes, etc.

Interactive Infographic

Infographics are the most shareable type of content. If that’s not enough to convince you to create your own, add the interactive feature to the recipe. That brings outstanding results, especially during the first stages.

Take a look at the potential an interactive infographic has to educate while the user takes the lead of the journey on their own. This is an example from the Chicago Council website. 

It shows extra information as you pass your mouse over the pictures or tap your mobile’s screen.

Wrap Up

As you can see, there are several tools that you can put to work in your favor. When it comes to interactive content for SaaS, the possibilities are limited by your creativity only. 

Enhance Your SaaS Marketing with Ion Interactive Content

Interactive content can significantly boost engagement and drive conversions for your SaaS business. Ion by Rock Content enables you to break through the noise and captivate your audience across the entire buyer’s journey with creative, code-free experiences.

With Ion, you can quickly build personalized interactive content experiences. Start from a blank canvas, utilize fully responsive Quick Start templates, or collaborate with Rock Content’s professional services team to design and launch your branded content experiences.

Capture valuable first-party data for lead qualification and sales enablement with Ion’s robust data collection and reporting capabilities. Understand who’s engaging with your content and how they’re interacting, with the option to run A/B/n tests to optimize your campaigns.

Drive brand awareness and enhance lead generation with interactive content that encourages users to provide their information in exchange for meaningful experiences. Compared to static content, interactive content can double your lead generation results.

Ion integrates seamlessly with your preferred CRM or marketing automation tool, accelerating revenue velocity and efficiency by delivering insights rapidly to your sales and marketing teams.

Ready to transform your SaaS marketing strategy? Try Ion for free for 14 days and discover the difference it can make for your business.