Everything You Need To Know About Interactive Content Marketing [with examples]

Trying to be heard beyond the virtual noise in today’s digital marketing world isn’t easy. 

There’s increased competition combined with shorter audience attention spans, making marketing a continually evolving field with increasing difficulty. 

That’s why marketers need to get creative with the content they make.

Interactive content helps cut through the noise and create engaging, interesting content that resonates with your readers. 

In this article, we’ll help you understand what interactive content is, and why it matters, we’ll also give you some solid examples and ideas you can take forward in your own interactive content marketing strategies. 

What is Interactive Content Marketing?

Interactive content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that uses content to engage with audiences and improve participation and conversions. 

It captures the attention of your potential customers and leads and keeps them engaged with the sales and marketing processes you have in place, 

Benefits of Interactive Content

There are many advantages to using interactive content instead of traditional content in your marketing strategies. 

Higher Conversion Rates

Interactive content makes using content interesting and fun for your audiences. That could potentially lead to higher conversion rates and more actions being taken at key touchpoints in your buyer’s journey. 

In turn, moving customers through your funnels easier and quicker.

Better Customer Experiences

The customer experience is an essential component of the success of your brand. If people expect a certain experience when dealing with your business, you need to continue that experience across all your channels and with all of your audiences.

Interactive elements give your content personality and make it more enjoyable for audiences to interact with.

Increased Feedback

Interactive content isn’t just about moving people through your marketing funnel. It’s also about gathering key feedback and learning more about your audiences. 

Interactive content makes collecting feedback easy and gives you insights into how your customers view your brand and what areas are in potential need of improvement.

How Do I Make Interactive Content?

There are many ways to create interactive content to use in your marketing strategies. To begin, you can always look for free online tools to help you learn more about the interactive content creation process and become familiar with the types of tools that make interactive content great. 

You might also want to work with an agency that specializes in interactive content creation to save your internal team some time and headaches. 

This can be especially helpful when creating interactive video content or other customizable formats of interactive content that require a professional approach. 

What is an Interactive Platform?

An interactive content platform is a software that helps you create the interactive content you need to power your strategies. 

It often comes with a recurring or subscription cost, but it can help you optimize your interactive content creation process and create templates and standardized approaches to content that delight your audiences and engage viewers.  

12 Interactive Content Ideas

Now that you know what interactive content marketing is and why it is a beneficial marketing strategy to pursue, let’s look at different interactive content ideas that can positively impact your marketing strategy. 

1. Calculators

Calculators help users plug in their information and get results like pricing or products that work to fit their needs. 

It’s a great way to take some pressure off your sales teams and give audiences control over their outcomes.

Here’s an example of a calculator created with ION:

2. Multi-Touch Photos

Interactive photo galleries and photos that have multi-touch points on them visually engage your audiences and provide deeper insights than static images do. 

They also make the digital buying experience more tangible.

3. 360-Videos

360-videos provide full views and pictures of spaces or products that would otherwise be hard to discern or determine through a static video. 

It gives users control over how they view a space or look at a product, which increases their engagement with your brand.

4. Quizzes and Surveys

Quizzes, surveys, and polls are one of the easier types of interactive content to create and offer a chance to gather valuable information from your audiences. 

They help you gather first-party data that can be used to improve strategies going forward.

5. Live Chat Troubleshooting

Live chat is a powerful tool by itself, but combining it with troubleshooting interactive content makes it even more valuable. 

You can help visually guide customers through troubleshooting processes and explain how they can solve their issues or get more help.

6. Interactive eBooks

eBooks are a popular form of long-form content that give in-depth information on particular subjects to your readers. 

Making them interactive creates more interest in viewers and helps them find relevant information quickly. 

You can elevate your interactive content marketing game with Content Cloud by Rock Content. Harness the potential of interactive content to captivate, educate, and convert your audience!

7. Infographics and Data Visualization

Making complicated information easy to understand is no simple task. 

Using interactive infographics and other data visualization tools helps you communicate complex information to your readers in an engaging and visually interesting way.

8. Assessments

Assessments are complex and comprehensive surveys that closely examine the behaviors and opinions of your audiences. 

They help you learn more about your users but are more involved than quick polls and surveys.

9. Maps and Overlays

Maps and geographical overlays are another way for you to explain information and help your audiences visualize parts of your brand. 

You can use maps to help users find different branches or explain historical content with more context. 

10. Augmented Reality Overlays

Virtual reality and augmented reality are great ways to use new technologies in your content creation process. 

These interactive content tools help your audiences experience things they couldn’t before using these advanced tools for content creation.

11. Timelines and Heat Maps

Interactive timelines and heat maps also help you explain in-depth information to your customers. 

You can use these tools to make searching through historical data more interesting and appealing to your audiences. 

12. Content Library Recommendations

A content library often is full of different pieces of content, making it difficult to navigate, especially for new readers on your website. 

You can use interactive content to create digital library tours or give personalized recommendations on what content is most relevant to your audiences.

Examples of Interactive Content

Here are some examples of interactive content in action from top brands.

Creative Types By Adobe Creates

Creative Types is an interactive quiz created by Adobe to help creative users like designers and artists learn about their creative personalities and style. 

It also worked as an interactive content marketing tool to showcase different Adobe products and how the platform could help each type of artist do their jobs better. 

The quiz was eye-catching, and colorful, and included animations to make it even more interesting. 

You could also print a page describing your artistic type to use as inspiration after taking the quiz.

The New York Times – How the Virus Won

The New York Times used an interactive infographic and map to help educate readers and explain the facts about the spread COVID-19 pandemic. 

The map included animations and a timeline to explain how the cases of COVID spread throughout the United States during the pandemic and how they escalated over time. 

The tool drove home the points that the publication was clearly making, and made the information easy for readers to digest instead of offering lists of numbers and counties.

It also offered additional information on safety precautions to help readers stay safe in the midst of the pandemic.  

New York Yankees’ Opening Day Checklist

The New York Yankees helped their fans get ready for baseball’s opening day with an interactive checklist that was accessible to people who were subscribed to emails from the brand. 

The checklist included different categories from getting your outfit together to planning your food and drinks for the day, with links to helpful resources and stores. 

The checklist gave audiences the power to check off their completed items and see them displayed. 

The links also helped make the piece more interesting and provided more information to users who wanted to shop for merch or follow the team on social media. 

Wrap-Up

Interactive content marketing helps you increase engagement with your audience and build better customer experiences that last and bring in results. 

There are many different formats you can use in your marketing strategies, so don’t be afraid to get started and see exactly what interactive content marketing can do for your brand. 

If you are a marketer who wants to get started with interactive content marketing, then look no further than our interactive content guide. 

This guide helps you take your interactive content strategy to the next level and gives you tips on how to implement your strategy. Click on the link above to get started today!