People enjoy the content that is creative and stimulant, which makes them go beyond the ordinary and interact.
For businesses, such a form of content turns out to be more beneficial than the traditional methods of online advertising and sales. Thus, this type of content is gaining more appreciation and space in online marketing strategies.
Interactive content has become a prominent part of content marketing. Earlier it comprised mostly ebooks, blog posts, and other static materials. Things have advanced and become much more interesting and interactive for users.
This post is for those businesses who want to encourage their target audience to engage and participate in your content. Let’s get started.
What is Interactive Content?
The basics first.
Interactive content refers to any form of material conveying its message by making the users engage and participate. The content experience shifts from passive consumption to active interaction and engagement through these.
Media interactivity has increased with the intensive use of technology and the internet, especially after blogs and social networks gained popularity. This popularisation had made businesses encourage their consumer’s participation in their posts.
Content marketing preponderantly depends on passive consumption. Simply put, brands post their content and wait for user feedback through comments, shares, likes, or analysing browsing behaviours on blogs and websites.
These techniques were comparatively more attractive than offline marketing methods, or the initial phase of the internet. Still, brands progressed and there emerged interactive content approaches providing more interesting ways to reach out to consumers.
This new type of content makes the users interact and receive information in a more creative way than merely reading through texts. In other words, now users do not merely have to go through PDFs or text on blogs where they cannot directly give feedback.
When brands have access to consumer feedback through interactive content, they can develop an in-depth analysis of what their target audience wants, likes, dislikes, and prefers consuming.
Interactive Video in Marketing
Videos are comparatively more engaging because of their dynamic look and narrativisation than static or textual content. However, when the viewers get an opportunity to interact and leave their feedback on content, it gets to a higher level of engagement.
For instance, YouTube videos have interaction buttons that navigate the users to other videos they find relevant and helpful.
Is Interactive Content the Future of Marketing?
Online users are being flooded with content, even if your brand invests significant time and effort in creating content, user engagement is not guaranteed. Traditional content marketing methods such as articles, thought leadership, blogs, whitepapers, and videos put forth marketing messages directly with a particular viewpoint. On the contrary, interactive content encourages the audience to actively engage and leave their views, feedback and opinion through the platform.
Linear Video vs Interactive Video
Linear videos are traditional forms of video content, which is commonly known. You click the “play” button to start the video and have options to rewind, pause, change playback speed, restart the video, etc during the experience. There’s not much you can do for interacting with linear videos.
On the other hand, interactive videos allow the viewers to interact with various tools. Viewers can drag, scroll, gesture, click, and do other digital actions for interacting with the video’s content. It’s similar to how the audience engages with other web content.
There are numerous functionalities brands can build in interactive videos, however, the most common are:
- 360 views: users can drag the screen within the video frame to watch all directions and perspectives.
- Data inputs: form fields which the audience uses to feed their information and some relevant details such as name, age, sex, etc.
- Hotspots: these buttons direct the viewers to different web pages or present the content within the video, like merchandise prices.
- Quizzes: putting together various buttons and delivering evaluation with a personalised analysis or result at the end of the video.
- Branches: distinctive paths the audience can use and customise the content they want to watch as per their preferences.
All these tools help provide a more engaging and interesting experience to the viewers and transform a potentially linear video into something more enjoyable and memorable.
Why use Interactive Video?
Interactive videos have become a widely preferred and appreciated marketing tool. Marketers have gained significant growth in online sales through the incorporation of interactive videos in their content marketing strategies.
Here are a few characteristics of interactive videos that have made businesses inclined towards them:
It is popularised
Best marketing strategies have those types of media that the audience is currently engaging with, and interactive videos are gaining fame right now. Brand and consumer behaviours reflect the rising popularity of interactive videos. Companies have started creating interactive videos at an incredible rate, and even customer responses are incredible. It’s getting twice the engagement that linear videos drive in.
It can be efficiently evaluated
Earlier, marketers could analyse a video’s performance by the number of views it receive. However, it becomes quite difficult to estimate and prove the value of a video without any data that reflects the correlation between video activity and conversions. To evaluate the impact any video has created one needs tools much more than merely the number of views.
Through interactive videos, content marketers have various powerful metrics to track videos’ performance. You can go through the clicks within a video, gather data, and analyse various paths with branching, among other things. There are numerous tools marketers can use for tracking the metrics.
It increases engagement
Viewers might get distracted while watching a linear or static video. The audience tends to use multiple devices at a time when they watch a linear video. Whereas, in interactive videos, viewers are actively engaged. Interactive videos keep the users with them and create a game-like experience.
It improves Conversions
The rate of conversions is higher in interactive videos as compared to any other type of digital video advertisement. Such videos are more memorable as well.
Interactive videos are enjoyable, they offer numerous opportunities to extend a delightful user experience. This is a way through which users will know about your brand in a fun and light way rather than going through long readings.
Final Thoughts
Interactive video can be defined as a non-static or non-linear, gamified medium that allows users to click, scroll, drag, and have an effective interaction with the video content. It is a popular, and efficient way to boost conversions and help marketers achieve their marketing goals.
Design the user experience thoughtfully, try to gamify the user experience, add value, and create an enjoyable experience for the viewers. Make the users feel valued and realise their importance in the growth of your business.
If you desire to create interactive videos for your marketing strategy, connecting to the SEO experts from a content marketing agency will help you achieve your goals. These content marketing experts are experienced and their services will power your brand’s growth in a significant manner. When you build a connection with the content marketing experts, they will know and understand what you aspire for your brand and it will become easier to proceed. Now you must have realised the incredible future Interactive videos have in the marketing field. So get started and create interactive videos and make your business reach unprecedented heights!
