Today, every brand aims to ace the digital marketing game, and for a good reason. More people are using social media than ever before, and it can be easy to become just another ad to skip if you aren’t catching your audience’s eye and keeping their attention.

Interactive content is an important part of any digital marketing strategy. Interactive elements like maps, videos, and chatbots have gained popularity among marketers because they get your audience involved, educate them, and expand your customer reach.

Though marketing is important for any company, small businesses in particular need strong digital marketing since shares, likes, and retweets amplify your company message beyond your own network to create an interactive and engaged community. In a way, every engaged user acts as your brand’s micro-influencer and helps to build awareness.

Learn how you can boost engagement by leveraging various types of interactive content to keep all eyes on your business.

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Interactive approaches to digital marketing

Social media platforms have seen a stable growth of the user base, which has grown increasingly representative of the general population. Younger people are no longer the only users of social media, offering even more opportunities to reach potential customers. And the more interactions your poll generates, the higher the possibility that users will learn your company name.

1. Polls and quizzes

Most people enjoy being asked for their opinions and interacting with their favorite brands. This presents an ideal opportunity for marketers to increase engagement through polls and quizzes.

Even though quizzes, polls, surveys, etc. have been around for a long time, they are still very relevant in the digital world. You can use surveys and polls to gather valuable data about your audience, such as their purchasing preferences and product feedback. More generally, you can gauge who is interested in your product to investigate new customer demographics.

An important part of polling is that it enables your followers to see how others have responded and what perceptions they hold about your brand. You may want to consider taking steps like making a Facebook page for your company and getting multiple team members involved in managing it to make sure there is always fresh content.

2. E-books

If you want to generate leads through e-books, it’s time to adopt a more dynamic approach. E-books allow your audience to navigate through the content seamlessly and in a unique manner. You can also offer free e-books as rewards for customer actions such as signing up for your email list.

Keep in mind if you’re not much of a writer yourself, you can always hire a freelance writer to create the content for you. You can expect to pay less than $50 an hour on average to have quality content written from writers working remotely online.

Just make your e-book’s content compelling and interactive to grab and keep their attention. Here are some surefire ways to increase engagement via an interactive e-book:

  • Create a clickable table of contents. This allows your readers to click and move directly to the sections they find interesting.
  • Add animations. You can incorporate animated elements like animated gestures, illustrations, characters, etc. for that extra wow factor.
  • Embed videos. Using video links in your e-book is an effective way to offer more information in an engaging way.
  • Use appealing visuals. If you include data, help the reader visualize it through charts and graphs to make the statistics easily understandable.

3. Infographics

A practical way to educate your audience about your products and services is through infographics. You will see more people sharing your content when it includes infographics because it’s more interesting and informative than just using words.

A good approach to incorporating infographics in your digital marketing strategy is creating a clear roadmap of your plan as a business. Generate actionable data, display the information, and show what your brand wants to achieve.

Additionally, it is important to hook your audience’s attention from the beginning. You can do this by giving a brief history of your products and services with the help of infographics to intrigue your prospective customers.

All in all, when you want to share adequate information, using interactive infographics to design your content is an important tip. This way, you can share a wealth of information about your company without worrying that you’ll lose your viewer’s attention with meaningless numbers.

4. Videos

Digital marketers can also leverage the power of interactive videos to get customers interested. Videos can help you connect with your audience, redirect your prospective customers to your website’s homepage, and promote products and services.

Customer testimonials and videos of your product in action can pay off when it comes to longer engagement and more sales. A positive, personal tone will be more appealing to viewers and will be more likely to impact their decision-making.

What’s more, videos can create a flow to your website that can direct your viewers to click on-screen objects and interact by reviewing products and answering questions. All of this contributes to an immersive customer experience.

5. AI and chatbots

When it comes to boosting audience engagement, artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots are great interactive content types that make customers feel like their experience matters. Today, most chatbots offer services to prospective clients by answering their queries.

With the continued evolution of artificial intelligence, chatbots sound increasingly more natural and “human.” It makes the customers on your website feel like they are speaking to your customer service team, but it saves you the time and manpower of actually having humans on the other end of the line.

This is beneficial for your brand, as people appreciate robust customer support. Instant response to client inquiries will elevate your brand’s image and make them feel that you are attentive to their needs.

This type of engagement will increase trust in your brand and increase the chance that first-time customers or users facing some issue will become loyal followers in the future. But it can’t all be automated. Some issues, like problems with a product that require special attention, may still benefit from a human presence to keep customers satisfied.

6. Maps

Making your customers scroll through a long page to find information relevant to them will not be appealing or user-friendly. Maps can allow users to hover over different locations and see details about them. When they find something that interests them, they can then click through to an individual landing page with more information.

For instance, if you are sharing information from a range of geographic locations, it might not interest your users to wade through locations not relevant to them. Instead, they might be more interested to learn about the countries or states where they live or have personal connections.

Interactive maps offer data via click-through and hover-over functions, giving users flexibility in how they wish to explore. Such experiences allow your audience to control the amount of information they get instead of bombarding them with too much data.

Last thoughts on interactive content

The more interactive your content is, the higher your conversion and engagement rates will be. An effective digital marketing strategy can captivate your customers, reach new audiences, and promote your products and services in order to beat out the competition.

Ultimately, the type of interactive content you generate will depend on your digital marketing goals, target audience, and media platform. But one thing is clear: interactive content is sure to yield higher engagement, conversions, and returning customers.