Online, it’s easy to scroll through endless platforms and consume what seems like never-ending content. From a consumer side, endless content is great, but on an advertising side, this can make digital marketing even more complex. In today’s digital age, you have to catch the attention of your audience within seconds — 8 seconds to be exact, according to Time magazine.
Have I already lost yours?
Interactive content is a great way to combat what can be labeled as attention fatigue. It grabs your audience’s attention and doesn’t let go. So, what exactly is interactive content? And how do you implement it? Let’s dive in —
Types of Interactive Content
Put simply, interactive content requires the consumer’s active engagement. There are many different types of interactive content to choose from. This can be infographics, landing pages, quizzes, blog posts, presentations, eBooks, product walk-throughs, and more.
Interactive content typically adds more value for the consumer by giving them something to actively read, listen to, click, or watch, making them more likely to share the media. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words — videos are shared 12 times more than status updates of only text.
The Benefits
Due to the participatory nature of this content, engagement on interactive posts is often higher than static content. This is because consumers and potential consumers spend more time interacting with it. Higher engagement isn’t the only benefit. By increasing brand awareness and engagement, users will build a stronger affinity between your business and themselves which can positively affect your metrics throughout the entire marketing funnel.
In other cases, interactive media can improve website metrics by increasing the time spent on each page, increasing conversions, and lowering bounce rates. Further, 79% of marketers report that combining interactive content with other content increases their message retention.
This type of media is anything but passive as it makes the consumer a part of the experience rather than just a viewer of it.
Adding Interactive Content to Your Marketing Funnel
At the top of the marketing funnel, the goal is to improve awareness and engagement. Use anything from quizzes or infographics to articles and eBooks to get users to actively engage. Any portion of the marketing strategy that features content can utilize interactivity to best enhance your content.
When trying to maintain interest and develop leads in the middle of the funnel, try using product walk-throughs, reports, and case studies to inform and entertain.
At the bottom of the funnel, educate your consumers to take action. Try using sales brochures, demos, case studies, pricing pages, and testimonials to improve conversions.
The amount of content seen in just one day is seemingly endless. In fact, Americans are now spending over eleven hours per day consuming media. Competing to capture your audience’s attention can be challenging with the many forms of ever-evolving internet content, but interactive media is one way to help catch their attention and keep it.
Cecelia LeBus
