How To Use Interactive Content To Promote Your Business
Small businesses are always in search of ideas and techniques to promote their business. No doubt you are here!
The underlying reason for this never-ending cycle of search is that traditional marketing techniques are constantly losing their effectiveness. Marketers are growing at a faster rate as compared to the market. Businesses are dealing with an increased number of competitors on a daily basis. There’s so much noise in the market that customers are confused; they are constantly dealing with attention deficit.
With the advent of the web, marketers saw an opportunity to boost their business in a world that seemed to be completely new and potent for business promotions. The way of business promotion completely transformed when it migrated to the web. It was the era that gave birth to a new term in marketing – Content Marketing.
We all know what content marketing is, as we are directly or indirectly involved in some form of content marketing. This strategic marketing approach involves creating and distributing content that is useful and relevant to our target audience. Though, it is still working, but the pace of its effectiveness is degrading with passing time. Every minute internet is being flooded with massive amount of content. The market is in need of revival or at least a slight up-gradation. The theory of ‘interactive content’ is the result of this demand for revival. This is also a part of content marketing, but it takes marketing to a higher notch as compared to the passive content marketing that is slowing down in effectiveness.
As per a recent research from Content Marketing Institute, 81% of marketers stated that interactive content is highly effective when it comes to grabbing attention of the audience. Further, 79% believed, it greatly reinforces brand message and results in better and continual exposure while enhancing repeat visitors.
Here we are presenting some creative ways to use interactive contents to promote your business.
Give interactive demo of your products or services
Every e-commerce website has a section on their website that deals with product information. Why not make it interactive and entertaining for the prospective customers? You can use gifs or info-graphics for detailing your product or service feature. Videos can be the best choice though. Let your animated salesperson take your customers on a virtual trip to the world of your products and services. For instance, if you have an online portal for apparels, you can also add a short video or tutorial showing how to design your own t-shirt. It can dramatically increase user-engagement on your site.
Provide your prospective clients with price estimate calculator
This is useful for you if you are a service provider where your charge varies from project to project. Customers are growing smarter, and they are willing to make informed decisions. They want to compare prices of different service providers before choosing the one. However, they are not willing to contact sales person before finalizing their decision for obvious reasons. Help them do the estimation easily by providing a free tool on your website, and your good gesture will earn you some extra points over your competitors.
Have live polling on your social media page
Keep an eye on business news from around the world that are directly related to your business or may indirectly affect it, like changes in some laws or government policies. Create an attractive poll around the topic and have your social media followers ,vote and share their opinion on the issue. This will not only let your customers engage with you, but it may also come up with an insight into the future effect of that particular on your business.
Organize photo, video or graphics contests related to your industry
Contests are an evergreen concept for attracting prospective customers. If the contest is being organized on social media, people participate even if there’s no physical prize because there’s always recognition to be gained. It won’t even take much effort from your side if you give digital certificate and contestants will be more than happy to win and flaunt it on their social media accounts. Contests can be hugely creative, so, think out-of-the-box and come up with an industry-specific contest for your customers.
Create an open story thread on your social media page
Stories have evolved with the evolution of homo-sapiens, and it would not end until humans are alive. We all love to hear and share stories as a part of our behavior. Start a thread and tell your story and encourage the followers to share such experiences of their life. Be strategic while sharing your story; choose to share a story that relates to your business. If you deal with antivirus, your story should be about data or information being corrupted and some funny incident following the incident. However, don’t mention your product anywhere. Some of your followers will do so, and that would be valued more by others.
Create online games for educating people about your industry
Games are not an attraction for only kids. Adults like gaming equally. So, create some exciting games that the visitors on your site can play online. Make sure the game is interesting and related to your industry in some way. Let the character in the game go through the hurdles that your target audience faces in their real life. Games are the most interactive way to tell a person about a solution. Whenever a person fails in a level direct them to a page containing relevant information about the problem the gamer failed to solve.
Research before writing a blog post
If you are planning to write a blog post that may have a survey, then do the survey yourself rather than using old data. Let’s assume you need to present a case study on a logo-generator rather than quoting stats from other’s research, it is good you do the research yourself, so that you can present relevant stats that even others can look up to.
An analysis of a topic becomes more valuable when you insert reliable stats. Moreover, it becomes authoritative when you are putting fresh stats. When we are talking about interactive content, then there’s no point of putting the stats in boring excel sheet. Use infographics with pie-charts, diagrams and bars to make it interesting and easily understandable.
Rank your followers based on an assessment
You are very well aware of educating your target audience by providing them relevant content. Take a step back and create a questionnaire to test your audience’s level of knowledge about that topic. Set an average benchmark level of knowledge. Let them take the quiz and tell them their level of knowledge with respect to the average benchmark. When they are done with quiz and know their level of knowledge, then offer the content.
Create a service assessment
It is imperative to have yourself assessed to be the better version of yourself. Whenever you make a sell or provide services to your customer ask them to give you an assessment. Don’t just ask your customer how was their experience with your product and services. Give them a detailed questionnaire in multiple-choice format and space to write if they wish to elaborate a point. Don’t just take it as a formality. Read each feedback and try to improve on your weak points and at the same time maintain your good quality.
Show your gratitude with personalized thank you e-cards
When a customer accepts your thank, you note and fills your assessment questionnaire you too are bound to show your appreciation. When you receive your assessment questionnaire, respond to the email as soon as possible with a personalized e-card thanking your client. This small deed of gratitude can go a long in your business relationship. The client will surely recommend you to their friends and return to you when they again need your service.
Use your full potential to make your Unsubscribe page interactive
Don’t make the mistake of making a boring unsubscribe me page. Don’t treat that page as if you don’t care about your subscribers leaving you. Apologize and tell that you feel really sad by knowing the user wants to leave you. Ask them for their last feedback, so you don’t have to see someone else going like this and promise to correct your mistake. If you get the feedback take it seriously. An interactive unsubscribe me page ensures that some users might change their mind. After that, it’s up to you to keep them happy.
Though, Interactive Content Marketing is not rocket science but it needs some technical expertise. If you know about creating calculators, gifs, animations, videos and interactive games, then no one can be as lucky as you. However, if you can’t-do it yourself you better hire high-quality professionals to do the work for you. Find expert designers who can take care of your every designing need such as designing social media page, infographic design, email design, advertisement design and more.
Hope this article helped you in knowing how you can use interactive content to promote your business. You can tell us through comments if you know some more interesting ways to use interactive content marketing.
