Are you looking for new ways to market your brand?
There are over 30 million small businesses in the United States alone. This means that your brand only has a small chance to stand out in the market today. Most businesses wear out the usual marketing tactics, making them ineffective for the most part.
To stand out, you’ll need to make use of the newest trends in marketing. This is where interactive content steps into the scene. These prove to engage with people and help you grow your audience.
As long as you’re using these for your marketing strategy, you’re sure to find success. If you want it to be even more successful, though, you’ll want to look ahead and use trends that are sure to appear in 2021. Read on to learn about the 10 types of content that you’ll see more often along the line.
1. Interactive Infographics
A great way to extend your reach and market yourself on different platforms with ease. You will find that more people will share your content more often if you go for these interactive media. This is because infographics are among the most engaging and sought after media on any platform.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a social media platform or a dedicated video platform, infographics will find more viewers. This is only because people love learning about things they don’t know. People are always looking to learn something new or refresh their knowledge, and infographics always deliver.
Toss in some interactivity into the mix, and you’ll find that your content will have tons of engagements in a matter of time. You can even go viral with the number of shares and engagements that your post is likely to get.
A good example of this is by making a roadmap for your brand. You can add some interactivity by allowing viewers to control where they land on the map. You can then add some information on what your brand aims to accomplish on each interactive node.
You can also use this to give people information that you have expertise over. A good idea is to give a history of your product or service to intrigue potential customers. This infographic about coffee is a good example of this.
The important thing is that you give some information to your viewers. This will ensure that they get hooked on the interactive journey.
2. Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence
Another interactive trend that will only become better with the passage of time. Nowadays, most chatbots are only there to provide potential customers with answers to their queries. These come with preset questions and answers, making them more magic 8 balls than chatbots.
With how artificial intelligence is improving and changing everything, though, you can expect chatbots to become more natural-sounding. This means that any customer on your website may think they’re talking with real-time customer support.
This is good for your business because people appreciate good customer support. If they think that you have employees on your website no matter what time it is, they’ll think of you as a professional brand. They’ll then trust you and their likelihood of becoming loyal customers increases.
Soon enough, your chatbots can even do more than talk to consumers. They can even help troubleshoot any problem the customer has. This is important as people who don’t get the answers they want often end up being irate.
They can even be the repair tool that the consumer needs. All these features allow the bot to help people with what they need at any time. It’s a great way for you to have an amazing customer support system.
It’s important if you want to keep your current consumer base active. People are likely to come back to a brand if their first experience was a good one.
3. Quizzes and Polls
These are the ones that you see most often on different social media platforms. They often appear in the form of quizzes that tell people what their personality trait is. Some put a spin on this by telling people the type of onion they are or something similar.
The reason you see so many of these on social media platforms is that they’re effective marketing tools. One way or another, this type of content will receive tons of engagements. These engagements also involve each question that the viewer answers.
This means that in one simple post, an individual can give it as much as 12 engagements. This is why you see so many of these go viral in no time at all. The environment they’re in is also perfect for going viral.
Social media platforms are among the most popular websites on the Internet. They have a steady growth of users who spend most of their time browsing their profiles. This means that they will find the engagements they need with ease and find new people to engage at the same time.
You can expect these to stick around as more people look for fun ways to kill the time on different platforms. The more people engage with your post, the more likely your brand will become a familiar name to them. Because of this, you have an increased chance of doing business with them the next time they see your brand.
4. E-Books
Interactive e-books are the best way for you to get people to read your content. This is useful if you find yourself publishing chunky and long content. Things like research papers and scientific reports are among these forms of content.
People are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of words that these papers have. This dissuades most from reading through them even if it interests them. This is because they don’t want to wade through the sea of words to find what they’re looking for.
Making this interactive makes it more of a viable choice for content marketing. You can help people by allowing them to navigate through the text in a unique way. This helps them find the topics that are relevant to them, allowing them to read and enjoy your content without trouble.
You can then further make it interactive. Showing a list of other sections they can jump to at the end of a chapter is a good way to do this. it ensures that other parts of your content also get some attention.
You can then add more interactive elements at the end. These can lead to things like other related books that cover further topics. It’s a great way for you to link to your other content to increase your SEO score.
5. PDFs
If e-books are the new books of the interactive world, then PDFs are interactive magazines. Interactive versions of these files will find a place in the B2B world. This is already what most businesses use to layout information and communicate with other companies.
Like with e-books, PDFs will become more engaging when they become interactive. It will allow people to skip to the sections they want to peruse. It’s a great way to speed up communication between businesses about certain topics.
6. Interactive Images
Images make it easy for you to catch the eye of anyone browsing the Internet. You only need the correct combinations of colors to make it hard to miss. You can also use other colors to make it stand out against the platform’s backdrop.
A better way for you to make them more eye-catching is by making them interactive. Turning them into 3D pictures is a great way for you to do this. This catches the eyes of people browsing different platforms since they shift as they scroll past.
What’s great about them is that they often entice people to click on them. This is enough of an engagement to make them more viral on the platform. If audiences find these entertaining, they’ll even leave it a reaction, increasing engagement.
You can also make them into 360-degree images. These are getting more popular these days as they often showcase amazing sceneries. This makes them great tools for tourism marketing and such.
7. Video
Other than images, videos are also among the best ways to catch someone’s eye on the Internet. In fact, they’re the most engaging media available today. This is because people are often curious enough to find out what the end of the video is.
For this to work, though, you’ll need a good hook for the video. This makes the first 5 seconds the most important part of the video. If you’re not up for the task, what’s great is that you can make an interactive video, instead.
There are even more engaging than normal videos because of the added interactivity. A famous example of this is Netflix’s original film, Bandersnatch. It took the Internet by storm because viewers had a choice in how the movie progressed.
It’s a great way to get people involved in any narrative you want to give. It’s a great tool for storytelling, which you can use for your marketing strategy. You can be sure that people will stick until the end this way since they’ll become invested in the story.
Another way for you to do this is by placing quizzes in the video. This is a great way for you to get your viewers to pay attention to your video. It makes it a nice way for you to tell them information that may be useful in the future.
8. E-Commerce
Even e-commerce platforms can become hubs of interactivity by the time 2021 rolls around. Online shops and other stores can implement small surveys to give better shopping experiences.
These surveys ask the customer about the service or product they’re looking for. The answers they give will help the bot sort through the store’s stock. Once the system finds something that fits their preferences, it recommends it to them.
This is a better way for people to shop in an online store. Most people think this is a mistake as people may find something else they like. They may even get them together with what they’re looking for.
You need to realize that customers are also likely to miss what they’re looking for. It’s a surefire way for you to lose a customer for good since they’ll think you don’t have what they’re looking for. These customers aren’t likely to go back to a store if they know they checked it before.
This system also reduces the workload an employee has in the business. It’s a great way for them to focus on other tasks, increasing productivity.
9. Giveaways
Giveaways are always great sources for engagement for your brand. Doing this is a great way to increase your brand’s visibility. It’s a great way to extend your reach and generate new customers.
Giveaways themselves are interactive enough to make you go viral. Asking customers to share your content for rewards will help you generate leads, too. What’s great about it is that they’re cost-effective marketing tactics.
Your audience will market your brand for you. Having them buy your product in the process is a great way to create a UGC campaign.
10. Augmented and Virtual Reality
There’s nothing more interactive than virtual or augmented reality. Immersing people in the virtual world has many applications. Regardless of how you use it, though, it’s a great way for your brand to show off its creativity.
The real estate business can use this to full effect. They can immerse the buyers in a simulation of the place they’re looking to buy. They’ll have a complete view of the interior of the rooms in the house.
Implement These Interactive Content Trends Today
Nothing can compare to the engagement that interactive media can bring for your business. Know and learn about these trends to learn how you can use interactive media in your marketing strategy today!
Do you want to learn more about interactive content? It has more applications beyond marketing that you can use to boost your brand and improve your business. Contact us here to learn all you can learn about interactive media today!