How Interactive Advertising Can Increase your Conversion Rates
Insights, Tips & Tricks
Written by
Hendrik
When you’re trying to grow your company and improve your bottom line, your conversion rate is one of the first things you’ll look at. This lets you know how successful your marketing is – it measures how many people are engaging with your content and how many of them wind up making a purchase. The more people you can convert from leads to customers, the better your sales process is working. Interactive advertising can boost this process!
Interactive ads are one of the best ways to optimize your conversion rates. Read on to learn more about this innovative strategy and how you can integrate it into your marketing plan. So it helps you convert those prospects to customers!
What is interactive advertising?
Before we dive into how to use advertising interactive, let’s talk some about what they are. As the name suggests, interactive ads are formatted so your customers can interact with them. This can take several different forms ranging from quizzes to product samples, as we’ll discuss more in a moment.
You can use interactive ads almost anywhere you run other digital marketing campaigns. These ads will be primarily visual, so you’ll want to stick to formats where you can make a large visual impact. Social media platforms, external sites, newsletters, and even your own website can all be great places to use interactive ads.
Types of Interactive Advertising
There are a few different types of interactive ads you can use, depending on your customer base and your messaging goals. One of the most common and popular is the interactive pop-up ad. These ads show up when a certain trigger is activated and give customers a chance to select different product or service options and see what their final product might look like.
Interactive video ads combine the power of video engagement with the draw of customization options for your ad. If you’re advertising an app, an interactive end card can give users a taste of what your app is like to use. And playable ads gamify advertising, giving viewers hints to guide them as they try to win points in a mini-game designed to promote your product or service.
Keep Customers Engaged by Using Interactive Advertising
One of the biggest benefits of advertising interactive is that it helps to keep customers much more engaged. It’s easy to scroll past a static ad that asks nothing more of you than to read it and click the link. But what about an ad that actively asks you to engage and will create a custom-tailored experience just for you?
Interactive ads are much more interesting than traditional digital ads. For one thing, they’re visual, and in the marketing world, a picture is worth a thousand words and maybe a thousand dollars, too. This is especially true if you wind up using a video format – there’s a lot of data to prove that videos get much higher rates of engagement than their static photo cousins.
Create Strong CTAs in Interactive Advertising
Interactive ads also give you a fantastic opportunity to create strong, dynamic calls to action. A good CTA creates a sense of urgency and purpose for leads who see your ad. It also gives them a definite next step to take in the buying journey, making the whole process easier and more convenient.
When you create an interactive ad, the CTA becomes much more personal for the client. You can customize your CTA based on quiz results, and a “buy now” button is much more compelling if your lead has just gotten a taste of what your product is like. Rather than an easy-to-ignore button at the end of your ad, interactive ads make your CTAs a personal message to your clients – one which they’re much more likely to heed. Like the example below, created in our interactive video software: Spott.
Make the Buying Process Easier then Ever
When you’re trying to optimize your conversion rate, convenience is the name of the game. You want your leads to have to do as little work as possible to make a purchase. The quicker and easier that process is, the more likely they are to see it through to the end, and interactive ads can help you revolutionize the way customers do business with you.
An interactive ad can become a mini-sales platform all on its own. If a customer likes what they see, they can click through to a purchase screen right there in the ad. Depending on the customer and the platform you’re working with, they may even be able to autofill their information so that purchases become a simple matter of a few clicks on one page. Even inserting an add-to-basket button will definitely speed up the buying process.
Give Customers a Sneak Preview
We all like a good sneak preview – if you don’t believe it, think back to when you were a kid and you tried to guess what presents were waiting for you under the Christmas tree. As a marketer, you can take advantage of that impatience and anticipation and sell your product in the process. Interactive ads allow you to give customers a sneak preview of exactly what their product will look like and how it can help.
If you have customization options for your product, you can create an interactive ad that allows customers to create previews of what their personalized product will look like. They can play with colors, fonts, images, and other such design elements and create the perfect design for them. A customer is much more likely to take that leap and make a purchase if they’ve gotten a glimpse of what their dream product could look like.
Customize the Advertising Experience
In the digital age, it’s easy for advertising to feel mass-produced and completely anonymous. Customers want to feel like they’re getting a personalized experience, rather than being another blip in an endless sea of leads. Interactive ads can make your messaging much more personalized for your customers.
Quizzes give your customers a chance to tell you a little more about themselves so you can deliver customized results and suggestions.
Something as simple as a form where you can put in your name at the beginning of an advertisement can allow you to speak directly to your customers. And clickable videos with different hyperlinked areas leading to different landing pages give customers some control over their online advertising experience, allowing them to feel like they’re creating a process tailored to them.
Leverage Social Media
Social media is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal as a marketer. Nearly seventy percent of U.S. adults have a Facebook page, and another 37 percent use Instagram. Interactive ads allow you to bridge the gap between the social side of these platforms and the advertising potential there, generating better results.
When people see something interesting, funny, or cool on social media, they share it with their friends. Interactive ads are much more likely to hit that “coolness factor” that motivates people to share the ad with their friends. And that word of mouth advertising can be some of the most effective – not to mention free – internet advertising you can get.
Start with Your Messaging Goal
Any time you get ready to create an interactive ad, you should start with a messaging goal. This will be the primary focus you refer back to throughout your ad development process. Your messaging goal should include both the primary message you want to convey and some specific goals for the outcome of the advertisement.
In this case, your outcome goal may be to improve your conversion rate. You may want to target your messaging towards one strong CTA, a specific pain point your product can address, or the key benefits of a new product or service. Come up with one strong “thesis statement” that will be the driving point you focus this ad around.
Create a target customer
If you don’t already have one for your company, your next step in the ad development process should be to create a target customer. This is a specific description of a person who best represents your customer base. It will help you target your messaging more effectively, as well as guide you in finding the best platforms for your new advertisement.
Your target customer profile should be as specific as you can make it. Start with age, gender, geographic region, average income, etc. Then start delving into specifics such as hobbies, interests, affiliations, online activity trends, and other such information that will inform your marketing decisions.
Consider how customers engage with you
Once you know what message you want to convey and who you’re conveying it to, it’s time to start walking a mile in your customers’ shoes. You need to understand how customers engage with your products and promotions before you can create an ad they’ll interact with. It should come as no surprise that market research will be a huge part of this initiative.
Take a look at customer data and figure out what social media platforms and websites your target customer uses, what sort of content they respond best to, and when they tend to be most active. You should also take a look at which sources drive the most traffic to your website – emails, blogs, search engine results, social media posts, etc. Use these to figure out how, when, and where you should post your interactive ads.
Review your sales funnel
When you’re building an interactive ad, you can’t just think about where you want it to start. You also have to think about where you need it to go – after all, if all goes well, your leads will be clicking on this ad and making their way to your website. You need to know what pages to send them to and how to direct them from there.
Take a look at your sales funnel, and use this opportunity to make sure it’s working well for you. Make adjustments as necessary, and take a look at which pages are the most effective for starting a customer down that funnel. You’ll want to use these as the landing pages for your interactive ads.
Connect the Dots
Once you know where you need your leads to start in your sales funnel, you’ll be ready to start connecting all the dots you’ve been building. Begin with your target message and start figuring out how to phrase that in a way that will appeal to your customer base. Get creative and use the information you gathered about how they engage with you to guide you along the way.
After you create your ad, start using that same market research to figure out where and when to run your ad. Link the ad through to the appropriate pages in your sales funnel that will give you the best results. And make sure every step of your sales funnel is strong and that you fix any “leaks” as they appear.
Adjust as you go
With your new ad in place and running, your work is far from over. Marketing strategies are not static, and you’ll need to constantly monitor and adjust things as you discover what’s working and what isn’t. Even with strong market research, consumer whims shift on an hourly basis, and you need to be able to adapt or you’ll sink.
Keep an eye on your ad and use the feedback you get to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. If you find out your ad is doing well on one platform, but not another, shift more resources into the platform that’s working and look for similar places to run your ad. If the message seems to be falling flat, go back to the drawing board on that and try a new tack with the same publication routes.
Create Better Interactive Ads
Interactive ads can be one of the best ways to improve your conversion rates. They’re more engaging, more memorable, and more personal than traditional digital advertising methods. Make sure you keep your target customer and your messaging goals at the forefront throughout your ad creation process, and always adjust as you go.
