Which content do you use to boost audience engagement? Is it a captivating blog article on a topic that excites your readers? Or maybe a visually appealing Instagram post? Or, would you rather go for a video?

There is no doubt that all these content types still work well, but there’s hardly anything new about them. Today’s average consumer has already seen everything, and sometimes brands have to go the extra mile to get the consumer’s attention.

However, you don’t have to go out of your way and stress over it if you have interactive content in your marketing arsenal.

This type of content has proven to be quite effective in terms of lead generation and engagement. According to the statistics by HubSpot:

• 45% of B2B buyers say interactive content is in their top three preferred content types
• 51% of them also say that interactive content helps them tackle business challenges
• interactive content has shown to gain two times more engagement than static content
• 62% of marketers are already using interactive content

You can see why brands and consumers love this content type so much. Consumers love to interact with brands, but static content doesn’t often provide that level of engagement that consumers expect to get from these interactions. On the other hand, it brings more dynamics into the customer-brand relationship, thus, bringing the engagement and conversion rates up.

So, today, we’ll take a look at how you can use interactive content for your benefit and not just diversify your content marketing strategy but also attract the necessary audience. We’ll be using examples from well-known brands that have successfully targeted their audiences with the help of interactive content.

1. Deloitte and Interactive Recruitment Strategy

Any HR manager would tell you that the recruitment process is quite costly. That’s why brands invest in different strategies to hire top talent right away, and content marketing is among them.

Developing content specifically for the recruitment campaign helps companies target the best top-level candidates. Besides, content helps companies differentiate their employer brand from others.

Interactive content has proven to be effective in this regard, helping famous companies and corporations to diversify their recruitment strategies and attract the necessary audience. Deloitte is one of these companies.

The company developed an interactive video called “Will you fit in Deloitte?” in which potential job candidates have to complete a set of tasks and find out if they have the values that Deloitte is looking for in a perfect candidate:

If all the tasks are completed successfully, a candidate goes on a virtual job interview with a representative of the Deloitte department they want to work in.

During this interview, they also learn more about the company, get introduced to the working routine at this company as well as its corporate culture. All this information can help potential candidates understand whether Deloitte is a good workplace for them.

With this video, Deloitte managed to attract the audience it was interested in – job candidates who possess certain qualities that the company is looking for when hiring a new employee. Besides, this video also represents the values of the company well, allowing potential candidates to learn about the corporate culture before they get hired.

2. Banqer Brings Education Forward with Interactivity

One of the advantages of interactive content that attracts a lot of brands is its ability to bring value. And because of this feature, interactive content is often used for educational purposes.

For example, you can take a look at how Banqer, a financial education platform, uses an interactive video to help the learners destroy the debt. Similar to Deloitte’s video, the viewers have to complete a series of tasks, but this time they are practicing their financial management skills:

Banquer’s main goal is to use this video to reach and engage their target audience – people who want to learn budget planning and generally become smarter financially. Besides, with an interactive video, learners can improve their skills faster because they are applying them to real-life situations.

You can use interactive videos too if your goal is to educate your audience. For instance, if you’re a Spanish teacher, you can make an interactive video with situations where your students have to use basic Spanish words and phrases, like going to the post office, buying groceries, or paying bills. Interactivity will allow them to better memorize what they’ve learned and apply their knowledge more independently.

3. Function of Beauty Delivers Personalization through a Quiz

Consumers always want more personalization from brands. According to the statistics, 91% of consumers will most likely shop with a brand that offers relevant recommendations.

Interactive content can help you provide more personalized experiences because it enables direct interaction between your brand and consumers.

Besides, you can even make interactive content a part of your sales funnel to bring more personalization to it and nurture your leads. Function of Beauty is doing it successfully, asking their customers to complete an interactive quiz before placing orders:

This way, the company tries to optimize the final product to make it fit the personal preferences and goals of its customers. It is also a good way for them to collect email addresses even if the visitor doesn’t order the product right away.

Quizzes are quite universal, and you can apply them to match your needs, but they work best to improve personalization. You can use the results of the quiz to select products that will cater to the needs of the consumers, which also contributes immensely to customer loyalty and retention.

4. Hello Fresh and Bringing Diversity to Home Cooking

When online catering and food delivery services started getting popular, Hello Fresh, a meal kit company, started facing tough competition. They needed something that would differentiate them from others but also bring unique value to their customers. This is how they came up with Flavor Generator.

The idea is simple – you pick the type of ethnic food you like and the flavor profile you would want to try. As a result, you get a creative idea for dinner:

This is a great example of how a brand can leverage interactive content to promote its product without pushing it too hard. If a person gets interested in one of these dishes, they will follow the link to read a recipe, which Hello Fresh provides for free. And, to avoid going shopping for groceries, they would rather order products from Hello Fresh right away.

With this interactive generator, Hello Fresh also targets a specific audience – people who don’t want to waste time buying groceries but still want to make delicious meals at home. Besides, various recipes that the company provides to its customers also bring diversity to home cooking and help their customers eat healthy nutritious food without spending too much money on it.

5. NHS Promotes Healthy Body Weight with an Interactive Calculator

Another example of interactive content that targets the needs of a specific audience is the NHS’s Body Mass Index calculator.

The problem of healthy body weight has always been concerning for both doctors and patients since it can lead to numerous chronic and deadly diseases, but they lacked a proper tool to measure the body index. This is what pushed the NHS to come up with their interactive BMI calculator:

Now, to calculate the weight, both patients and doctors can select their age category, height, weight, age, sex, ethnic group, and activity level. As a result, they will get a chart with the BMI as well as some comments that doctors can use for further diagnosis:

This is a good example of how interactive content can be used to match the exact needs of your target audience. It’s quick to use, and your audience can get value out of it right away. However, this type of interactive content isn’t as versatile as the ones that we shared before. So, make sure it fits the goals of your marketing campaign first.

6. Simply Business and Interactive Infographics

One more example of outstanding interactive content that can help you attract the necessary audience is an infographic. This content type usually collects the data on a certain topic and visualizes it to make it more comprehensible and easy-to-read.

In terms of engagement, infographics also show very good results. According to the statistics by Venngage:

• articles containing infographics receive 72% more views
• infographics get 3 times more shares than other types of content on social media
• people are 30 times more likely to read the entire infographic from top to bottom than a regular blog article

Indeed, having to go through an infographic compared to a long-read article would take you considerably less time and still provide you with all the data you’re looking for. A good example of this is the infographic by Simply Business on hungry tech giants and how many companies they acquired over the years:

If this were an article instead, it would definitely take over 2,000 words to tell about every tech giant company, which businesses it acquired, and how much money they made from these deals. Instead, an infographic shows all this information in a concise manner. Besides, it’s easier to navigate all the data without having to scroll through the entire article.

Most importantly, this is a great example of how to use an infographic to reach the necessary audiences. It is meant to reach stock market experts and B2B companies interested in acquiring other businesses but are currently doing research on how successfully others have already done it.

However, it doesn’t mean that this content type exists exclusively for B2B. Interactive infographics can be used for any industry and topic, as long as you’re using it to visualize and structure the data. That being said, it would be a great addition to your content marketing campaign, helping you engage the audience you need, and boosting social shares.

Over to You

Creating engaging content can be harder than it seems. Internet audience is quite picky in their content preferences, and companies often find it hard to create something that truly catches the eye.

However, if you include interactive content in your marketing strategy, you won’t have to worry about engagement. Because it’s quite rare, interactive content easily attracts consumers, and, because of its unique value, they will be more inclined to stay with your brand for longer.

The examples of the companies that we’ve mentioned here today also show how versatile interactive content can be. It can fit the demands of almost any marketing campaign, helping you drive more leads and nurture them.

However, before you start producing interactive content, make sure it meets the needs of your target audience. After all, it’s their opinion that matters, so take it into account if you want to create interactive content that’s truly engaging.