Interactive Marketing: How to Engage Your Customers

Are you looking to take your content creation to new heights, connect with customers like never before, and differentiate your brand from competitors? Then it’s time to implement an interactive marketing strategy. Through this approach, brands can personalise messages to enhance the customer experience. In the last few years, interactive marketing has been on the rise with more brands using it to engage customers through quizzes, polls, and surveys.

In this blog, we will cover the following interactive marketing topics:

1. The definition of interactive marketing
2. The benefits of interactive marketing
3. Interactive marketing tactics
4. Interactive marketing best practices

What is Interactive Marketing?

It’s a strategy that entertains and connects with customers through various forms of media. The goal is to provide customers with a captivating experience that keeps them interested in a brand’s product or service. This can be effectively implemented through various channels such as social media, email, or even in-store. Tactics such as videos, blogs, and infographics can also be helpful in in driving successful outcomes.

Benefits of Interactive Marketing

Engagement

Interactive content transforms static media into something exciting that your audience can engage with. Customers are twice as likely to engage with interactive content compared to static content, making interactive marketing an excellent strategy to follow when your goal is to increase engagement.

Feedback

This marketing tactic enables your customers to voice their opinion. Quizzes, polls, and surveys can be used to gather feedback from your customers. You can learn about their experiences with your brand, their expectations, and what they think about your products. This information will indicate what – if anything – your brand needs to change.

Learn why feedback is important here.

Differentiation

The insight gathered through interactive marketing tactics can be used to personalise products and communications – which creates a unique experience that your customers cannot get elsewhere and motivates them to return.

Conversions

Interactive marketing can expand into commerce. Ads can include a ‘Buy Now’ button which streamlines the online shopping experience and encourages customers to act on paid promotions.

Interactive Marketing Tactics

There are several effective tactics to choose from. Here are a few of the most used:

Quizzes, Polls and Surveys

These are entertaining methods that can be used to test your customer’s knowledge on topics. The results can help customers determine which products or services will be most useful to them. Brands can also use the results to promote organisational learning and motivate important business decisions.

Bailey’s, a pet care brand, has a fun and interactive quiz on its website. The quiz enquires about the website visitor’s pet needs and recommends products. This quiz accounts for approximately 22% of Bailey’s monthly online sales.

Interactive Blogs

Interactive media such as infographics or polls breaks up text and turns the experience of reading a blog into more visual and entertaining one.

You might also find this insightful: Blog Writing 101

Interactive Videos

You can create, 360˚ videos that move as people turn their screens, videos that prompt viewers to engage with the screen, or viral videos that encourage user-generated content. This is a thrilling form of content that increases shareability and reach.

Coldplay created a video that asks the viewer to pick different prompts which determine the outcome of the video.

Infographics

These are visual representations of information that use eye-catching visuals to inform and educate. They can be made more interactive by adding pop-up elements or animations.

Interactive Emails

By adding infographics, personalisation, or any other interactive content, you can transform a standard text email into an interactive format that increases open rates and the success of your email marketing efforts.

📧 Read next: The Guiding Principles of Successful Email Marketing

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Interactive Marketing Best Practices

Follow these best practices when you implement any of the tactics discussed above:

1. Understand your customers

You need to understand what your customer wants to engage with and what they will simply scroll past. For example, Marriot Hotels  understand that families visiting their hotels are interested in group activities while on holiday. With an interactive infographic, they help these families plan their holiday in Scottsdale.

2. Focus on visuals

Interactive content must entice your audience and an effective way to do that is by using visuals. People are less likely to take part if the infographic has a basic black-and-white design.

3. Personalise

Adding a personal touch to your interactive content will make engaging with it even more appealing to your audience.

Ready to Connect?

Interactive marketing is a good way for brands to connect with their customers, it just takes some time and planning to implement. If you’re willing to put in the work and find success in this form of marketing, take the tips and information in this blog, and create your own interactive marketing strategy.