Over the last few years marketers have reached a point where unfocused marketing campaigns are no longer effective. Instead, consumers want and expect hyper-personalized digital marketing messages, which have become scalable thanks to various advancements in technology. Unlike traditional marketing, which often feels cold and impersonal, brands can further engage consumers with customized messages by using a strategy called interactive marketing.
What Is Interactive Marketing? Examples and Definitions
Interactive marketing, also known as event-driven or trigger-based marketing, is a marketing tactic that involves acting in direct response to a consumer’s actions, behavior, preferences, expectations, or demands. An effective interactive marketing strategy is crucial for planning and executing interactive marketing efforts, ensuring that all elements work together to increase engagement and conversions. The practice has been used for more than a decade in digital advertising but has become more prolific now that personalization of customer data has become a priority.
Traditionally, marketers would follow a single path in creating an ad, sending it out to the world, and waiting for a response from the target audience's attention. With the widespread availability of data and the use of various tools, those traditional approaches are now replaced by more potent methods of two-way interactions.
Advantages of Interactive Marketing
You’re probably using different types of marketing to reach clients. Why should you devote any time or resources to interactive marketing versus something else? It turns out that this form of interactive marketing relies on distinct advantages.
Showing customers that you understand and care about their needs and interests is an excellent way to build trust. Also, customers that are short on time or attention are generally looking for more targeted content that they can digest easily and quickly. Maybe they need help to choose the right product or have a hurdle you can help them get past.
Learning from customer feedback can provide valuable insights to improve your interactive marketing strategies and better engage with your audience.
Once you’ve done the tough job of identifying your target audience, the next step is to find ways to reach your audiences interact with them most effectively. Since personalized content performs well, you can push the envelope even further by engaging your audience with interactive marketing.
Types of Interactive Marketing Campaigns
Understanding the definition and benefits of interactive marketing is well and good, but how can your brand put this into practice? Here are a few different types of interactive marketing campaigns:
Interactive marketing techniques, such as reaching the target audience through interactive videos, conducting remote team training using interactive tools, and building relationships with customers, are essential for modern businesses.
1. Contests and Giveaways
Consumers love contests and giveaways, provided they are relevant to their interests. They’re quick and simple to enter. #beautygiveaway is just one way consumers can find brands that frequently have contests on their Instagram pages.
Interactive marketing tools are often used to create and manage these contests and giveaways.
2. Quizzes
Interactive content, such as quizzes, is another way to foster interaction among your audience. Some websites and social media platforms have quizzes, and the final result gives customers more insight into their product choices. This can help customers figure out more about their needs or even get past some objections during the sales process.
3. Email Marketing
You can email messages ready to send when a triggering event happens, such as an abandoned shopping cart or a repeat visit to your website. Conversational marketing can be used in email marketing to create personalized interactions by utilizing AI to facilitate meaningful conversations with users. Let the customer know that you appreciate them considering your business and provide them with some useful information or an incentive to make the sale.
4. Polls & Surveys
One way that companies can improve the customer experience is by asking for feedback throughout the sales process. Polls and surveys provide brands with valuable data about processes and product usefulness. They also let customers know that you care about opinion.
Additionally, feedback from polls and surveys can be used to create user-generated content, which enhances engagement and involves fans in the creative process.
5. Personalized Interactive Content
Putting the right type of content in front of the customer at the right time can produce fantastic results. An instructive video might not be helpful to someone who is in the research phase but can be invaluable to a customer that is struggling with implementing your solution.
Additionally, an interactive video can serve as personalized content that engages users by allowing them to interact with the content, increasing engagement, viewing time, and conversions.
Best Practices for Interactive Marketing Strategy
If you’re going to implement an interactive marketing campaign, it’s important to do it right. Here are several best practices that you can follow:
- Segment Your Market
Not all interactive methods are going to be effective with every audience. If you’ve created detailed buyer personas, take a bit more time with these and consider which types of content might engage that audience the most. For example, teens will get more excited about contests, but you’ll reach fewer through an email marketing campaign. Innovative marketers are increasingly using new content formats and interactive marketing tools to engage with both external customers and internal remote teams.
- Identify Triggers
Identify the triggers that will launch one of your interactive marketing campaigns. Will it be a click from a social media platform to your website? A view of one or several products? Spending 20 seconds or longer watching a video? Once you’ve created a set of triggers, you can attach these to each campaign.
One of the most vital parts of interactive marketing is personalizing your approach. You want to create a unique experience for your customer that shows you understand their struggles and preferences. Your content should seek to address any pain points and add value.
- Incentivize Your Content
When a customer takes a quiz, opens an email message, or reads your content, there should be an incentive. With contests and giveaways, the motivation is obvious. However, you may wish to consider offering something additional to customers in exchange for their valuable time and attention in other cases. Some examples include a free download, a discount code for your products, or early access to new products.
- Leverage Technology
Many digital marketing campaigns are produced on a large scale, and interactive marketing is no different. If you are going to personalize your efforts, you can leverage technology to scale your approach by using various tools:
- Chatbots can be used for conversational interaction with customers.
- Data visualization tools are excellent tools to produce interactive infographics to simplify complex information and capture attention.
- Interactive videos help users interact with video messages and follow at their own pace.
- Virtual and augmented reality create a virtual interactive environment for product and service demonstrations.
Measure Your Results with Interactive Marketing Tools
Anytime you launch a digital marketing campaign, you should track and measure your results. How is it performing compared to other methods? Are you driving conversions more with one type of interactive marketing than another? Is this approach giving you any valuable insight into user preferences? Use this data to reform and optimize your campaign going forward. Additionally, tracking engagement and conversions among potential customers is crucial to understand how well your campaign is reaching and converting your target audience.
At Connection Model, we help clients achieve their goals with a wide range of digital marketing options. Whether you’re looking at moving in a new direction or want to learn how to supercharge your current program, we can help. Contact us today to request an assessment.
Written By: David Carpenter
