Marketing is constantly evolving, and today, it’s all about personalization. Generic blog posts or videos don’t cut it anymore; you need dynamic content that’s hyper-personalized to users. And with video marketing, you can’t get the same level of traction with your average video.
This is why interactive video marketing is the next big thing. In these videos, viewers can actively participate in the video’s narrative, instead of being passive observers. Plus, 81% of consumers believe that interactive content is more engaging than static videos.
If that’s not enough to convince you, did you know that 88% of marketers believe that interactive content gives them an edge over their competitors?
So, if you want to build your brand awareness, generate leads, and drive revenue, interactive video marketing is the way forward. In this post, we’ll discuss everything that you need to know about interactive content and how to market it.
Let’s dive in!
Benefits of Interactive Video Marketing
In this section, you’ll learn about the numerous advantages of interactive video marketing:
- Higher Engagement: Since your audience is no longer just watching the video, but actually interacting with it, you’re bound to increase your engagement metrics. Audiences can fill up forms, play a quiz, and navigate branching storylines!
- Easier Lead Generation: Interactive videos simplify lead generation through in-video elements like polls, forms, and surveys. These can be filled in by the viewer without ever leaving the video. This creates a seamless viewing experience, leading to a greater number of leads.
- Increased Brand Awareness: You’ll already stand out from the crowd of brands if you’re using interactive video marketing techniques. Users are quick to engage with dynamic video content, and they’re more likely to remember brands that gave them a novel experience.
- Improved Conversion Rates: The ultimate goal in marketing is to increase sales and drive revenue. Interactive content tends to perform better than static videos, providing higher leads, more engagement, and a streamlined user experience. In fact, some types of videos can guide users through the buying journey. These factors play a huge part in getting the user to sign up for a trial or buy the product outright.
- Personalization: Interactive content is easier to customize for different audiences, based on data analysis. You can change the content to cater to multiple audience segments, resulting in hyper-personalized content that resonates better with your target demographics.
- Virality: If your content is engaging and interactive, it’ll likely be shared more often on social media. This increased organic reach can help you target different audiences in multiple regions.
Key Interactive Video Strategies
Now that you know about the benefits of interactive video content, here are a few strategies you can implement:
- Shoppable Videos: If you’re selling a product, the easiest way to market it would be through interactive shoppable videos. These videos can give the consumer a better idea about the product’s size, design, and functionality. They can click on video hotspots to know more about the product, or can add them directly to their cart, without leaving the video. This frictionless buying experience through interactive content works wonders for your sales numbers!
- Branching Videos: Remember Netflix’s Bandersnatch? The movie that had different endings based on your choices? Branching interactive videos are basically the same thing. This type of video content allows users to explore different storylines and choose their own adventure, leading to astronomically high engagement rates.
- Gamification in Videos: Incorporate game-like elements in your video, like quizzes, challenges, and puzzles, for increased engagement. This brings out the viewers’ competitive side and improves your engagement!
- CTAs: Call-to-Action buttons can be implemented into your video at the right time for higher conversions. For example, you can provide a CTA in the middle of the video to engage and retain, and another CTA button at the end of the video can be used for conversions.
- Live Experiences: Your brand can create live video sessions in which they answer audience questions, talk about the brand’s vision, add polls, and provide CTAs at the end of the session. These elements come together to increase brand awareness, loyalty, engagement, and conversions.
Best Tools for Interactive Video Marketing
Interactive video content can’t be created with your usual platforms like YouTube. You’ll need specialized platforms like Life Inside, Videobot, and Storyly, to incorporate interactive video content into your marketing campaigns.
Do check out our post on the best interactive video platforms to know more!
How to Create an Effective Interactive Video with Life Inside
Life Inside should be your go-to interactive video platform to change your marketing approach. It provides a highly intuitive interface that’s replete with features for video collection and funnel creation.
Here’s how it works:
1. Send a Video Request, Automate Collection, or Upload Your Own
Life Inside allows you to send your contacts video requests via SMS or email, directly from the platform. They’re guided on how to record the video and submit it to you as well.
Apart from this, you can automate the collection process through the Video Collector feature. You can create a video campaign and send it as a QR code to the recipients. This QR code is then used to share the videos directly to the platform.
2. Receive the Videos
You’ll get notifications to receive the videos once they’re ready. You can manually accept the requests or automate their collection; readying them for your next video campaign.
3. Publish the Content
Once your videos are ready, you can add them to your existing video funnel or create a new one from scratch. It only takes a few seconds, and your videos can then be distributed across your website or other channels!
4. Monitor and Adjust for Performance
After your videos are activated and funnels deployed, you can use Life Inside’s analytics features to monitor their performance. This includes data on the best-performing videos, impression counts, watch times, and overall engagement rates.
You can use this data to formulate your video campaign strategy and adjust on the fly!
Case Studies: Brands Using Interactive Video Successfully
There are plenty of real-life examples where interactive videos were successful in capturing the audience’s attention and driving revenue. Let’s talk about a few of them:
1. Netflix’s Bandersnatch
We already mentioned Netflix’s choose-your-own-adventure movie in an earlier segment. What we didn’t touch upon was the fact that this interactive video (read: movie) was a massive hit after its release!
In fact, after its release in 2018, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch won two Primetime Emmy Awards! Not only that, it also sparked discussions about viewer engagement, agency, and directorial progress!
2. Maybelline’s Try It On Tool
Maybelline, a popular American cosmetics company, released a Virtual Try It On tool on their website. This allowed consumers to virtually apply cosmetic items like lipsticks and eyeliners on their faces, without buying the product. Apart from increasing engagement, it helped build brand loyalty.
The tool also gave them ideas on which shades to use based on their skin tone!
3. Honda’s Interactive Film
We’re all aware of Honda, the Japanese manufacturing company. But you probably haven’t heard about their interactive film and marketing campaign, “The Other Side”.
In this film, viewers could switch between the storylines by pressing the ‘R’ key on their keyboard. On one side, it showed the Honda Civic, and the other was based on the newer Civic Type R.
To give you an idea of how well it worked, the traffic to Honda’s website doubled during this campaign!
Future Trends in Interactive Marketing
Interactive video content’s personalized approach, along with its versatility, make a strong use case for adoption. In fact, shoppable videos can increase conversion rates by 70%, and 89% of marketers already use video for their marketing campaigns. This shows that brands are willing to use new video marketing techniques to capture their target audiences.
We’ve covered this in detail in our Interactive Video Marketing Trends post, so make sure to check that out!
Conclusion
As a marketer, your main goals are to increase brand awareness, improve engagement rates, and generate revenue. All three of these goals are accomplished by one content format - interactive video.
Now is the perfect moment to embrace interactive video marketing. Life Inside's dedicated team is available to assist you in automating the process of video collection, activation, and distribution. Plus, our platform’s lightweight, easy to use, and integrates seamlessly with your marketing tech stack.
But don’t just take our word for it - sign up for Life Inside today and find out its benefits for yourself!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why use interactive video?
Interactive video content helps you personalize your video marketing campaigns, increase engagement, and drive conversions.
2. How does interactive video improve engagement and conversions?
Interactive video allows your viewers to participate in a video’s progression, instead of being mere spectators. This leads to an organic increase in brand retention, engagement, and conversions, as your viewers feel in control of their purchasing decisions.
3. How can AI and personalisation be used in interactive videos?
You can use AI video generators to quickly create short videos that are personalized based on your audience’s data. This helps you create videos based on their purchase history and preferences. Plus, if you’re using AI tools for data interpretation, you can analyze the data you receive from videos to customize future videos to streamline and optimize your marketing campaigns.
4. What are the challenges of implementing interactive video marketing?
Interactive videos may take a longer time to develop than traditional videos. Moreover, viewers who are used to static videos might have a difficult time understanding these videos, at least during the initial phase.
