Types of Interactive Content and Examples

Interactive content turns your passive viewer into an active participant in the content’s narrative. This type of content uses interactive elements for users to click, answer, or redirect the narrative based on their choices. It’s a great way to stand out among your competitors by increasing brand recall, lead generation, and conversions.

Here are a few benefits that interactive content provides:

• Increased Engagement: Since your viewers are no longer passively watching the content, their engagement times are higher than when using static content.
  
  
• Improved Data Collection: With multiple interactive elements in the content, you can gather data far more easily for personalization.
  
  
• Better Lead Generation: Interactive elements for forms, surveys, and registrations provide a higher number of organic leads.
  
  
• Higher Conversions: Interactive content can streamline the user’s purchase journey and reduce overall friction, leading to higher conversions.
  
  

Still not convinced? Let these stats speak for themselves:

• 93% of marketers believe that interactive content is effective in educating potential buyers
  
  
• 62.3% of businesses employed interactive content in their marketing strategies in 2024
  
  

Interactive content increased engagement by 94%, as compared to static content

These statistics indicate that the marketing landscape is changing. It’s moving to a more personalized approach, allowing users more control over the content they consume. If you’re ready to jump into the interactive content bandwagon, this post will help you understand the different types of interactive content!

Types of Interactive Content

There are plenty of interactive content formats that you can use today. Let’s check them out below:

Quizzes and Polls

Interactive content that includes quizzes and polls is excellent for engagement, since it brings out the viewer’s competitive side. You can include questions that are based on the user’s personality or knowledge.

Benefits:

• Encourages viewer participation for increased engagement
• Can go viral through social media shares
• Gives excellent insight into your target audience’s preferences
  
  

You’ll see plenty of examples of this type of interactive content in real life, such as Instagram Polls or Buzzfeed Quizzes.

Interactive Infographics

Infographics are a great way to educate your audience on a particular topic. This type of content includes visual aids to supplement research and information. With interactive infographics, you can provide clickable elements for a more streamlined approach.

Benefits:

• Makes complex information easier to consume
• Higher engagement through clickable elements
• Great for acquiring backlinks and aiding the brand’s SEO efforts
  
  If you’ve checked out Google Trends’ Year in Search at the end of every calendar year, you’ll notice how it provides clickable elements to show what people are searching for and where. This is a great example of an interactive infographic.

Calculators and Assessment Tools

You’ll find price calculators on plenty of business websites, and assessment tools in instances when you’re checking your BMI. These are interactive tools/content that deliver personalized results, which ease your decision-making.

Benefits:

• Great for gathering user data
• Provides value to users through personalized results
• Can increase conversions if the tool simplifies difficult calculation.
  
  As an example, you’ll find Mortgage Calculators on real estate websites to simplify the mortgage calculation for purchasing a particular asset.

Interactive Videos

Interactive videos allow viewers to make choices, click multiple elements, and even change the video’s narrative based on their personal preferences. If your brand uses video marketing, interactive videos can replace static video content for higher engagement and conversions.

Benefits:

• Excellent for brand recall and engagement
• Can be customized for target audience personalization
• Greatly increases the video watch times for better SEO signals
  
  

Netflix’s Bandersnatch is a great example of interactive video content. It gave the freedom to viewers to choose their own adventure for multiple endings, leading to higher engagement.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented Reality (AR) content is more expensive to produce, but allows your users to interact with digital products in their real-world environments. However, this type of content requires AR-compatible devices.

Benefits:

• Combines both offline and online experiences
• Excellent for increasing immersion
• Increases the customer’s confidence to make a purchase decision
  
  

For example, the IKEA Place App enables users to visualize furniture in their rooms before purchase. This helps them understand the product’s dimensions and drives purchase decisions.

Gamification and Contests

Just like quizzes and polls, the gamification of your content indulges the prospect’s competitive side. This directly increases their engagement rates and the likelihood of sharing. You can introduce competitions that feature awards, badges, and leaderboards to make it more immersive, and reward users post the contest’s end.

Benefits:

• Significantly increases user engagement
• Improves brand recall through a gamified experience
• Great for lead generation via entry requirements

As an example, Duolingo uses a Streak system that rewards players for using the app daily for a set number of minutes or challenges.

Interactive E-books and Whitepapers

If you want to increase brand awareness, use interactive e-books or whitepapers ahead of static PDFs. This makes the brand storytelling more fun, engaging, and memorable for users, as you can include clickable elements and interactive visuals for a better experience.

Benefits:

• Makes for engaging content that improves the consumption experience
• Gated access for deeper insights can enhance lead generation strategies
• Can be used by brands to establish their authority
  
  

For example, Salesforce publishes an interactive whitepaper every year that includes interactive visual data and embedded videos.

Best Practices for Creating Interactive Content

It’s not enough to just create interactive content—you need to approach your audience with proper user engagement strategies and generate revenue. Here are some practices that you can follow:

Understanding Your Audience

Interactive content gives you extensive customization freedom for your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). So, take advantage of this customization by first understanding your audience. You can use polls or surveys to gather data and create content based on data-driven insights. 

In simpler terms, use data to understand the requirements and preferences of your audience and tailor your content accordingly.

Choosing the Right Type of Content for Your Goals

Interactive content comes in different formats for your goals, targets, and channels. For example, if you want to generate leads, creating short-form interactive content for social media platforms is the way to go. However, if you want to educate and engage your audience for longer periods, long-form interactive content is a better option.

Lead generation requirements can be met by using interactive tools like calculators, which require users to sign up for access. They’re also great for conversions!

Optimizing for Mobile Users

Mobile devices are the go-to option for users around the world. In fact, just in the final quarter of 2024, mobile devices accounted for over 62% of the global website traffic. So, it’s imperative for you to take advantage of this and create content that caters to the mobile device audience.

Your content needs to load quickly, maintain audio/video quality, operate smoothly, and fit different screen sizes. Most importantly, the content needs to be easily navigable. 

Tracking and Measuring Engagement

Marketing now runs mostly on data. According to a 2024 survey by Ascend2, over 95% of marketers consider data-driven marketing to be either somewhat or very successful. This shows that data-driven marketing is now the norm, and brands that don’t leverage this will fall behind sooner than expected.

Conveniently enough, interactive content platforms give you the ability to track metrics like engagement rates, watch times, click-through rates, and more. This is particularly useful if you want to know which content is performing better and why.

For content that’s not performing well, you can measure other metrics like drop-off rates and customize for improvement in future marketing campaigns.

How Life Inside Can Help You With Interactive Content Marketing

Life Inside is an interactive video platform that can help you extensively in your video marketing efforts. It helps you automate video collection, activation, and distribution across all your channels. Plus, it analyzes metrics like engagement and watch times, and helps you in A/B testing your video content.

It’s also remarkably easy to integrate with your current marketing stack, thanks to various integrations and lightweight operation. 

Life Inside’s dedicated in-house team can help you start your interactive video marketing journey from day one. To experience these amazing benefits, sign up for Life Inside today!

FAQ

1. 1. What makes interactive videos more engaging than traditional videos?

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3. Interactive videos feature clickable elements for engaging users. These videos can be used for brand storytelling, product shopping, and more. Since interactive videos require active participation, they provide higher engagement than traditional static videos.
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5. 2. How is augmented reality used in marketing strategies?

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7. Augmented Reality (AR) can be incorporated via smartphone apps and other AR-compatible devices to bridge the gap between the offline and online. For example, if you’re shopping for furniture online, you can use an AR app to determine the product’s dimensions. This helps you visualize your purchase even before making a decision, and can directly increase revenue generation.
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9. 3. What are the future trends in interactive content marketing?

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11. Interactive content marketing, especially video marketing, is now seeing a massive increase in adoption. We’ve covered these details in our Interactive Video Marketing Trends post!
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13. 4. How can small businesses start using interactive content effectively?

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15. Small businesses that are tight on funds can use interactive content on their social media channels. They can include polls, quizzes, and survey forms, which will increase their lead generation capabilities. Another way to engage users would be to introduce interactive e-books or infographics to create awareness and establish themselves as an industry authority!