Interactive marketing to boost consumer engagement, conversion, and ROI

Insight

Attention scarcity is at an all-time high. If you have just 7 seconds, how do you capture your consumer? How do you ensure they go from hooked to purchase? The facts¹ show that:

Users ignore over 80% of digital ads.
Fully engaged customers represent a 23% higher share in profitability, revenue, and relationship growth.
54% of customers think companies need to transform how they engage.
64% of customers expect tailored engagement that is based on past interaction.

The solution to this lies in a combination of hyper-personalised messaging and engaging, digital features. In other words, interactive marketing.

What is interactive marketing?
How do interactive features drive marketing campaigns?
Interactive marketing examples
Case studies

What is interactive marketing?

Interactive marketing is about catching consumers’ attention and triggering a direct response from them through innovative means.

It is a method that takes into account a target audience’s preferences² and engages them through interactive features that range from simple Instagram polls to complex, immersive video.

How do interactive features drive marketing campaigns?

Image via our campaign for Nutox

Interactive features are adept at garnering consumer interest and engagement.

Why? For these simple reasons:

1. Interactivity makes users feel involved

Interactive features help consumers see themselves in the brand’s experience.³ Whether it is time spent joining a brand’s product development process, or effort used to play a gamified campaign for a discount, these investments give users some skin in the game.

2. Interactive features support the Awareness stage within the marketing funnel

During the Awareness stage, these features differentiate a brand from its competitors and delivers impact during that critical first impression. This first discovery experience leads a customer to further engagement down the road.⁴

In fact, 75% of marketers agree that offering customers a “sample” of the brand through free, interactive content resulted in a higher degree of lead nurturing.⁴

3. Interactive content streamlines the purchasing process

Demand Gen Report⁵ found that interactive content led to 2X more conversions than passive content. This is likely through showcasing the product in an engaging manner and by providing social proof to ease the fear of buyer’s remorse.

Used this way, interactive features become a tool that reduce friction at buyer touchpoints and supports conversion.

Interactive marketing examples

There are numerous types of interactive features marketers and brands can incorporate into their strategy. These features are flexible enough to suit a short-term campaign or become a mainstay of their content marketing strategy. Below is a non-exhaustive list of features brands can incorporate into their marketing.

Simple interactive features

Image via piktochart

1. Animation

Animation in marketing ranges from website features to short videos. It can convey simple messages or break down a complex concept in a visually appealing way.⁶

2. Infographics

Dynamic infographics take educative content to the next level. Layering an element of engagement with informational content combines expertise with memorability. Users are more likely to remember the brand associated with impactful, valuable content.

Advanced interactive features

Image via Braze

1. Gamified elements

Gamification is a well-known interactive marketing tool that engages users. It is easy to customise to a brand’s needs, be it simple or complex. Popular features range from calculator-like tools to trivia and lottery-style games. AR too is another form of interaction and it’s extremely flexible, used in custom IG and Facebook filters to full-fledged games like PokemonGo.

Though gamification requires some time and effort, it yields great results both for product exposure and increasing user engagement.

Adact⁷, a gamification company trusted by leading global brands, shows gamification offers:

A 16% bounce rate compared to the industry average — between 25.2% and 62.8%
Engagement time ranges from 9 minutes to 60 minutes
A completion rate of 98%

2. Video

Personalised, otherwise known as dynamic video, turns “just” a video into a piece of content users resonate with. It makes the audience feel like the video is speaking to them and addressing their needs.⁸

Interactive video

Interactive video is where participants navigate a video through the choices they make. This could be the short surveys YouTube shares before a video loads, toggling left and right within a video, or entering a storyline and making choices like a character.

Compared to other types of video content, 43% of consumers prefer interactive video content because they’re able to decide what information they’re in control of and what they’re viewing.⁹

Immersive video

Immersive video, otherwise known as 360° Video, records video in all directions at the same time.

These sorts of videos are memorable and impactful. They’re great for creating an ultra-immersive user experience while also allowing the user to frame themselves within the video environment.

Case studies

Here are two examples of how interactive marketing supports different stages of the marketing funnel and can be tailored to a campaign.

1. Shiseido X Watsons: #MyJapaneseBeauty Asia Campaign

Image via our campaign for Shiseido

Shiseido sought to pivot online in the middle of a pandemic to spotlight their brands and products.

To digitally recreate the sensorial experience consumers get at physical events, we designed an interactive microsite to meet Shiseido’s multiple markets and corresponding languages.

Interactive features included:

Parallax animation and asymmetrical layouts that pushed the boundaries of traditional web design.
Engaging website navigation that led consumers to discover the 6 pillars of Japanese Beauty philosophy and the persona of Shiseido’s brands.
Integrated gamification elements that highlighted each brand’s USP, product, and essence.

This direction, supported by our digital strategy, strengthened top of mind awareness for Shiseido and its sub-brands. Results-wise, we gained 25K+ unique page views and drove 18k traffic to Shiseido’s e-commerce partner, Watsons.

2. KSK: YOO8 serviced by Kempinski Interactive Campaign

Image via our campaign for KSK Land

KSK Land sought to promote their upcoming YOO8 branded residences under 8 Conlay.

Due to MCO (Malaysia’s national quarantine measures) constraints upon physical sales galleries, we offered an alternative method to engage with consumers: an interactive digital experience that showed customers “the art of living” with Kempinski at YOO8.

This digital alternative:

Took the consumer through YOO8’s hospitality in first-person perspective within a mini movie. As the main character, consumers could make choices to navigate the storyline.
Personalised the consumer experience. We offered viewers 6 possible endings to uncover, thus increasing playability and encouraging further discovery.
Hosted the mini-movie on a mobile-first microsite with interactive elements to improve user experience.

This campaign was the first of its kind among Malaysian property companies. The campaign raked in 2.8 million social media impressions and close to 28K site visitors.

Conclusion

Staying top of mind is crucial and a strategic interactive campaign could be the tipping point that captures the consumer’s attention amidst the noisy ad landscape.

Interactive marketing has near-endless possibilities and is proven to work. Its highly personalised messaging and impactful, engaging features are the antidote to ad fatigue today.

Want to include interactive marketing in your next campaign? Talk to us today!

References:

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