2016 interactive content marketing trends

interactive content marketing trends @ioninteractive

What’s inside…

• Addressing increased content performance and ROI pressure

• Breaking through content clutter for sustainable attention

• Repurposing content through function rather than format

• Increasing lead quantity and quality from content

• Increasing velocity and relevance in the buyer’s journey

This year brings an evolution of trends in content engagement, lead gen, lead quality and measurement.

• Need to demonstrate ROI in the form of leads, pipeline, sales

• Content shock (which leads to low engagement, less than stellar results, un-differentiated content, etc)

• Need to repurpose existing content investments

• Need to surface more, and better, leads to sales

Macro-level content marketing trends

• lead gen • lead quality

• engagement

• audience insights

• measurement

• repurposing

• testing • personalization • content across the buyers journey

• the user experience

in 2016 interactive content will be all about….

• Measurement

• Leads

• Lead quality

• The content experience

main interactive content trends

first, a content marketing state of the union

The past few years have brought a dramatic increase

in Content Spending & Content Creation

Content Creation

Content Spending

And with it, we’ve hit a saturation point (the infamous

“content shock”)

Content Creation

Content Spending

Saturation Point

Which brings some negative consequences in the form of…

Content Creation

Content Spending

Saturation Point

Content Factory

Content Shock

Undifferentiated

Low ContentEngagement

Lack ofMeasurement

Lack ofDemonstrable Results

“Content marketers have reached a market saturation point where increased

effort yields diminished results.” Heidi Cohen

ThoughtfulContent

Repurposing

Highly Differentiated

IncreasedEngagement

Clear Measurement

Increased Leads,Lead Quality,

Pipeline Sales Velocity

The ideal outcome is to be able to maintain a high output of quality

content while overcoming the inherent challenges.

• your audience is overwhelmed • your audience can find any content on any topic easily • your audience isn’t vested in your content • it’s harder for you to differentiate your content • it’s harder for you to get your audience to engage • it’s harder for you to get your audience to want to convert

content shock….

content shock creates a perfect environment for the rise of interactive

content…

“Enter interactive content. On the battlefield that is content marketing, reading, watching, listening to, or

downloading something may be the equivalent to firing a shot, but getting a prospect emotionally

involved via interaction is a hit.” Barry Feldman on the Kiss Metrics Blog

“A Study in Brand Transformation” by Skyword and Researchscape International of B2C and B2B enterprise marketing leaders across 40 industries.

Yet so few marketers are taking advantage of interactive (just 36% in this survey)!

But interactive is what your buyers want! 91 percent of B2B buyers want brands to offer more interactive and visual content for on-demand consumption…45 percent say

interactive presentations are highly valuable when researching purchases (ranking them as four or five on a scale of five).

The 2015 Content Preferences Survey by Demand Gen

Buyers want it. Which is probably why interactive content is so much more demonstrably effective at

buyer education than static content is.

“Blog posts, white papers, info graphics, videos and reports can be great content for people and search engines. But in 2016, attention

will start to shift away from static content toward more engaging forms of content….your 2016 content plan should include

interactive assessments, calculators, trainings and games to keep people clicking, pressing, swiping and sharing information

with you that you can use in your sales processes.” Big Interactive Corporation

@chiefmartec

“By its very nature, interactive content engages participants in an activity: answering questions, making choices, exploring scenarios. It’s a great way to capture

attention right from the start. Individuals have to think and respond; they can’t just snooze through it.”

Scott Brinker, @ChiefMartec, in a guest post on Copyblogger

Your content has to be useful.

"The point isn't just to be present, but to be useful.For companies that sell to other businesses,

the litmus test of an effective content marketing program is always to ask the question, 'Will our

customers and prospects find this to be useful?’" Tim Williams, founder of Ignition Consulting Group

A white paper is limited in it’s usefulness

Quiz Assessment Interactive Infographic

The white paper content transformed into tools and discoverable stories are useful

Useful is….a calculator

…with personalized results

Useful is….a self assessment tool

…with personalized benchmarks & recommendations

Interactive InfographicEarly Buyer Journey Content

Interactive White PaperEarly & Mid BuyerJourney Content

AssessmentMid & Late Buyer Journey Content

Useful is content that’s appropriate for the buyers journey

78 percent of B2B professionals worldwide say content is very important to the effectiveness of the sales process.

Qvidian

Your 2016 action items• Repurpose existing content assets into interactive tools and

interaction-based experiences

• Provide personalized recommendations, benchmarks and assessments based on responses and inputs

• Support the buyer’s journey with content that’s stage-appropriate

• Adopt a content strategy—no more content for content’s sake

Lead generation. It’s where it’s at.

Website conversation rate is nearly 6X higher for content marketing adopters

than non adoptersAberdeen group 2014

Interactive content is almost twice as effective as static content at conversion!

Getting your audience to convert on your interactive content is relatively easy….

Consistent CTA for a related asset

Consistent CTA for a related asset

Gated full results

• Incorporate calls to action, used prominently

• A/B test CTA and form placement

• Use stage appropriate content to increase conversion likelihood

• Cross-sell content to capture leads on experiences that would otherwise not lend themselves to lead gen

Your 2016 action items

But it’s not just leads…it’s lead quality too!

Marketing typically surfaces lead quality and engagement like this….

Digital Body Language—a record of a lead’s page views, links clicked and

downloads…

All this shows a lead’s interest. But not their

true quality or readiness.

Interactive content can surface lead quality, intent, needs, pains,

challenges and more…

prices calculatedconfigurations saved

self assessments completedreport cards graded

quizzes takencontent consumed

solutions built

explicit. specific. descriptive.

consumptio

n

Show your sales

team the

percent of

content that the

visitor

consumedJoe Smith consumed

80%of the Interactive Content Marketing Toolkit

Show sales how the buyer completed an assessment and what it means

Show sales what the buyer calculated

Show sales how the buyer scored in a quiz

• Useful experience increase likelihood of content consumption, which increases a leads education—be useful in your content creation

• Surface visitor content outcomes to sales

• Use stage appropriate content to increase conversion likelihood

• Gather insights into visitor outcomes and consumption to continuously improve content, making buyers more likely to engage and consume, which leads to a better qualified lead

• Use those same insights to stop buying media that delivers low quality leads

Your 2016 action items

You gotta measure it all…

“Businesses continue to have trouble measuring their content marketing investment results. This includes budget and people.

Despite this trend, businesses keep investing more money in content. At some point, marketers must show results in terms of

MQLs (or marketing qualified leads) or sales. Money needs to be aligned with results or businesses will stop providing budget.”

Heidi Cohen

Score interactions An aggregate score indicates overall consumption and engagement (great for marketing insights), and an individual lead’s score can be shared with sales. Scoring

Each time a visitor interacts with a page element, increment their score by 1.

1+

1+

1+

1+

Tagging

Show sales which

infographic

elements the

visitor interacted

with.

Tag behaviors Aggregate tag data shows content interest (great for ongoing content improvements), and an individual lead’s tags can be shared with sales.

If documenting and following a thoughtful strategy are critical this year, then measuring the successes and failures should go hand in hand

with those steps.

Trim the fat off your reporting and focus on the important data points that actively contribute to your funnel and aren’t just vanity metrics that give you false hopes. Every business will track its efforts differently, so it’s important to remember whatever KPI (key performance indicator)

you are looking at; make sure it is one that reveals the effectiveness of your whole content marketing system in relation to customer

conversions and sales.

Quinn Whiten via Marketing Land

• Track conversion rates of all your interactive content experiences

• Track consumption patterns to show indication of content quality and usefulness

• Track user behaviors to show indication of audience interests and preferences

Your 2016 action items

It’s all about the content experience

1. personalization

What it boils down to with content personalization is knowing your audience. It’s critical for content marketers to understand

whom they’re communicating with and what type of content their audience wants to consume. Once that understanding is there, personalization can be applied through different content

mediums. Sunil Rajaraman, Scripted

Choices make the content increasingly feel personal

Personalized results pages based on interactions

Personalized results pages based on interactions

82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content,

and 90% find custom content useful. Demand Metric 2014

Almost 78 percent of “digital natives” now expect a

personalized web experience. Venture Beat

• Start small—make it feel personalized based on their interaction

• Use progressive profiling—it reinforces the relationship you are building with the visitor

• Use behavioral information or explicit results from interactions to serve up increasingly specific or relevant content experiences

• Use information gained via interactions to target & personalize through marketing automation/nurture tracks

Your 2016 action items

2. interaction design

“Blog posts, white papers, info graphics, videos and reports can be great content for people and search engines. But in 2016,

attention will start to shift away from static content toward more engaging forms of content….your 2016 content plan should include interactive assessments, calculators, trainings and

games to keep people clicking, pressing, swiping and sharing information with you that you can use in your sales processes.”

Big Interactive Corporation

In 2015, we saw an increase in:

Swiping and clicking, Control over seen/unseen content, Personalization (e.g., location tools), Microinteractions, Scroll-based navigation, Video and animation, Transitions and loop

functions.

This shift places more emphasis on microinteractions, the minutiae of interactivity: a ding sound when you send an email,

or an animation to draw attention to a new notification. Interaction design with only get more intricate as technology allows, making

this a trend that’s sure to stick around for a while. Via The Next Web

Also from The Next Web The advantages of RWD are immediate, and well documented:

• Increases your audience, sales and conversion rates. According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, RWD sites achieve 11 percent more conversions than non-responsive sites on average.

• Forces you to prioritize content for each viewport (especially smaller screens), which inevitably makes for a stronger site.

• Truly future-proof since you don’t need to obsess over every new device screen size

• Improves your SEO: Google officially recommends responsive sites. • Gives users uniform quality — no one wants to be a second-class

citizen. • Enables you to be detail oriented, which is great because (if you’re a

good designer) you care about details.

Check out examples of modern interaction design here: http://www.ioninteractive.com/interactive-content-customer-examples/

• Generate more leads & sales from my content, showing demonstrable results

• Test a variety of experiences, test placement of my calls to actions and forms

• Surface buyer content consumption, behaviors and outcomes to sales

• Measure engagement, interaction and consumption to better understand the audience and use that insight to improve content marketing

Check out examples of great interactive content marketing:

http://www.ioninteractive.com/interactive-content-customer-examples/

Thank you! @ioninteractive

info@ioninteractive.com