Games, interactive infographics, polls, calculators, assessments — the list of interactive content goes on. Interactive content is in and has become one of the most effective lead generation methods. In fact, 81 percent of marketers argue that interactive marketing content is better than static content, which fits the assertion from 80 percent of consumers, who believe that their experience with the brand is as important as their experience with the product or services itself.
Today, marketers are seeing the benefits of creating and sharing interactive content. However, many marketers are under the impression that they need an in-house developer or designer to help design, build, and develop an engaging experience.
The truth is, there are a number of tools available on the web today that do just that. In this article, we will share the top nine interactive content tools that are easy to use.
What is interactive content?
Before we dive into our list of tools, let’s briefly look at what interactive content is and why it works so well.
The internet is saturated with information, media, and content. As a result, marketers are creating content faster than ever before. In fact, according to SnapApp, an interactive content tool, 70 percent of marketers claim that they are creating more content than they were a year ago.
Not only has this led to information overload, but it has also made the web highly competitive, ultimately making it even more difficult to stand out and capture the attention of your audience. As a result, the appeal of interactive content has skyrocketed.
Interactive content can be created in a variety of formats. The most common are quizzes, polls, surveys, maps, web games, and other visuals. And when used in emails, interactive content can help increase open rates and click-through rates by up to 300 percent! It goes without saying that those content marketers who do not consider interactive content in their strategies not only risk getting left behind but also miss the opportunity to really capture the attention of their users and audience.
An example of interactive marketing content
To help you get an idea of what interactive content is and how it can be used to drive leads for your company, let’s take a look at this interactive Tesla automobile savings calculator built by Outgrow (the last tool we highlight below). With this sleek calculator, a consumer can click through a few questions and determine how much money they will save by purchasing a Tesla vehicle over the life of their purchase.
Source: Outgrow
After answering a few questions that are poised to make me fall in love with the vehicle options available to me, the results are shown in an interactive graphic depicting the different areas I could save money (tax, maintenance fees, etc.). And before showing me the results, the interactive experience asks me for my contact details so that they can “conveniently” send me the results.
If you’d like to get some ideas for creative and interactive content you can create to help fill out your marketing quiver, Outgrow provides examples by industry, whether it be automobile, skincare, or hospitality.
P.S. In case you were wondering… with how little I’m driving during this pandemic, the calculator tells me I’d lose a chunk of change if I purchased a Tesla.
9 interactive content marketing tools to try
Now that you understand more about what interactive content is and why it works so well, here are the top nine interactive content tools that are worth trying.
1. Typeform
This is a popular interactive content tool used by many marketers. Typeform allows users to easily build interactive forms designed to collect customer feedback, contact details and information, quizzes, surveys and more. Typeform also offers a template gallery for users to easily build forms and other types of interactive content in minutes.
As discussed in this head-to-head product review where I review Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, and Typeform, Typeform is a great product that provides a beautiful interface for your potential customers to engage with. Additionally, as a sign that Typeform is continually being developed and improved upon, in the recent past, the developers added in integration to famously helpful martech tools such as Zapier, Hubspot, Slack, and a slew of others.
2. MindMeister
If you work within a highly collaborative team or conduct many online presentations for customers, then using an online mindmap tool just might be a great addition to your toolbox.
MindMeister allows users to instantly and easily create mind maps for brainstorming, developing marketing funnels and processes, and conducting presentations. Team members and clients can also participate in brainstorming sessions and add elements in real-time. MindMeister can also be integrated with Google, which allows users to easily add mindmaps to any document or slide deck. Enhancing your productivity one step further, MindMeister also now offers a dedicated project management tool called MeisterTask, which enables you to put your brainstormed/mind mapped plans into action.
MindMeister is available for free for your first three creations, which is a great opportunity to see if you like it. If you enjoy using it, then you will eventually need to upgrade to a paid subscription.
3. Beacon
If you want to boost your content for lead generation purposes, then be sure to check out Beacon. Beacon is a great tool to create vivid, attractive, and professional content for lead gen purposes in a matter of minutes.
Not sure where to start? Beacon offers a number of templates to choose from, or you can use the template builder to build interactive content that is on-brand. You can also easily share your content on social media. Beacon can also be integrated with other content marketing tools, such as WordPress, Mailchimp, Aweber, Zapier, and HubSpot. These integrations, and Beacon’s other lead generation features also help business owners improve their conversion rates.
4. LeadQuizzes
One of the most popular types of interactive content today is a quiz. Users love taking and sharing quizzes. LeadQuizzes is a tool that you can use to create and build quizzes to share with your audience on your website or via social.
LeadQuizzes offers a number of features, such as custom forms, designs, and logic to build a truly interactive and personalized experience for users. LeadQuizzes also now boasts a URL-redirection feature which further enables businesses to generate their own leads.
LeadQuizzes can also easily be integrated with other tools. You can embed quizzes easily in email, share on social media, or use HubSpot to track analytics and leads.
5. Pinpoll
Similar to quizzes, users love taking polls and voting on a particular personality trait, product, TV character, service, or another topic. If sharing polls with your target audience is part of your content marketing strategy, then check out Pinpoll. They have dozens of samples you can choose from to help you get started, and their features (even in the free version) make this my favorite online poll creation app.
After creating a poll, you can easily share it on social media or embed it on a page on your website.
While it may seem burdensome, with CCPA and GDPR (and another acronym-infused regulations that will likely follow), ensuring your data collecting interactive marketing tools are compliant with consumer privacy measures is more important than ever. Pinpoll understands this and is one of the first tools to have made itself 100 percent GDPR compliant.
6. Mapme
If you are targeting a local audience, or have products or services based around travel, then using a creative map tool will certainly give your brand a competitive edge. In steps Mapme, which allows you to create maps based on your audiences’ interests and then layer in additional written and video content for an awe-inspiring customer experience. Mapme also offers superb mobile compatibility which will help you reach more clients on their preferred devices.
As you can see in this example, showcasing several of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world, your highlighted location can include photos, videos, and 360-degree tours. Best of all, these can be built with no coding skills, and then shared by embedding them on your website or sharing on social. If you prefer to roll up your sleeves and get into the code, they’ve recently added the ability to get into the CSS and do some of your own advanced styling customizations. Mapme also plays well with Wix, WordPress, Weebly, and Squarespace.
7. Videoly
Videoly is a great tool for e-commerce businesses that want to enhance their product listings with videos, but don’t have the resources to create fresh videos for each product. Videoly can also help marketers find user-generated content, in a video format, that is already ideal for the product you are selling.
After Videoly finds videos through an automated algorithm that may fit your product, they then manually watch each video to ensure it is about the right product, doesn’t promote other retailers, and contains positive messages. The videos are easy to embed on your site, as you’ll update your e-commerce theme with a single script, whereby Videoly will automatically place the videos for you. Of course, you can (and should) further curate the videos by checking them yourself and opting for them to stay or be removed from that given product page. Observing the coverage and performance of these videos is something that should also concern the discerning marketer, and Videoly offers functionality for you to monitor these videos, helping you decide if they should be replaced for better-performing content.
8. Ceros
If you are just looking for ways to enhance or spruce up your existing content, then check out Ceros. Ceros allows you to create and add highly interactive content to your existing content inventory. It provides you with a wealth of interactive elements and options to add to your ebooks, infographics, webpage banners, blogs, and so on. With an eye for design, and the desire to improve its user experience, Ceros recently added in better animations and a new mantra for creating content more easily: Copy. Paste. Done.
Ceros offers many different creative elements, features, and visuals designed to enhance any type of content, and it is easy to use. Ceros also integrates with other martech tools such as Marketo and ChartBlocks.
9. Outgrow
To round out our list of nine tools that can help you create interactive marketing content, I bring you a martech tool that is perhaps the most comprehensive of the nine. Outgrow boasts the functionality to help marketers easily create interactive components as simple as forms and surveys, to those as complex as quizzes and chatbots. The rich offerings it provides can help any marketer, no matter their coding or tech chops, spin out interactive content that will help earn high-quality leads.
Suppose you are thinking of adding a calculator to your site. Outgrow is a great martech tool that makes the creation and embedding of calculators a breeze. In the unlikely scenario that you run into snags building out your calculator, Outgrow is known for great customer service via online chat.
One of Outgrow’s features that I am most impressed by is the ability to dynamically show graphs and charts based on the users’ input to your interactive content tool (i.e. calculator or quiz), in formats such as line charts, tables, and polar charts. The Outgrow tool can also handle complex formulas for calculating and displaying more advanced outputs.
Content marketing is becoming king
All in all, yes, content marketing has changed drastically within the last decade, but content is still king. In fact, 93 percent of B2B companies believe that content marketing increases and attracts more leads than traditional marketing methods, and 70 percent of marketers are actively involved in the creation of content for their company. Today, the most effective type of content is interactive content.
Regardless of your industry or niche, or whether you are B2B or B2C, the primary goal of your marketing strategy and business should be to boost lead generation, connect and nurture leads, grow your audience, and close new customers. You can achieve all of these with the right interactive content. And with the right partner. At ClearVoice, our managed content creation and expert creators can take your content creation to the next level. Talk to us today to see how.
