Posted by There comes a point in marketing when improving audience engagement becomes flat-out exhausting.
So many of us couldn’t help but wonder “How to engage your audience?”
Let me tell you the secret sauce to engage the audience: Interaction. Brands must interact with their target audience and make them feel heard.
Moreover, providing value in a fun way is always welcomed by the audience, which boosts the engagement as well.
In this post, you’ll learn the four most popular ways to use interactive marketing to engage your audience.
4 Ways to Engage your Audience with Interactive Marketing
1. Quiz
When talking about interactive marketing, it’d be impossible not to mention quizzes and their potential. You can turn a simple statement into a True or False question and engage the audience. Also, modifying the quizzes in the right way can not just turn it into a great source of first-hand information, but also boost engagement and conversion rates as well.
A quiz by Zenni Optical called ‘You’ve been framed’ received an impressive amount of engagement with $1 million in revenue in just 6 months. For Zenni Optical, the quiz was an efficient and thought-out way to understand their audience and learn more about their everyday lifestyle.
The quiz consists of a total of 9 lifestyle-related questions that allows Zenni Optical to provide the most suitable type of frame to the quiz taker.
Due to this quiz, their motive to engage the audience was achieved both on-page and off-page successfully.
On-page audience engagement generated:
Off-page audience engagement generated:
How to create engaging quizzes?
1. Choose the right topic
Before creating the questions, you must brainstorm and choose the most relevant topic for your business. Some businesses might find it easier to zero-in on the best topic. For example, fast food restaurants can form a quiz around “What kind of pizza are you?” However, for others, choosing the right topic for the quiz requires an understanding of their target audience.
Check your performance metrics on platforms like Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and learn about what type of content attracts which target audience. Following this process can clear your path into making a more informed decision.
2. Create compelling titles
The title of your quiz has to be impressive that makes the potential quiz takers find it irresistible to click. You must’ve come across (and even clicked on) a lot of titles of similar nature on several social media platforms (especially Facebook).
Here are some examples of quiz titles to engage your audience:
- Which _____ are you?
- Are you really a F.r.i.e.n.d.s fan?
- Which celebrity do you look like?
Using words like ‘really’, ‘actually’ etc. in your quiz titles increase its chances of receiving more clicks since such terms imply challenge (depends on the framing), and backing down from a challenge is not easy.
3. Craft the questions
It’s the questions of a quiz that will help you understand your audience better. You have to begin light and move on to ask some personal questions. Just look at how Zenni Optical encourages the audience to tell about themselves:
4. Compile and share the results
Compiling and sharing the results of the quiz can further help in engaging your audience and improving conversions. Zinni leveraged it as well and generated $1 million in revenue.
When showing results, Zinni adds a link for the quiz taker to look for more styles, just look at the last line:
2. Polls and Surveys
Often mentioned alongside quizzes, polls and surveys are an excellent way to engage your audience and gather feedback about your brand and its products. Through these mediums, your audience can share their mindset about your brand and what they want it to be.
For a brand, working on those feedbacks implies to the audience that they’ve been heard. Also, this gesture means that the brand cares about their customers. If your audience starts to feel this way, then you’ll notice a growth in your engagement and conversions.
How to create engaging polls and surveys?
Polls and surveys are very different from each other. One significant difference is – a poll has to be short, whereas a survey has to be detailed. Other differences include:
While there are many differences between polls and surveys, the approach of creating them is the same.
1. Humanizing the Questions
When creating the questions, make sure that they are detailed enough so the audience can understand it. Also, it is important that you give them a human touch. Your questions must be more like a conversation, so the answerer feels involved.
2. Use Emoticons and Images
Images and emoticons both have the potential to engage. Moreover, they make “conversations” light and enjoyable. So, remember to use images emoticons in your text. Also, keep in mind that they are relevant to the question.
3. Audience Data (for Surveys)
Polls are quick, and the best place to conduct them is on social media platforms. Post polls in your status or story and your target audience will take action. However, surveys are long and can take some time, and you must be aware of who is taking the survey. So, you can ask for the survey taker’s name, age, gender, location, etc.
3. Interactive Video
Have you heard of Bandersnatch?
Bandersnatch is a famous interactive film on Netflix. In the film, the viewer takes the decisions for the protagonist and based on those decisions, the storyline changes.
A Clip from Bandersnatch (2018)
For a short yet immersive experience, try this interactive video.
78% of marketers consider interactive video to be an effective strategy, and since the outcome for such videos is not predictable, the viewer is engaged until the very end.
How to create interactive videos?
While interactive videos build engagement conveniently, creating them requires expert attention. You can use tools like RAPT media, Wirewax, Hapyak, etc.
Apart from this, there’s nothing new to mention about interactive videos. However, you need to pay attention to the options. Remember, make them brief and exact so that it doesn’t confuse the viewer.
4. Live Videos
There’s nothing more interactive and engaging than live videos. If we were to believe Martechadvisor, then live streaming can be a $70 billion market by 2021.
Live videos allow viewers to interact with your brand in real-time directly. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, several celebrities, influencers, and bloggers have been live streaming to maintain a connection with their audience.
Since there’s a possibility of receiving direct responses from your favourite brand and celebrities, people tend to live stream with that hope; thereby, making contributions, commenting, and sending in thousands of likes.
How to create engaging live videos?
There’s no secret sauce to creating an engaging live video. However, for maximum audience engagement, you must keep these things in mind:
- Make live videos a part of your marketing strategy.
- Try responding to as many comments as possible.
- Do check the statistics for each social media platform when the majority of your audience is active and go live at that time for higher engagement.
Conclusion
Interactive marketing is an impressive way to keep your audience engaged. There are several tools that you can use to create quizzes, polls and surveys, and interactive videos. However, what these tools won’t teach you is how to create engaging content, so remember to brainstorm for that.
Furthermore, keep track of your efforts and performance. The data extracted from quizzes along with polls and surveys can help you make an informed decision about your next content and SEO strategy.
You have got a lot of data available at your fingertips, and you just need to utilize it in the best way possible.
Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments.
This is a guest post by Sahil Kakkar. Sahil is the CEO and Founder of Rankwatch – a platform, which helps companies and brands stay ahead with their SEO efforts in the ever-growing internet landscape. Sahil likes making creative products that can help in automation of mundane tasks and he can spend endless nights implementing new technologies and ideas. You can connect with him and the Rankwatch team on Facebook or Twitter.
Other posts by Sahil
- How to Identify FAKE Social Media Influencers
- Simple Strategies to Optimize Your Stock Photography Website
- How To Run A Successful Facebook Ads Campaign
- How To Get Started With Podcast SEO
- How Social Media Affects Your SERP Visibility
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