Content Personalization and Interactivity
You started a business. That was your dream. It was easy to start, but you should be making a profit. You know that there is already a large number of companies that have the same or similar offer. You need to stand out, but it is necessary to do it right. The easiest way to stand out is through ads, but it is short-term. You have learned about content marketing, but not what and how to do it. You want to find out which trends will bring you better results. This is one of the scenarios that take place at the beginning of the business.
The main focus of content marketing is to provide information to the audience and to meet their needs and desires. That’s why you need to know your audience. Content marketing is used to provide content that is both useful and interesting to readers. With such content, we keep the readers and we encourage further action. Content marketing includes various forms, some of which are:
- Blogs
- Social media content
- Case studies
- E-newsletters
- Website articles
- Video
- Photos
- Whitepapers
- Infographics
- Research reports
- Print Magazines
- Digital Magazines
- Books
- E-Books
When it comes to marketing, it is not enough to take care of the visuals only. One of the key factors is the content we share. If the content is not customized, users are not satisfied either. With the help of proper content, we create good customer relationships and trust. No matter what form of marketing is being done, there is content. We can say that content marketing in almost 100% of cases goes with another form of marketing.
Content marketing foreseeing a larger number of trends. Some of the trends are:
- Improving user experience
- Personalization and interactivity of Content
- A micro influencer
- Voice and search controls
- Testing new content formats video, audio, short stories
- Brand storytelling
- Using Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence
Of the great number of trends that should mark content marketing this year, I set one out. It’s personalization and content interactivity. With the terms “personalization” and “interactivity” you have met many times. But when it comes to content marketing, information is reduced.
Content personalization
Personalized content allows the brand to distinguish from a large number of competitors. When a user gets the content that is intended for his needs and demands, then he feels valued, and this form of content personalization creates trust between the user and the brand. For such users, there is a greater likelihood of re-making the sale. The buy decision depends on the quality of the content. This means that if the content is more personalized, there is a greater chance for sale. With the help of cookies that hit almost every web page, it is possible to track users and adjust content. By developing the technology it is necessary to invest into methods for collecting information about customers and into creating personalized content.
Content customization is used for optimizing customer “journeys” on the web page or campaign. In the future the buyer’s journey will be automatically optimized and personalized for each customer. This includes headlines, content, and campaigns that will go through emails.
Personalized content can sometimes mean that we are focusing on a certain audience, while the other part is “neglected”.
There are several ways in which personalization and content interactivity can be used:
- To involve the customers into discussions about their experience with the brand
2. Live video on social network helps to create interactive content. They can be used for asking questions and giving the answers to the public, and for giving instructions about products and services. Also, various associations can use live video to inform about current problems or actions.
3. Creating tools and software’s that track all published content of the brand. This can be the creation of a special tool that have the function of understanding an issue and its impact on the life of the audience.
4. Mechanisms are created by tracking clicks and searches. This mechanisms give to the audience recommendation’s for the content that may interest them. One example is the Wish application. Based on the search it gives recommendations that are related to previous search. This way, they do not occupy app users with content that is not interesting to them. Another example is Netflix that makes recommendations based on reviewed content.
The benefits of personalizing content include:
- Increasing content relevance
- Providing the information you need
- Creating public trust
- Less possibility of wrong content
- Attracting a new audience
Personalization of content has several shortcomings:
- Need a large number of resources
- High technology required
- An analysis of a large number of data
To create personalized content it is necessary to pass 2 main phases:
1. Collecting public information
Before you create personalized content, you must create client profiles. Profiles are create with the help of the collected data. Data is collected through conversations, Google Analytics research tools …
2. Creating and publishing personalized content based on the profile
The content is made for each profile based on the client profiles. It is a content that suits the needs and wishes of a particular client. It helps marketers to create further action for the audience.
The audience for which content is created can be divided into different segments. Some of the most used segments are:
- Activity (industry)
- Size (number of employees)
- A phase of buyers journey
- Previous activities
- Personas
- Accounts
Of course, like all marketing activities, content marketing is a must to measure. With the help of measuring the brand, knows whether its marketing is good or not. Customized content marketing is measured by:
- Browse content
- Download and similar actions
- Session Duration
- Sharing content
- Make conversions
- ROI
- Lead Opportunities
- Sales opportunities
Content Interactivity
SnapApp gives you a very simple definition of interactive content marketing:
˝Content that requires the participants’ active engagement — more than reading or watching. In return for that engagement, participants receive real-time, hyper-relevant results they care about.”
Interactive content achieves better interaction between creators and content readers. Interactivity helps keep the reader’s attention and encourage him to research more and to make decisions. Creates a greater value and users share it more, comment and flatter it on social networks.
Advantages:
- Engagement Rate is higher –interaction content has more engagement than regular content that does not provide any action. The engagement obtained with interactive content includes:
- Lead generation
- Link Building
- Increased visits to the website of the brand.
- Greater amounts of relevant data are collected — To provide personalized content for the public, it is necessary to collect as much information as possible about it. In this situation, both sides win. Brand gets information about their leads and the audience content they need.
- Creating loyalty to a brand — users that read the published content see brand as experts in their field. If users are loyal that means the brand has gained their trust, and the conversion is easier.
There are many types of interactive content, and some of them are:
- Interactive Infographics — To achieve a positive impression a site needs to be visually appealing and to have some interaction with the readers. Interaction can be a click to move or scroll. I can increase engagement, website traffic, and backlinks. Content is presenting in a fun and easy way without much information.
- Interactive Video — Video is used more and more in marketing. It provides the ability to present information with a lot of creativity. Video interactivity can be increased by including hotspots tags. Clicking on the tag shows more information or leads to some websites and content.
- Calculator — The form consists of an entry field and formulas that help us to get an answer. In most cases, answering and queries are numerical. These can be, for example, an ROI calculator, average net salary, costs, percentage of growth …
- Intellectual e-books and White Papers — Large amounts of data can be shared. They result in an increase in engagement rate. The number of leads and sales increases in the long run. Readers can click on a specific piece of content to get more information.
- Interactive Email — Sends personalized content intended for one-to-one communication. There is a possibility of clicking in the email for more information.
- Interactive Time Line — Can use to display company history or various other events. It is most often placed on the website of the brand. There is a possibility to click on a specific part to get more information.
Example of using personalization and content interactivity:
When we get to the web shop and browse content, they record it. Next time when we visit the page, they will show us the content we have viewed before in a separate section of the screen. This may also be content that is related to the products or service viewing. The content that is displayed has the ability to click on it to get more information. Clicking on the content viewing serves as a reminder.
Summary:
Content marketing has become part of any business. This business wants to be in good relationship with their audience. New ways for implementation of content marketing are being developed every day. There are many trends predicted by marketing experts. Personalized and interactive content marketing is one of them. Other trends can be found on the website dedicated to marketing.
