A Guide to High-Converting Interactive Videos
Interactive video is an effective way to create a more personalized, immersive, user-driven experience
Interactive content is at least 81% more effective in grabbing people’s attention than traditional static content.
The increased effectiveness stems from its ability to allow the viewers to get more involved through a personalized experience, which improves engagement and conversion rates.
While there are various forms of interactive content marketing, visual content like videos are perhaps the most popular.
Videos and other forms of visual content are more attention-grabbing, easier to process, and more effective at shaping human behavior.
Modern-day interactive video marketing has also evolved beyond the linear limitations of traditional videos, where viewers could only play, pause or restart them.
Videos are now more interactive as the viewers can interact with them using gestures and digital actions.
This increased interaction has helped customers get a more immersive experience when viewing marketing videos.
By encouraging customers to interact with videos, businesses can increase engagement with their target audience, which is hard to achieve with traditional static touchpoints.
The increased engagement also increases the likelihood of converting the leads.
What are interactive videos?
Interactive videos are a form of digital media meant to promote user interactions.
They are videos the viewer can interact with and are highly useful in creating an immersive marketing experience.
Unlike other video types that will only take you through a linear path when watching, interactive videos have various ways for viewers to navigate depending on their preferences.
Although these videos will play like all other video files, they have some aspects like hotspots meant to make them more interactive.
Clicking on a hotspot forces the video to jump to a different point or direct you to a separate video file.
Viewers can also interact with these videos by performing other digital actions such as dragging and selecting different objects.
The level of interaction depends on the content creator.
Some interactive videos will also allow for 360-degree views and feature other things like pdf in the video, trigger pop-ups, clickable cards, and Google maps.
All these elements help boost the effectiveness of video marketing and increase conversion rates.
Why use interactive videos?
At least 35% of marketers who used interactive videos have seen an increase in their conversion rates, and 25% saw an increase in their sales.
Since increased conversion and sales are the key goals of any marketing campaign, this is enough reason to use interactive videos.
However, there are still many other benefits of interactive video marketing strategy that you should know if you are thinking of adding it to your digital marketing campaign.
Read More: 5 Reasons Why You Should Create Interactive Videos
Benefits of interactive videos
1) Trackability
One of the most significant shortcomings of traditional video marketing is that it is not always easy to track its success and effectiveness.
The only thing that comes close to tracking the success is the view rate, but it is still impossible to determine how it relates to your conversion rates.
An interactive video campaign can help change this as it supports greater traceability.
You can track the number of clicks within your interactive video and collect data from different fields in the video.
Certain tools can help you track different interactive video metrics, such as WIREWAX and VIDYARD.
Read More: 35+ Experts Reveal the Most Important Video Marketing Metrics to Track .
2) Increased engagement
87% of viewers use at least one extra screen when watching TV, meaning something is already distracting them.
Therefore, for your marketing video to capture their attention, it must be engaging.
Interactive videos achieve this by creating an interactive game-like experience that will grab user attention and make them engage with your content.
Read More: Create Audience Engagement With Videos
3) Message simplification
People are exposed to numerous ads every day. And so you can be sure your target audience is already overwhelmed with other ads by the time they see your video.
But, an interactive video can still capture their attention as it simplifies the message.
The interactive video makes the message you want to pass easier to understand by interacting with the target audience, leading to a higher likelihood of conversion.
4) Optimizing customer experience
Businesses can gain tremendous value from ensuring the customer experience is enjoyable throughout the sales funnel.
Interactive videos are highly useful for optimizing customer experience as they give the target audience a natural way of personalizing content to suit their preferences.
These videos also present your sales message in a fun way that does not appear like you are trying to sell, which most customers prefer.
5) It is memorable and more delightful
The ability to engage with your videos will make your brand more memorable, and so even if they do not buy immediately, they are likely to in the future.
Interactive videos are up to 32% more memorable than traditional linear videos.
Besides being memorable, an interactive video will be more delightful as many viewers enjoy viewing and interacting with them, especially if they have a fun gaming element.
These videos will be an excellent way to improve the user experience by giving them fun content that still teaches them more about your brand and products.
How brands can use interactive videos
While there is a lot you can do with interactive videos, the ultimate goal is always to increase profits for your business by driving more conversions to make more sales.
However, brands can still have specific targets for their interactive videos and so the benefits they get from them will also differ.
Here are a few examples that show how brands have used interactive videos:
Honda
Honda had one of the most successful interactive videos a while back.
The main aim of the video was to increase interest in their new Honda Civic by showing its practicality as a family car and high performance.
Their two-sided interactive video allowed the viewers to switch between stories showing the two sides of the car.
The outcome was that the interactive video made people spend more time on the video, and traffic to their website doubled as the campaign went on.
Interactive Video: Honda Presents The Other Side
Disney’s The Jungle Book
Disney created an interactive video to give their fans an inside look at how “The Jungle Book” was made.
The interactive video helped Disney reveal how they made one of their most successful films to date to help create a closer bond with fans.
Interactive Teaser: The Jungle Book by Disney
BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland produced an immersive 360-degree view of Scotland’s Glen Coe valley.
The video aimed to showcase the beauty of Scotland, and it allowed the viewers to experience the landscape from any angle, making them feel like they were there.
Role of interactive videos in marketing
Adding an interactive video platform to your marketing strategy should be part of your plans if you are serious about improving customer engagement and experience.
But it is still essential to make sure you understand the role of interactive videos in marketing for the best outcomes.
Interactive video marketing provides an easy, efficient, and highly effective way of improving your video marketing strategy.
It ensures that you do not just create videos that will sell your product but also dictate how they do it as you get more control over the storyline.
Also, interactive videos will open new doors for lead generations and increase conversions by building several functionalities into the videos.
These functionalities include hotspots, 360-degree views, branches, and data inputs.
The extra functions will give you a reach that you would not get with traditional linear videos, increasing your leads and conversions.
Making your video marketing strategy interactive will help achieve better engagement with your customers and prospects by giving them high-quality content that they would want to interact with.
Besides increased engagement, this will also help improve brand awareness, which is critical for your marketing campaigns.
How interactive videos can fit into your marketing strategy
Interactive videos have a vital role in your marketing strategy, and failing to include them is a big mistake that will deny you access to more leads.
Although its role in marketing might not look that obvious, here are a few ways how it can fit into your strategy.
Branding
Interactive videos will fit perfectly into your brand awareness marketing strategies.
Most people love innovation, so they are more likely to remember brands that use innovative technologies like interactive videos.
Also, interacting with your brand and products through the videos means they will know your business and what it offers better and are more likely to remember it for a long time.
SEO
Using relevant videos in your marketing effectively improves your web ranking and drives more organic traffic to your site.
Hence, it should be clear that interactive videos will fit into your existing SEO strategy well.
Gamification
Gamification is one of the most effective strategies for increasing customer engagement and making your target audience take a specific action.
The strategy has been gaining more popularity in recent years, and the gaming element of interactive video means they will be an excellent addition to the tactic.
Social media engagement
Videos are the most useful content on social media, according to marketers.
However, it is still grossly underutilized, with videos forming less than 15% of content on Instagram and Facebook.
You can easily leverage the potential videos have to drive more social media engagement by creating and sharing fun and interactive videos that more people will want to watch.
Improving conversion rates with interactive video marketing
Interactive videos provide an easy way of improving your conversion rates without having to create several videos.
Unlike the traditional linear videos, they will not rely on quantity. So with just one video, your brand can target more people to increase prospects’ engagement and create more qualified leads.
Here are a few other things you need to do to improve your conversion rates with interactive video marketing:
Plan the interactive video marketing campaign
Your interactive video marketing campaign should be well-planned and carefully thought-out to increase conversion rates.
Planning will primarily entail making an intentionally designed video with the end-user in mind.
It should not just be interactive for its sake but instead, use its interactiveness to enhance the user experience.
Here are some tips to keep in mind when planning an interactive video marketing campaign.
- Define your video marketing goals from the onset
- Pick the right platform to reach the target audience — YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Landing Pages, etc
- Set up your video marketing budget
- Batch-create your videos to ensure you have enough content ready and save time
Use the right strategy
Creating good interactive videos is only the first step, as you will also need to use the right strategy to increase conversion rates.
For example, you can embed functionalities like hotspots and branches in the videos that require the customers to take some action.
These functionalities increase customer engagement and make them more perceptive to further lead-nurturing, which is essential for your ultimate goal of converting more of these leads.
Personalize user’s journey
Creating videos that personalize the user’s journey through the sales funnel will increase the chances of making a conversion.
A personalized video should include elements that make the customers feel like you are talking directly to them and understand their pain points.
You can personalize your interactive videos using different prompts in the video to create segment-wise personalization.
Branches can be very effective here as they allow the users to take different paths for more customized content.
Use visual media
If your interactive videos also air on TVCs, you should use visual media like QR Codes to drive the viewers to your online landing pages.
When the audience chooses to scan the QR Codes, it means they are well engaged and will hence be easier to convert once they get to your landing page.
You should not have any difficulties creating and embedding QR Codes into the interactive videos as you only need a good QR Code generator tool.
Create custom landing pages
You should use custom landing pages to personalize user journey flow after engaging them with an interactive video CTA.
A custom landing page can help improve lead nurturing and the overall customer journey, leading to a higher conversion rate.
Interactive videos are slowly proving a game-changer for business owners and marketers. In the highly competitive modern business space, linear videos are no longer enough to engage a more informed customer base and increase conversion rates.
In a highly innovative digital space where people can interact with others in just a few clicks, interactive videos are a powerful tool that you can leverage to convert more prospects into actual customers.
When used properly, interactive videos will also improve and personalize the customer experience, which can be very useful for building customer loyalty and enhancing word-of-mouth marketing.
Author: Maria Prakkat
An avid reader, and writer, Maria is an ardent knowledge-seeker of anything technology and marketing. She is a fervent supporter of environmental and eco-friendly activities. Maria also aims to write and spread the word on latest innovations in regard to technology and its future scopes.
