2015 Interactive Content Marketing Trends

2015
Interactive Content Marketing Trends
© i-on interactive, inc. All rights reserved • www.ioninteractive.com

“Content Marketing Is
Becoming Less About The
Words You Put On A Page,
And More About The
Experiences You Create For
The Consumer.”- William Comcowich, CEO of CyberAlert

Clearly, Content Is Going Interactive

But Why?

Only 36% of marketers say 
passive content is effective at  
engaging buyers.
(Passive content includes things like blogs, articles and white papers.) 
 
 
Demand Metric, Enhancing the Buyer’s Journey
36%

But, 70% of marketers say interactive
content is effective at engaging buyers.
(Interactive content includes things like quizzes, assessments,  
calculators and interactive white papers.)
70%

Only 55% of marketers say passive
content is effective at differentiating 
their brand.
(Passive content includes things like blogs, articles and white papers.)
55%

While 88% of marketers say  
interactive content is effective at
differentiating their brand.
(Interactive content includes things like quizzes, assessments, calculators and  
interactive white papers.)
88%

And a whopping 93% of marketers rate
interactive content as effective at
educating the buyer.
93%

“In 2013, the most popular pieces of content on both BuzzFeed and the
New York Times had something in common.
Was it that they were well-research pieces by respected journalists? No.
In fact, the NYT piece was created by an intern. Did they break news?
Nope, no new news was made….They were quizzes. ”
- BuzzStream

“The Writing Is On The Wall:
Interactive Content
Is The Future Of
Content Marketing.”- Buzzstream

But what the heck is interactive content?

“Interactive content is anything that
requires participants’ active
engagement—something more than
simply reading or watching. In return
for their engagement, participants
receive real-time responses and
information.”
- William Comcowich, CEO of CyberAlert

So, let’s look at the 2015 interactive
content trends.

Trend #1
Engagement

“The point of content marketing  
is to attract, acquire and 
engage an audience.”
Content Marketing Institute

But 58% of marketers say their content  
doesn’t create enough opportunity  
for engagement.
58%

“Producing engaging content”
Marketers’ Biggest Challenge?
2015 B2B Content Marketing Trends, Content Marketing Institute

The Takeaway:
Think beyond linear
words on a page and
create an interactive
content experience.
Hint: assessments, configurators, quizzes,
calculators, interactive white papers &
infographics.
Get inspired here: http://www.ioninteractive.com/
interactive-content-examples/

Trend #2
Quality over quantity

“The more content we produce,
the more likely it is to fail.”
-Eccolo Media 2015 B2B Technology Survey Report

“Global business executives
are seeking substance. While
marketers are largely
marketing.”
-The Economist Group, “Missing the Mark: Global Content Survey of Brand Marketers and
their B2B Audiences

“86% of businesses say that they are
looking for ways to repurpose
content…within the next 12 months.”
- AMA

“Repurposing content will be at
an all-time high in 2015.”
-Renée Warren, President of Onboardly

The Takeaway:
Don’t create more
content.
Take your best content
and scale it into several
interactive experiences.
Here’s how:
http://apps.ioninteractive.com/site/solution-finder/interactive-content

Trend #3
Youtility.

What is the main reason a piece of content did not make a positive impression?
“It seemed more like a sales pitch ”
-The Economist Group

What content characteristics had a meaningful impact on your perceptions of a brand?
“Contained timely or unique
information and helped me understand
a complex issue in simple terms”
-The Economist Group

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

"It's not OK to simply push out anything that
contains a relevant keyword. As the content
landscape continues to experience
exponential growth, the future will be about
piecing together solutions for time-starved
individuals and helping them consume and
apply the insights.”
- Nadine Dietz, creator of The CMO Solutions Clubhouse

The Takeaway:
Launch an
assessment,
configurator or
solution builder that
will help your buyer
to learn, do or
decide.

Trend #4
Rapid innovation in user experience

There Is A Lot Happening In User Experience Design
• Responsive
• Mobile-first
• Parallax
• Hover
• Reveal
• Fade
• Ghost buttons
• Background images
• Full width background videos
• Scrolling over clicking
• Card design
• Layers
• Transitions
• Microinteractions
• Microanimations
• Material design
• Touch-friendly
• And on….
• And on…
• And on…

“Our analysis shows there is a
direct correlation between
increased levels of participation
and user engagement.”
- Alex Mathias, Twitter

The Takeaway:
Use modern
interaction
design to
engage your
visitors. It’s table
stakes now.

Trend #5
Visual & interactive storytelling

Future content will… “evoke
emotions, express deeper empathy
for each customer persona, and tell
great stories with less emphasis on
aggressive selling…”
- Hanna Andrzejewska of GetResponse

“Immersive, interactive storytelling gives companies a
means to strategically orchestrate an agile selling
environment, empowering their customers to uncover
the true value of a product or solution while creating an
emotional connection. This added level of engagement
allows users to circumnavigate relevant materials and
explore as in-depth as they deem necessary.
Customers are now engaging with content and
becoming part of the selling narrative by having the
ability to influence the outcome as they explore
consistent marketing messages.”
- AMA

Visual Content Builds Brand Engagement
• 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and
visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text.
• Photos are liked 2x more than text updates, while videos are
shared 12x more than links and text posts combined.
• 80% of your online visitors will watch a video, while only 20%
will read content.
• Video constitutes 50% of all mobile online traffic and over 90%
of internet traffic.
• Infographics have seen the largest year-over-year increase in
usage. In 2013 38% of B2B marketers were using
infographics, compared with 51% in 2014.
- Michael Brenner, Head of Strategy at NewsCred
(the irony of this page not using any visual content is not lost on us!)

“In the age of infobesity and increasing digital
noise, visual storytelling will continue to emerge
as a strategy for not only standing out, but also for
nurturing and growing vibrant and engaged
communities. The ability to craft visual stories
that inspire emotion and spark the movement
will help companies get noticed and amplify
their message throughout those communities.”
-Ekaterina Walter, CMO of Branderati

The Takeaway:
Launch an
interactive storyteller
experience to
immerse your
audience.
Here’s one we use:
http://apps.ioninteractive.com/sales/interactive-presentation/content-marketing

Trend #6
Meaningful measurement

“To show more value, our content is going to
have to be targeted to specific goals. Content is
no longer just ‘content’, but rather a highly
tactical piece of marketing created to do specific
things, like bring more people into our funnel,
increase the speed at which people move through
the sales funnel, or mitigate the churn rates.”
- Mathew Sweezy of ClickZ

“Future content will evoke emotions, express
deeper empathy for each customer persona, and
tell great stories with less emphasis on aggressive
selling. Driving these campaigns will be the rush of
data that is being made available to marketers that
not only help to determine raw metrics such as
conversion rates and engagement, but gain deeper
insight into customer behavior to develop
smarter campaigns and more targeted offers.”
- Hanna Andrzejewska of Get Response

When we measure
interactive content
inputs, we have rich
insights into buyer
needs, pains, goals.
When buyers interact with content like
calculators, quizzes, configurators &
assessments, we know exactly how they
responded. That’s powerful data.
When we measure
downloads, page views
& shares, we’re
measuring pass/fail
interactions.
Pass/fail interactions aren’t really all that
illuminating when you think about it. So, they
downloaded a white paper. Did they read it? So
they hit a webpage, did they learn anything?

The Takeaway:
Measure aggregate
user interactions
and inputs in your
interactive content
to yield significant
audience insights.

Trend #7
Surface buyer insights to sales

Content Marketing Today
“Marketers must produce content that
adds value in order to engage customers.
The true measure of content is the
experience the person has with it.”
Mathew Sweezey, Director of Thought Leadership at Pardot

“In 2015, digital marketing will converge with
digital selling in a meaningful way. Marketing
(one to many) and sales (one to one) are
beginning to use the same techniques of
content creation and real-time engagement. The
best organizations will not run marketing and
sales as separate ‘departments’ but will merge
the two functions into one customer facing
organization focused on revenue generation.”
- David Meerman Scott, Keynote Speaker & Bestselling Author, Freshspot Marketing

The Takeaway:
Provide more than
pass/fail data to
sales. Provide rich
insights into
specific buyer
behavior & inputs.

We can help!
ion interactive helps customers concept, create and
launch interactive content experiences.
www.ioninteractive.com
@ioninteractive
info@ioninteractive.com

2015 Interactive Content Marketing Trends

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