People tend to spend a significant portion of their time on their phones throughout the day.
Mobile devices travel with your customers and are always in their pockets, making it easy for them to use frequently.
However, many marketing strategies fail to take mobile devices into account and instead focus their efforts on desktop marketing.
Engaging audiences with authentic, interesting content on a mobile device is an essential part of a successful marketing strategy.
Interactive content allows you to hold the attention of your audience and deliver a great experience.
Combining interactive content with a mobile strategy is a perfect combination for growth. In this article, we’ll examine why interactive content for mobile matters to your business.
What is Interactive Content?
Interactive content is content that conveys a message through user participation.
Rather than passively reading a blog or news article, interactive content depends on active engagement from users.
This empowers individuals and gives them some control over the content they are taking in.
Interactive content can come in many forms, including:
- Quizzes
- Ebooks
- Calculators
- White Papers
- Infographics
- Lookbooks
- Landing Pages
- Resource Libraries
- Questionnaires
- Videos
- Maps
- Surveys
- Polls
- Assessments
- Webinars
Why is Interactive Content Important for My Marketing Strategy?
Interactive content is an important aspect of a successful marketing strategy.
It provides many benefits that make it superior to traditional content and a worthwhile avenue to invest in.
Interactive content creates a better user experience than traditional content.
When content is interactive, it becomes a source of entertainment for your users and adds some fun to the content experience.
Rather than passively reading an article, your users can enter their own ideas, choose what to click or read next, and think through options in order to tailor and personalize the content experience to their liking.
All of this interaction also helps to boost engagement. When a user is actively participating in their own content experience, they are more likely to convert to the next step in the buyer journey by clicking on a link or submitting their information.
Users are also more likely to support a brand that can deliver a great interactive experience.
Finally, interactive content helps to increase your lead generation efforts and improve your marketing workflows.
Interactive content has visual appeal and dynamic elements that encourage users to join in your sales and marketing funnels.
By making the experience of engaging with content more enjoyable, you can pull in more leads and find more ways to reach out to your audience.
What are Mobile Strategies?
Now that you understand more about what interactive content is, let’s explore what a mobile strategy is and why it matters for your brand.
A mobile strategy is a unique strategy that takes a mobile device into consideration and uses it to drive the digital strategy for a marketing department.
The steps of the buyer’s journey and your customer paths are all channeled through the lens of mobile devices, and marketing efforts are geared towards using a mobile device as a tool.
Mobile strategies can include many different elements, including mobile-optimized websites, emails, SMS messages, social media, mobile apps, and more.
By creating a strategy that focuses on mobile, you can reach your customers where they are and engage with them in a setting that is easiest for them to access.
What is Mobile-First Communication?
Many marketing strategies begin on a desktop.
This makes sense if you think about how we work in an office setting: on a computer.
Most of the time websites, emails, landing pages, and other marketing assets are designed for a desktop experience and then shrunk down to fit a mobile screen.
Mobile first communication spins this on its head.
Rather than beginning big and shrinking it down, digital technology begins small and then scales up.
This means that instead of trying to make large designs fit into a small space, you begin with the more complicated mobile approach and then optimize those designs and strategies for the desktop as needed.
While mobile-first is usually used in the case of design, it also plays into marketing strategies.
Rather than designing and creating interactive marketing assets for a larger screen, then trying to shrink it down to fit into a mobile device, you can begin with mobile in mind and assume that most of your users are on mobile devices when interacting with your brand.
What are the Steps to Design a Mobile Strategy?
Building a mobile strategy requires you to take a few different steps.
Let’s break down those tactics.
Keep Things Simple
Mobile strategy shouldn’t be overly complicated.
When you are working on a small screen, you want to make sure that the core message and elements of your marketing initiatives are prominent, and not lost in the crowd.
In addition, users have a short attention span, especially on mobile, so you want your interactive elements to be easy to find, easy to use, and simple.
Make Sure You Aren’t Slowed Down
Is there anything worse than a slow-loading webpage on a mobile device?
This can often happen when too many elements are struggling to load at once.
Streamlining and creating a simple page allows you to optimize the time that users spend on your pages and make sure that your message is clear.
You don’t want your users to back out of your site or leave your interactive content experience because it was taking too long to load.
Be There For Customers
Customers expect to be taken care of when they use company apps or mobile-designed websites.
When they have a question, they expect an immediate answer. They don’t want to wait days or more for a reply to a simple question.
Tools like chatbots and live chat can help you connect with customers immediately, and having a resource center can help customers self-serve themselves to find the answers they need.
Create an App
Having your own company app is a huge way to create an interactive experience with your customers and deliver them a tailored experience.
With a company app, you can create a specific, targeted strategy for customers and give them the kind of experience that makes your brand unique, special, and stand out in their minds.
Your app can become the command center for your mobile strategy, and you can implement any number of interactive content types in your app to engage your user base.
Interactive Content to Boost Your Mobile Marketing Strategy
Now let’s look at some specific interactive content ideas that you can use to boost your mobile strategy and create engaging experiences with your users.
Interactive Content #1: Mobile Strategy Games
Mobile strategy games are specific types of mobile apps and games that are geared towards thinking creatively and planning out decision-making to reach a specific outcome.
Mobile strategy games are some of the most popular types of games out there on mobile devices, and users are extremely dedicated to their favorite mobile strategy game.
By attaching your brand name to strategy games, you can increase engagement and brand recognition among mobile users.
Interactive Content #2: Gamification
Gamification is what it sounds like: making things feel more like games.
It’s an interactive strategy that applies different elements of gaming, like scoring points or competing with others, to different areas of marketing.
It makes things much more fun for users and works great on mobile where your users are already geared towards clicking, playing games, and competing with others.
Interactive Content #3: Rewards Programs
Interactive rewards programs on mobile are a fantastic way to ensure that your customers keep coming back for more.
You can take the elements of gamification and use them within your mobile rewards programs to ensure that your customers get even more value out of purchasing from your brand.
You can make the action of spending points more fun and enjoyable for your readers to increase engagement and return sales.
Interactive Content #4: Microlearning
Microlearning is an interactive strategy where you help to educate and inform your audiences on mobile in an entertaining way.
Rather than just having them read an article, you can come up with short, informational videos, learning courses, infographics, games, challenges, and other content sources.
This allows your readers to learn within their attention spans and gather information at a pace that works for them.
Wrap Up
Interactive content is an essential part of creating an engaging, enjoyable, and interesting experience for your customers.
When you have a strong connection with audiences through interactive content, you can then optimize that approach for mobile.
Mobile strategies reach your audiences where they are and help you increase leads, conversions, and engagement.
Interactive content is only one element that can be used in a mobile marketing strategy.
To learn more about other ways to improve your mobile approach, check out our blog on mobile marketing tactics. There you’ll learn about different techniques you can work into a mobile marketing strategy to improve your efforts.
Ready to transform your mobile strategy with interactive content? Discover how Content Cloud empowers businesses to create engaging and interactive marketing experiences optimized for mobile devices.
