The Content Marketing Institute’s research on the use of interactive content provides us with key insights into the best way to utilize specific pieces of interactive content to best nurture your leads from mere brand awareness all the way to the sales pitch. 

According to their research, it’s more effective to start the buyer’s journey with less complex, more interactive pieces of content such as quizzes or games and gradually build up to more educational pieces like an interactive whitepaper in the middle of the process. Buzzfeed popularized this business-model and has transformed what was once considered a silly quiz website into a multi-million dollar affiliate marketing platform. 

The final step is providing your potential client with a configurator to help drive home the importance of your business in providing a lasting solution to their problem and showcasing how you’re best equipped to do so.

Of course, one of the most effective ways to make sure the content you’ve laboriously crafted to help nurture your leads is actually reaching their eyes is through a solid marketing automation system. These powerful tools can help you track the ROI of your campaigns, automate multiple workflows, and collect and aggregate prospect information. Using a marketing automation platform to send personalized emails highlighting the appropriate content can go a long way to smooth the user journey for possible conversions. 

Below you can find a few of the most successful forms of dynamic content that you should take some time learning the ins-and-outs of.   

Perhaps the most ubiquitous forms of interactive content, a good infographic can be a master-class in visual storytelling. There also some of the most shareable forms of content, with many infographics including the HTML code necessary for other blogs to post the information they provide, thus organically extending the reach of the creator’s brand.

Like the face of digital marketing, infographics are evolving. Back in 2014, a static graphic was all the rage and was just the ticket for elevating your brands reach. But now, it’s important to understand that simply presenting an image, while helpful, is not all there is to creating a truly effective piece of interactive content. 

A good bit of graphic design software can work wonders in helping you quickly and effectively creating a piece of interactive visual content. Tools such as Canva or Charblocks — while simple — can go a long way in transforming the presentation of your content. These programs can not only help you distill information in an easy to consume format, but it can turn any boring blog post into something more exciting.

And then there is content experience software like Maglr that can turn larges amount of static content into highly visual interactive experiences. Content that will turn a passive reader into an active participant of your content. Interactions that definitely will win over some hearts in the early stage to grow brand awareness and engagement.

“A calculator? Why would anyone need another one of those?” You might be asking yourself. “After all, it’s not like people are visiting my eCommerce website to help them do their taxes.”

Well, my fine feathered friend, as it turns out that some ingenious, mad, incredibly attractive content marketing scientists have devised ways to create calculators that are tailor-made to provide education value for a myriad of different issues that your target audience might be experiencing.

The above picture is an example of how some scrappy content marketing teams have devised a way to deliver tangible solutions, in this case for creating UTM campaigns. 

This highlights a key understanding of creating interactive content: identify a problem being experienced by your target audience (in this case, really long and unwieldy URLs) show your audience you understand what they’re dealing with, then offer a solution. The beauty of interactive content is that it makes offering tangible solutions much more satisfying for your readers. 

Okay, you’ve piqued their interest and have them coming back to read your content on a regular basis. Now it’s time to seal the deal. 

This last example of interactive content is much less flashy than some of the other listed examples. However, if you have a potential lead hooked on your marketing pipeline, this is perhaps the best way to turn them into a customer. 

The information and inputs that consumers provide when using interactive content lead to richer profiles, better lead scoring, and improved nurturing of prospects along the buyer’s journey.

Essentially, a “configurator” is a multi step process on your website that helps your prospects find exactly what they’re looking for, with minimal investment of time or effort on their part. These have been used in many eCommerce storefronts for several years. For example, Amazon.com’s book section has a configurator to help visitors find exactly what they’re looking for and easily make a purchase: 

However, a configurator has a wider application than simple direct B2C sales. They can be exceptional tools for helping visitors slim down and synthesize information on your website, particularly if you’re offering extremely complex or technical services. 

G2.com accomplishes this well with B2B software selection. For example, their category for CRM software allows users to view dozens of software options on a visual display that sorts products based on their user satisfaction and market presence. The configurator for this piece of interactive content can be seen off to the left with the functionality to sort based on market size or other user-defined parameters. 

Now that you know how these work, check out the best CPQ Software on the internet to help you identify the needs of your website visitors and offer them long-term solutions that will naturally lead them into a productive sales call with your team.

Compare it to a trailer or teaser of a movie. You often know from the trailer whether you want to see the entire film. And still, you have control over when you want to watch it. And that's how it also works with this type of snackable content. It is an attractive way to satisfy our appetite for more information. Because of the fast, easily scannable and shareable format, it has the potential to reach and engage a larger and wider audience.

A tasty example is Food Inspiration Magazine, who are stimulating readers with beautiful food photography, short blogs and quotes via their social media channels to read the online magazine. Give readers a first taste and let them crave for more.

Snackable content is not just about a quick branded message. Brands and organisations have more to say. But they can't tell it in just a single-sided post on social media or a short blog. And therein lies the challenge for most content creators. They want their long-form content (such as a blog, white paper or e-book) can be enjoyed and consumed just like we do with smaller bite-sized content. Our brain loves images, which are much easier to digest and remember than text only. Meaning: we need to let readers enjoy every bite they take.

But how can you present and design a large amount of content in such a way that every (relevant) information is crystal clear at a glance? You need to shorten texts and support them with descriptive images, graphs and headlines. This way, you provide a clear structure and layout. Content that is easy on the eyes and can be understood quickly. Make it snackable! Arouse the curiosity of the reader and invite them to take another bite, as this example of the BBC shows.

Snackable content contains anything but empty calories. In those few seconds that you gained the reader's attention, you have the opportunity to involve them with your content. And with the available technology and tools of today, we are now able to add interactive elements to it. As a result, for example, longreads offer readers a new reading experience in a bite-sized form.

Publications such as Millennials are screwed by Highline (Huffpost) or Retour Rumoer by NOS show that you can captivate and engage readers for minutes with a well-thought-out mix of interactivity, animation, images and text. Snackable content that is finger-lickin' good.

You can see the impact of snackable content through various metrics. Short-form content is perfect for data-insights such as reach, clicks and shares. Long-form content however offers more insights into the reading behaviour of the target group, such as average session duration, scroll depth, click-through rate, bounce and even conversion percentages. 

With both this quantitative and qualitative data you can assess how snackable content contributes to the needs of the target group. Once you know what they like, you can serve your returning visitors!