This document discusses emerging trends in interactive content marketing in 2016, including a focus on measurement, leads, lead quality, and improving the content experience through personalization and interaction design. Key points include the need to demonstrate ROI from content through leads and sales; overcoming "content shock" by repurposing content into interactive tools; and using interactive content to better qualify leads and provide sales with insight into prospects' content consumption and interests.

1. interactive content marketing trends
@ioninteractive

2. What’s inside…
• Addressing increased content performance and ROI pressure
• Breaking through content clutter for sustainable attention
• Repurposing content through function rather than format
• Increasing lead quantity and quality from content
• Increasing velocity and relevance in the buyer’s journey

3. This year brings an evolution of
trends in content engagement, lead
gen, lead quality and measurement.

4. • Need to demonstrate ROI in the form of leads, pipeline,
sales
• Content shock (which leads to low engagement, less than
stellar results, un-differentiated content, etc)
• Need to repurpose existing content investments
• Need to surface more, and better, leads to sales
Macro-level content marketing trends

5. • lead gen
• lead quality
• engagement
• audience insights
• measurement
• repurposing
• testing
• personalization
• content across the buyers journey
• the user experience
in 2016 interactive content will be all about….

6. • Measurement
• Leads
• Lead quality
• The content experience
main interactive content trends

7. first, a content marketing
state of the union

8. The past few years have
brought a dramatic increase
in Content Spending
& Content Creation
Content Creation
Content Spending

9. And with it, we’ve hit a
saturation point (the infamous
“content shock”)
Content Creation
Content Spending
Saturation Point

10. Which brings some negative
consequences in the form of…
Content Creation
Content Spending
Saturation Point
Content Factory
Content Shock
Undifferentiated
Low Content
Engagement
Lack of
Measurement
Lack of
Demonstrable
Results

11. “Content marketers have reached a
market saturation point where increased
effort yields diminished results.”
Heidi Cohen

12. Thoughtful
Content
Repurposing
Highly
Differentiated
Increased
Engagement
Clear
Measurement
Increased Leads,
Lead Quality,
Pipeline
Sales Velocity
The ideal outcome is to be able to
maintain a high output of quality
content while overcoming the
inherent challenges.

13. • your audience is overwhelmed
• your audience can find any content on any topic easily
• your audience isn’t vested in your content
• it’s harder for you to differentiate your content
• it’s harder for you to get your audience to engage
• it’s harder for you to get your audience to want to convert
content shock….

14. content shock creates a perfect
environment for the rise of interactive
content…

15. “Enter interactive content. On the battlefield that is
content marketing, reading, watching, listening to, or
downloading something may be the equivalent to
firing a shot, but getting a prospect emotionally
involved via interaction is a hit.”
Barry Feldman on the Kiss Metrics Blog

16. “A Study in Brand Transformation” by Skyword and Researchscape International of B2C and B2B
enterprise marketing leaders across 40 industries.
Yet so few marketers are taking advantage of
interactive (just 36% in this survey)!

17. But interactive is what your buyers want! 91 percent of B2B
buyers want brands to offer more interactive and visual
content for on-demand consumption…45 percent say
interactive presentations are highly valuable when researching
purchases (ranking them as four or five on a scale of five).
The 2015 Content Preferences Survey by Demand Gen

18. Buyers want it. Which is probably why interactive
content is so much more demonstrably effective at
buyer education than static content is.

19. “Blog posts, white papers, info graphics, videos and reports can be
great content for people and search engines. But in 2016, attention
will start to shift away from static content toward more engaging
forms of content….your 2016 content plan should include
interactive assessments, calculators, trainings and games to
keep people clicking, pressing, swiping and sharing information
with you that you can use in your sales processes.”
Big Interactive Corporation

20. @chiefmartec

21. “By its very nature, interactive content engages
participants in an activity: answering questions, making
choices, exploring scenarios. It’s a great way to capture
attention right from the start. Individuals have to think
and respond; they can’t just snooze through it.”
Scott Brinker, @ChiefMartec, in a guest post on Copyblogger

22. Your content has to be useful.

23. "The point isn't just to be present, but to be
useful.For companies that sell to other businesses,
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

24. A white paper is limited in it’s usefulness

25. Quiz Assessment Interactive Infographic
The white paper content transformed into
tools and discoverable stories are useful

26. Useful is….a calculator

27. …with personalized results

28. Useful is….a self assessment tool

29. …with personalized benchmarks &
recommendations

30. Interactive Infographic
Early Buyer Journey Content
Interactive
White Paper
Early & Mid Buyer
Journey Content
Assessment
Mid & Late Buyer
Journey Content
Useful is content that’s appropriate for the buyers journey

31. 78 percent of B2B professionals
worldwide say content is very important
to the effectiveness of the sales process.
Qvidian

32. Your 2016 action items
• Repurpose existing content assets into interactive tools and
interaction-based experiences
• Provide personalized recommendations, benchmarks and
assessments based on responses and inputs
• Support the buyer’s journey with content that’s stage-appropriate
• Adopt a content strategy—no more content for content’s sake

33. Lead generation. It’s where it’s at.

36. Website conversation rate is nearly 6X
higher for content marketing adopters
than non adopters
Aberdeen group 2014

37. Interactive content is almost twice as effective as static
content at conversion!

38. Getting your audience to convert on your interactive
content is relatively easy….

39. Consistent CTA for a related asset

40. Consistent CTA for a related asset

41. Gated full results

42. • Incorporate calls to action, used prominently
• A/B test CTA and form placement
• Use stage appropriate content to increase conversion likelihood
• Cross-sell content to capture leads on experiences that would
otherwise not lend themselves to lead gen
Your 2016 action items

43. But it’s not just leads…it’s lead
quality too!

45. Marketing typically
surfaces lead quality and
engagement like this….

46. Digital Body Language—a
record of a lead’s page
views, links clicked and
downloads…

47. All this shows a lead’s
interest. But not their
true quality or
readiness.

48. Interactive content can surface lead
quality, intent, needs, pains,
challenges and more…

49. prices calculated
configurations saved
self assessments completed
report cards graded
quizzes taken
content consumed
solutions built

50. explicit. specific. descriptive.

51. consumption
Show your sales
team the
percent of
content that the
visitor
consumed
Joe Smith consumed
80%
of the Interactive Content Marketing Toolkit

52. Show sales how the buyer completed an
assessment and what it means

53. Show sales what the buyer calculated

54. Show sales how the buyer scored in a quiz

55. • Useful experience increase likelihood of content consumption, which
increases a leads education—be useful in your content creation
• Surface visitor content outcomes to sales
• Use stage appropriate content to increase conversion likelihood
• Gather insights into visitor outcomes and consumption to continuously
improve content, making buyers more likely to engage and consume, which
leads to a better qualified lead
• Use those same insights to stop buying media that delivers low quality leads
Your 2016 action items

56. You gotta measure it all…

57. “Businesses continue to have trouble measuring their content
marketing investment results. This includes budget and people.
Despite this trend, businesses keep investing more money in
content. At some point, marketers must show results in terms of
MQLs (or marketing qualified leads) or sales. Money needs to be
aligned with results or businesses will stop providing budget.”
Heidi Cohen

58. Score interactions
An aggregate score indicates overall consumption and engagement (great for
marketing insights), and an individual lead’s score can be shared with sales.
Scoring
Each time a visitorinteracts with a pageelement, increment their
score by 1.
1+
1+
1+
1+

59. Tagging
Show sales which
infographic
elements the
visitor interacted
with.
Tag behaviors
Aggregate tag data shows content interest (great for ongoing content
improvements), and an individual lead’s tags can be shared with sales.

60. If documenting and following a thoughtful strategy are critical this year,
then measuring the successes and failures should go hand in hand
with those steps.
Trim the fat off your reporting and focus on the important data points
that actively contribute to your funnel and aren’t just vanity metrics that
give you false hopes. Every business will track its efforts differently, so
it’s important to remember whatever KPI (key performance indicator)
you are looking at; make sure it is one that reveals the effectiveness
of your whole content marketing system in relation to customer
conversions and sales.
Quinn Whiten via Marketing Land

61. • Track conversion rates of all your interactive content experiences
• Track consumption patterns to show indication of content quality
and usefulness
• Track user behaviors to show indication of audience interests and
preferences
Your 2016 action items

62. It’s all about the content
experience

63. 1. personalization

64. What it boils down to with content personalization is knowing
your audience. It’s critical for content marketers to understand
whom they’re communicating with and what type of content
their audience wants to consume. Once that understanding is
there, personalization can be applied through different content
mediums.
Sunil Rajaraman, Scripted

65. Choices make the content increasingly feel personal

66. Personalized results pages based on interactions

67. Personalized results pages based on interactions

68. 82% of consumers feel more positive about
a company after reading custom content,
and 90% find custom content useful.
Demand Metric 2014

69. Almost 78 percent of “digital
natives” now expect a
personalized web experience.
Venture Beat

70. • Start small—make it feel personalized based on their interaction
• Use progressive profiling—it reinforces the relationship you are
building with the visitor
• Use behavioral information or explicit results from interactions to
serve up increasingly specific or relevant content experiences
• Use information gained via interactions to target & personalize
through marketing automation/nurture tracks
Your 2016 action items

71. 2. interaction design

72. “Blog posts, white papers, info graphics, videos and reports can
be great content for people and search engines. But in 2016,
attention will start to shift away from static content toward more
engaging forms of content….your 2016 content plan should
include interactive assessments, calculators, trainings and
games to keep people clicking, pressing, swiping and sharing
information with you that you can use in your sales processes.”
Big Interactive Corporation

73. In 2015, we saw an increase in:
Swiping and clicking, Control over seen/unseen content,
Personalization (e.g., location tools), Microinteractions, Scroll-
based navigation, Video and animation, Transitions and loop
functions.
This shift places more emphasis on microinteractions, the
minutiae of interactivity: a ding sound when you send an email,
or an animation to draw attention to a new notification. Interaction
design with only get more intricate as technology allows, making
this a trend that’s sure to stick around for a while.
Via The Next Web

74. Also from The Next Web
The advantages of RWD are immediate, and well documented:
• Increases your audience, sales and conversion rates. According to
a study by the Aberdeen Group, RWD sites achieve 11 percent more
conversions than non-responsive sites on average.
• Forces you to prioritize content for each viewport (especially smaller
screens), which inevitably makes for a stronger site.
• Truly future-proof since you don’t need to obsess over every new
device screen size
• Improves your SEO: Google officially recommends responsive sites.
• Gives users uniform quality — no one wants to be a second-class
citizen.
• Enables you to be detail oriented, which is great because (if you’re a
good designer) you care about details.

75. Check out examples of modern interaction design here:
http://www.ioninteractive.com/interactive-content-customer-examples/

76. • Generate more leads & sales from my content, showing demonstrable
results
• Test a variety of experiences, test placement of my calls to actions
and forms
• Surface buyer content consumption, behaviors and outcomes to sales
• Measure engagement, interaction and consumption to better
understand the audience and use that insight to improve content
marketing

77. Check out examples of great
interactive content marketing:
http://www.ioninteractive.com/interactive-content-customer-examples/

78. Thank you!
@ioninteractive
info@ioninteractive.com