As the avenues for digital engagement expand, interactive content has become a priority for companies eager to connect with customers. Formats like infographics and quizzes gains twice as much engagement as static content like PDFs or white papers. Yet many companies continue to produce more static than interactive content.

So what’s preventing teams from creating the compelling content their audience craves? Every company is different, but those soldiering on with outdated content strategies usually point to a lack of budget, a dearth of in-house skills or limited support from company leadership for why they stay the course instead of exploring other — better — options. These companies also tend to underestimate the value of design.

Good design leads to interactive content that doesn’t just engage customers but elicits an emotional response. And nearly 80% of content marketers agree that once you grab someone’s  attention, interactive content is far better than static at keeping it and creating repeat online visitors. Perhaps more than any other company stakeholder, marketers deeply understand both the struggle to capture customers’ attention and the importance of keeping them engaged.

Considering the obstacles they face — social media fatigue, a changing marketing landscape and burnout — marketers know their content creations must stand out. Especially with as crucial as those first few seconds a visitor spends on your website or reviewing your email are when you’re competing for attention online.

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Designing interactive content

Interactive content can help you reach (and possibly exceed) your business objectives, whether that be growing awareness or converting more customers. In fact, more than half of buyers say they rely on content to research and make purchasing decisions.

Fortunately, thanks to technology like interactive content creation software, the potential for brands of all sizes to create effective interactive content —  engaging customers from the very first nibble of interest to a call to action — is limitless.

Some common use cases marketers are leveraging interactive content for include:

• Infographics
• Quizzes
• Games
• Landing pages
• Presentations
• Product demos
• Case studies

If you want to create compelling interactive, immersive content, make effective use of these five building blocks:

• Narrative: The underlying copy, script, text, data and other story components used to make up the bulk of the content.
• Visuals: The story’s visual framework — images, graphics, photos and videos — that grabs your audience’s attention. Great visuals are hard to forget.
• Interactions: Components programmed to respond to user actions might merely include a CTA, like links to a piece of content. Polls and games, however, allow you to provide deeper and richer interactions.
• Integrations: Third-party tools like forms, maps, chat services and other apps that you can layer on top of the content you are creating.
• Immersive Elements: Components like triggered animations, sounds and other dynamic layers add depth to visual content.

Making the most of your content

To maximize your interactive content, the magic lies in those immersive elements mentioned above. They are the keys to capturing your audience’s attention and pulling them deeper into your piece. My advice? Don’t neglect these three components:

Video

Want to really elevate the interactive experience and stand out from the competition? Add video. More marketers have adopted a serialized storytelling approach, where their messaging includes entertainment and education. Well-produced videos deliver an immersive, visual and unique story that supplements other text and visual content. Videos can elevate concepts, illustrate themes and represent products more effectively than static images.

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Audio

True engagement invites you to use all your senses. So why deprive customers of the power of sound? Digital audio has come a long way. During the internet’s early days, audio often felt intrusive and the sound quality tended to be poor. Today’s audio is sharper, more immersive and dynamic. Use it in combination with other storytelling and design components to deepen the experience and build a stronger bond between your brand and target audience.

Animations

To spark customer interest, companies cannot simply tell a great story. They must also make it fun and engaging for their audience as they digest the story. Animations, in particular, catch the viewer’s eye, evoke specific feelings and create effects that leave an audience surprised or even astonished. Animations should be subtle but can often enhance content and convey information that may otherwise be considered mundane.

These components, by their very nature, draw the audience in deeper into an interactive content piece and guide them to take action. When used properly, they can help visitors consume (and remember) your content more effectively.

By layering together the right building blocks, marketers can deliver remarkable interactive content for their audiences. Content that not only helps tell their brand story, but delivers on engagement and conversion goals. Marketers also gain access to more information about how the audience actually engages with a piece of content, empowering them to make alterations and improvements to the experience over time. In today’s digital-first world, this is imperative for businesses looking to drive real impact.