The more red and yellow answers you have, the less mature your content program is, and the higher the opportunity for the introduction of interactive content to make a huge difference in your campaign.
One of the best ways to figure this out is to assess your content maturity level and get a sense of where on the spectrum of interactive content your organization is currently. Ask the following questions about your existing content efforts:
How would you characterize the nature of your content?
If you’re only producing blog posts, white papers and static content, you’re missing out on the data-gleaning opportunities of interactive. And while not all of your content needs to be interactive, at least some interactivity deserves to be in the mix.
How effective is your content at educating your buyer?
Are your leads coming in as well-educated and ready to purchase—or are they loaded with questions that your content ought to be answering? If they’re not completing the buyer’s journey or asking questions they should have answers to, your content may not be engaging them on a deep enough level.
When you compare your content to that of your competitors, can you tell who created what? Does your content do a better job of engaging leads and answering questions? If not, you’re probably blending in a little too much.
How effective is your content at getting shared socially?
Are you seeing the kind of traction in social proportionate to your audience and promotional effort that you should be—or is your content falling flat? If nobody’s talking, interactivity is a good way to shake things up and start some conversations.
How effective is your content at converting your visitors?
How often does a visitor become a lead? How often does a lead become a qualified lead? Are your content pieces inspiring people to call, demo, or sign up? If conversion rates are low, interactive content can be an intelligent way to not only surface more info to sales, but get your leads taking action on their own.
How effective is your content at generating organic traffic?
Are you seeing much traffic from search? Are you earning links naturally and organically? If not, your content is probably poorly optimized—or just unremarkable. Interactive content can change that.
How would you characterize your content measurement?
Measurement is a big challenge for marketers—so much so that we dedicate an entire chapter to it later on, with some tools to assess how well you’re doing. If your content measurement is poor, interactive can help you tap into some really useful data.
If you’re running ragged on a churn and burn strategy, running out of ideas and never revisiting your old content, you’ve got enormous opportunities to start turning the content you already have into interactive experiences. One piece of static content can often be transformed into several different interactive experiences.
You now know your need—so, what exactly should you create? In the next chapter, we’ll help you figure out which interactive content experiences will work best for you.