If you didn’t have enough B2B marketing buzzwords to worry about, get ready for one more: interactive marketing.
What is interactive marketing exactly?
Well, you’re already familiar with interactive elements thanks to B2C apps, websites, and software you use every day.
Amazon, Facebook, Ali Express, and YouTube have all nailed down AI-driven interactive experiences.
Think these types of features don’t cut the mustard in B2B?
Big mistake. 65% of businesses expect a personalized experience like the one they’ve come to expect from B2C apps and if B2Bs don’t deliver it, they’ll consider switching vendors.
Here’s what interactive marketing means in a B2B context, why it matters, and how to incorporate it into your marketing strategy.
What is Interactive Marketing?
Generally speaking, interactive marketing uses AI learning to create a personalized experience for every visitor – whether they’re a lead in your system or anonymous visitor.
Imagine that you visit the Amazon home page, but you’ve forgotten to log in.
Amazon will show you several interactive widgets and carousels filled with different product categories. Once you start searching for products or clicking on product pages, Amazon’s AI technology will remember your preferences and continue showing you related products (“customers ultimately purchased” and “customers who bought this also bought”).
At this point, you suddenly realize you forgot to log in. Once you log in, the Amazon homepage looks completely different because its algorithm can use information about your account’s past searches and purchases to suggest products instead of your anonymous IP address.
You see this same algorithm and interactive technology on just about every website in the B2C sector today because it’s an experience that customers expect.
What is Interactive Marketing for B2Bs?
Your buyers’ expectations for interactive and personalized algorithms don’t vanish once they get to work.
The likes of Amazon and Spotify have created lofty expectations for personally curated content and B2Bs that don’t live up to these expectations will get left behind.
On average, an estimated 7 team members are involved in business decisions. For B2B marketers, interactive content can help you provide personalization on an individual level to buyers at every influence level.
It removes the guesswork because AI technology adapts based on behavior and other data sources to supply each visitor with related content.
What is Interactive Marketing Good For?
Now that you understand what interactive marketing means for B2Bs, what is interactive marketing good for? What are the benefits? Well, there are quite a few.
Generating More Leads
Your target audience is probably much younger than you expect.
In 2015, Think with Google reported that about half of all B2B buyers were millennials – up 19% from 2012. If the trend continued, that means about 65% of your potential leads today are under 40 years old.
Interactive content allows you to supply the same experience they enjoy everywhere else online.
Plus, when someone arrives at your website, you have no idea what their role is in the buying process. Interactive content removes that problem by providing relevant content to everyone.
Allowing Leads to Self-Nurture at Their Own Pace
Leads of all ages consume at least three pieces of content from a vendor before deciding to pick up the phone, write an email, or follow up with a potential sale.
Does your lead like videos, podcasts, eBooks, whitepapers, or blogs? Interactive content allows leads to educate themselves at their own pace with the type of content they prefer.
Conversion Rate Optimization
The design experts at Nielsen-Norman say that B2B websites need to appeal to both “choosers” and “users.”
In other words, your website needs to take the experience of both leads and current clients into consideration. Interactive content shows that you genuinely care about a person’s digital experience on your website and you’re not just trying to close a sale.
Eliminating Forms
According to Think with Google, 70% of all business searches will happen on mobile devices by 2020.
Responsive design is a necessity that is obvious but if you haven’t ditched clunky forms, your website still isn’t mobile-friendly.
Interactive content collects data silently and allows leads to self-nurture. Leads supply bare-minimum contact information when they’re ready so you can get rid of forms for good.
Source: Think with Google
Lower Marketing Costs
Interactive marketing does most of the work for you. You’ll spend less time sifting through forms, making phone calls to answer questions, and verifying leads because AI technology takes care of the leg work.
How to Use Personalized Interactive Marketing in Your B2B Marketing Strategy
What is interactive marketing like in action? You have several options for incorporating AI-driven interactive elements into your website to reap the full range of benefits above.
- High-quality personalized content: To give your AI technology some information to work with, you need to start by creating high-quality personalized content for different segments of your audience such as various stages of influence at a company and each stage of the sales funnel.
- Adaptive content hubs and resource centers: Put all your best content together in one place and let AI decide which topics and types to show your visitors and leads based on their preferences. EBooks, white papers, podcasts, case studies – make it easy for leads to find exactly what they need in one location.
- Content bingeing: Get rid of dead-end landing pages for good. Give your visitors an endless stream of high-quality and relevant content so they can decide how much time to spend on your website educating themselves.
Source: Sage Intacct
Create an Individualized Interactive Experience and Generate More Leads Now
Hushly makes it easy to create a personalized interactive experience for every visitor – both anonymous and known – through adaptive AI-driven interactive content.
Features like adaptive resource centers, content bingeing, and human lead verification can help you generate 51% more leads, close more sales, and ditch forms for good. In short, you can provide the experience your buyers expect at every stage of the sales funnel.
Give Hushly a try today. You’ll only pay for each verified lead and never for our software alone. See it in action now!