The Choice Is Yours: Marketing Magic of Interactive Videos
Find out how this video trend can you increase engagement with your brand's customers—and help your content stand out from the pack.
With barriers to creating original content being lower than ever, everyone from big name brands to micro-influencers are increasingly turning to online video. However, with so much content being produced, how do you stand out from the crowd and separate your video from the rest?
Video is currently the most popular choice for content consumption, making up more than 82 percent of all consumer internet traffic. An average person is expected to spend 100 minutes per day watching online videos in 2022.
As consumption continues to rise, so too does the effectiveness of video as a marketing tool. According to Optinmonster, 84 percent of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product by watching a brand video, so it comes as no surprise then that the number of businesses investing heavily in video is rising year on year.
One way that businesses are attempting to capitalize on these dynamics is by experimenting with interactive video.
Different Ways to Engage
Instead of the traditional, linear videos that most of us are used to, interactive videos allow viewers to engage with the content in different ways, much like they would with functions on a website. The most common example of this is 360-degree videos, where users can drag the screen to rotate the camera in all directions without interrupting the video itself. Other varieties are quizzes, often used in educational videos, and data collection, where an animated video allows a user to input their contact details.
Successful Campaigns
One of the earliest examples of a really innovative interactive video was produced by Wieden + Kennedy for the Honda Civic Type R. “The Other Side” featured one person in two drastically different situations, which the viewer could freely flick back and forth between by holding the letter “R” on their keyboard.
This cleverly advertised the car as being capable both as a casual family commuter vehicle and also as a more extreme model for all sorts of unexpected uses—in this case, as a getaway vehicle. The impact of this video was massive: it doubled the amount of traffic to the Honda Civic website and had a video view time of more than three minutes on average.
On a larger scale, the Netflix and Charlie Brooker collaboration Bandersnatch fascinated audiences and resulted in countless online articles, news headlines and reviews when it was released back in 2018. The complicated, but well-executed interactive movie had a potential runtime of anywhere from 50 to 90 minutes, depending on the storyline choices that the viewers made along the way. This cleverly made production sparked attention worldwide as people scrambled to discover all of the possible twists and turns they may have missed with their choices.
Of course not every company has the resources that Netflix or Honda have at their disposal. However, interactive videos can still prove to be effective on a small scale, and when executed properly can really prove to be an effective and powerful marketing tool. LaCantina’s interactive shopping experience is a perfect example of this.
Benefits to Your Brand
Interactive videos offer viewers a unique, alternative experience to linear video and an overall more engaging experience. For marketers, they allow for a range of metrics to be tracked, such as clicks within a video, data input and responses, and analysis of which paths were the most popular with viewers. In fact, according to Spiel Creative, just under 90 percent of marketers attributed growth in their online sales to the incorporation of interactive videos.
As Nick Moulds, video producer at Custom Media explains, the medium offers great potential for brands, and is continuing to grow and change: “Allowing a viewer to play a part in your video can really make them feel connected to your brand. A well-thought-out and entertaining interactive video is a powerful marketing tool and it’s exciting to see how these videos will continue to develop and impress.”
The format opens up a wide variety of possibilities and powerful marketing options, putting the user in control and resulting in increased engagement, higher conversions, and trackable metrics. But perhaps most important of all, it’s truly a unique way for your content to be recognized as a cut above.
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