How interactive technology can make your digital marketing more effective

The world of digital marketing is a fast-paced one.

The rules of SEO are always changing. Companies with billion-pound budgets are always pushing the bar higher when it comes to what can be achieved. If you’re not Coke or Nike it can feel hard to keep up.
However:
There’s one area where businesses of all sizes can up their digital marketing game. That’s on the interactive technology front.
In this article:
We’ll look at the ways digital marketers – whether B2B or B2C – can harness the power of interactive technology, both:

• internally
• and externally

to make their digital marketing efforts more effective.

First things first, what is interactive technology?

There are two strings to interactive technology’s bow. These are:

• A: Technology that facilitates communication and collaboration between people
• B: Technology that people can interact with and manipulate the content of

How to use interactive technology internally

The Digital Marketing Institute put it well when it said:
“No digital marketer is an island. The most effective digital marketers acknowledge the importance of teams, tribes and networks.”
Today It’s never been easier for digital marketers to communicate with teams, both remotely and in-house.
Of course:
They need to have the right kit.
Essentials include:
Team chat: interactive technology platforms like Slack now make it possible to communicate instantly with colleagues around the world.

In fact:

Research by Slack itself suggests that using a team chat app can cut the use of slow, clunky emails within a business by 48.8 per cent.
Video chat: video chat companies such as Zoom have made meetings with remote team members as simple as walking into a boardroom.
Interactive displays: interactive displays are now the nucleus of ‘war rooms’ and ‘huddle rooms’ around the world.
Why?
They make it easy for remote teams to get together. The best interactive displays are big enough to host video chat, team chat, and meeting material such as presentations and spreadsheets at the same time.
Plus:
They feature touch screen technology that allows meeting delegates to manipulate the information on screen and access documents from the cloud, for slicker, more efficient meetings.

6 ways to use interactive technology externally

As we reach the end of the twenty teens, consumers are expecting more and more from digital marketers.

• They’ll dodge content on both mobile and desktop if they suspect it contains an ad.
• They’ll leave a blog post in seconds if they can’t find what they want.
• They’re becoming more selective when it comes to the marketing media they consume.

Below are six ways you can use interactive technology to reclaim their attention.

Augmented reality

Augmented reality takes real world objects and situations and enhances them by adding computer generated images video content, sounds or even smells.
Today:
Multiple brands include an element of augmented reality in their digital marketing offering.
Examples:
Digital marketers at Michael Kors won awards for their 2018 campaign, which allowed viewers of Facebook ads to virtually try on pairs of sunglasses to see if they suited them. Wine line 19 Crimes, meanwhile, created an app that customers could download to bring the black and white photos of people on their labels to life.

AI

AI has broad reach in internet marketing.
However:
One of the areas it is currently being most effectively deployed is email marketing.
Here’s the deal:
Machine learning platforms such as ZetaHub can analyse millions of data points to help digital marketers understand the best times of week to contact individual clients and which sort of content they want to see.

Services like Phrasee, meanwhile, use AI to inform digital marketers which subject lines will work best on emails.

Chatbots

In a nutshell - a chatbot is a computer program or an artificial intelligence that’s designed to interact with humans in a naturalistic way.
Today:
Chatbots are essential to digital marketers.
Why?
Backup.
There’s no point in creating an ad or piece of content that gets customers flocking to a website to buy a product and not being able to offer those customers additional support when they get there.
Chatbots can be used as the frontline of customer service, to answer frequently asked questions, and to act as personal shoppers by suggesting further products and services to purchase when customers want to buy.

Voice search

As far as interactive technologies go, they don’t come much more accessible than smart speakers. In 2019 Amazon revealed that it had sold more than 100 million Alexas around the world.
Why does this matter to digital marketers?
Well - the way people search the internet with their voice is different to the way they search with written words.
Going forward:
Everything from blogs to digital ads will need search engine optimised (SEO’d) for voice search.

Interactive videos

In 2019 SEO expert Jeff Bullas referred to interactive video as ‘the future of video marketing’.
Essentially:
Interactive videos shift from showing viewers a linear story and allows them to navigate their way through the video on a route of their choosing.
How?
The videos contain ‘hot spots’ which allow users to click to another video or a webpage.
Interactive videos can be used to:

• Let users participate in a story
• To buy the products they have seen in a video
• To view tailored content
• To take part in a quiz, which allows marketers to collect data

Companies like Wirewax, HapYak and Rapt currently offer interactive video production services.

Virtual reality

On 20th May 2019:
Mobile network provider EE built an internet marketing campaign around virtual reality in order to promote the launch of its 5G network in London.
Here’s deal:
The company sent Kevin Bacon around the country to hand out VR headsets so people could virtually join their family and friends at Wembley for the FA Cup Final.
Of course:
Building virtual reality into digital marketing campaigns in the way EE did is costly.
However:
As technology improves, VR should become more affordable.

Summing up

Digital marketers can harness all sorts of interactive technologies to make their operations more effective.
These include:

• Interactive communication technology such as team chat, video chat and interactive displays
• Augmented reality
• AI
• Chatbots
• Voice search
• Interactive videos
• Virtual reality