Interactive Videos 101 - How to Use Them in Marketing, Sales, and L&D

Interactive videos are not only disruptive when it comes to videos. They are also changing the way business plan their marketing, selling, and Learning and development strategies. In this article, we will learn about the advantage of interactive videos in marketing, sales, and L&D. 

Just the way videos have disrupted the way businesses market, sell, and educate; videos have changed as well. Not so long ago, the videos were grainy and pixelated.

Due to advancements in science and technology, we can now host crystal-clear 8K videos on our websites.

But the effects of video's magic potion seem to be wearing off on viewers now. For instance, they can be on their other gadgets while watching your videos.

Videos cannot rely on razor-sharp clarity to keep winning over the customer. It needs something more engaging. It has to become interactive.

Videos that allow the audience to interact with them are known as interactive videos. The interaction between the videos and the viewers occurs through clickable hotspots or elements placed in the videos. The hotspots in the videos can be buttons, hyperlinks, forms, and more.

As we discussed above, interactive videos allow the viewers to participate in the videos. Interactive hotspots such as forms, CTAs, surveys, and polls can be placed inside the video to encourage the viewer to play an active role while watching the video. As a result, you are more aware of the viewer’s engagement with the video.

On the other hand, the viewer plays a passive role while watching traditional videos. The viewers sit down and watch the videos getting unfurled in front of their eyes. You get no idea whether your videos have been able to drive the message across to the viewers.

Let’s have a look at the benefits of interactive videos.

1. Increased Engagement

As interactive videos allow the user to engage with the content, the engagement level of videos is bound to increase. The chances of the user taking the desired actions such as signing up for the newsletter or requesting a product demo increase too.

2. Increased Retention and Understanding of the Content

As viewer participation increases with interactive hotspots, they are bound to pay more attention to the videos. The videos also become more memorable because of interactive videos. It helps the viewers retain the content for a longer time as compared to traditional videos. 

3. Improved Conversion Rates 

In today’s world filled with distractions, your consumer will not navigate to your video description and find the link to your website to go to your page. Your video will be pointless if your viewers do not even come across the CTA link in the video description. Interactive videos help you solve the problem.

A CTA is placed in an interactive video to drive the viewers where you intend to help you increase your conversion rate as you can serve the CTA on a platter to your viewers. 

4. Gaining Precise Insights Via Videos

A traditional video only has a few clickable elements like the play and pause buttons. These are not even in the video and are rather a part of the video player. You cannot gain a lot of insights. You are not going to discover whether your viewer has paid attention to your video or not.

On the other hand, the viewers’ engagement with an interactive video will be a lot more insightful to your business. For instance, based on the traffic driven by the CTAs, you will get an idea of how convincing your video is. Are you perplexed about how you will get your hands on video analytics and track the traffic generated by a CTA in your videos?

GetShow provides you with incisive video analytics, custom events, and tracking. 

5. Easy to Gather Feedback

Feedback sets the tone for any business. Be it finding the product-market fit to the right pricing for your product. However, collecting feedback is easier said than done. 

Companies hire focus groups and set up dozens of email outreach campaigns only to be misled. Getting feedback from your videos will save you a lot of time and money. Adding a survey/poll to your videos will help you glean feedback via your videos.

Now that we know about the benefits of interactive videos, let’s look at the interactive hotspots that will help your business grow.

Here are the different types of interactive videos.

A CTA is designed to make a viewer take the desired action. It serves the same purpose in a video too. You can place the CTA in your interactive video wherever you want to. With a platform like GetShow, you can also place both text CTA, button CTA or HTML CTA.

You can choose the time of your choice to place the CTA. You can also enable the skip option if you wish to provide an uninterrupted experience to viewers. 

The best interactive hotspot if you intend to glean feedback or determine the net promoter score for your product. Adding surveys or polls using the GetShow platform is child’s play. Just like in CTA, you can choose the timing and whether the viewer can skip the option or not.

You can also choose whether the survey/poll will pop over with a pop-over view or stay in the video with the inline view.

Lead generation is the lifeline of any business. It is also the trickiest part of a marketer’s life, as 61% of marketers admit that lead generation is their biggest challenge. On the other hand, 80% of marketers believe that automation makes lead generation much easier.

Today, a marketing strategy needs to be holistic and interconnected rather than being disjointed in bits and pieces. That’s why GetShow aims to combine everything under one roof. It does the same with the lead generation with forms.

Just like its other interactive counterparts, the timing, the type of form, and whether it should be skippable are under your control. 

Creating interactive videos should not be merely about placing interactive hotspots in your videos. It should provide a seamless user experience to your viewers through videos. Here’s how you can do it. 

1. Identify the Purpose and Target Audience of Your Videos

An interactive video is not a shot in the dark. You should have a vivid picture of who you are catering to through the videos. Make the videos for your target audience. Be clear about what you intend to achieve with the interactive videos. 

2. Make Sure that the Interactive Hotspots Are Timed Correctly

The placement of interactive videos should not seem random. It should provide a seamless user experience to the viewers. The interactive elements should not seem out of place even for a second.

For instance, a CTA in the video redirecting your viewers to a product demo page should only appear after you have indicated you have given a heads-up to your audience regarding the same. 

3. Clear and Concise Language

Not only should the video be discernible to the audience. Even the interactive elements should not be incomprehensible to them. Make sure your CTAs and your survey and poll questions are simple and easy to understand for your audience. They should be relevant to your target audience's demographic.

4. Short and to the Point Video

Your video will be concise rather than a bore if you have a clear picture of your audience in your head. Make sure that you have a script that follows a time constraint. 

5. Check the Videos Before Launching

Not only should you check whether the videos are well made. But you should have a checklist in hand that takes into account the usage, placement, and functioning of the interactive hotspots in a video.

For instance, if you have placed a CTA to redirect your user to the signup page. Ensure that your CTA does that instead of guiding your viewers to the “delete my account” page. 

Let’s have a look at how interactive videos can be used in the following ways:

1. Use of interactive video in marketing
2. Use of interactive videos in sales
3. Use of interactive videos in education

1. Interactive Videos for Marketing

Interactive videos are an effective tool for marketing in all kinds of businesses regardless of their size and scale. Personalized and interactive video marketing is here to stay. This is how interactive videos can be used for marketing.

(i) Product Explainer Videos: Interactive videos can be used to educate the know-how and nitty-gritty of a product. With interactive hotspots, you can increase conversions and get feedback from the viewers. Interactive video market research will play an integral role in product development and finding the product-market fit.

(ii) Lead Generation: As we have seen above, lead generation is the most difficult part of any marketer’s journey. However, with interactive hotspots such as forms and CTAs, viewers can generate leads from your videos.

It can be a lead-gen form in your video or a CTA which redirects the viewer to download a lead magnet.

(iii) Increased Engagement: Interactive hotspots such as polls, surveys, and quizzes can encourage your audience to engage more with your videos.

(iv) Signing up for an Event: Interactive hotspots such as lead gen forms can help you make viewers sign up for an event. For instance, you can make the viewers register for an upcoming webinar from your videos. 

2. Interactive Videos for Sales

Just like in the case of marketing, interactive videos can do wonders for your sales and help you skyrocket your revenue.

(i) Product Demos: Now your demo videos to your prospective customers do not need to be vanilla. Couple them with interactive hotspots so that your potential customers can understand the virtues of your product in a better manner.

(ii) Calls to Action: If your customers are at the bottom of the marketing funnel, it would be a good idea to send them interactive videos with calls to action that redirect them to product purchase or product demo page. 

3. Interactive Videos for Learning and Development

Learners are easy to distract. We need to come up with innovative ways to teach them. Learning with interactive videos will make the content more enjoyable and retainable to the viewers. The advantages of interactive videos for education are many. Interactive videos in educational technology are a must.

Education through interactive videos will be a norm if it already isn’t as the advantages of interactive videos in education are quite apparent.  

(i) Quizzes: Using quizzes as interactive hotspots in a video enables the viewers and educators to test their knowledge. 

(ii) Knowledge Retention: Interactive videos are more enjoyable and comprehensible than traditional videos or any other medium of education. The enjoyable experience helps the viewers retain the consumed information for longer.

(iii) Interactive Exercises: A relevant interactive experience makes it wholesome for the viewers to learn. Edutainment has gained a lot of momentum over the years. Interactive video is a great step towards providing valuable edutainment to the viewers.

Conclusion

Overall, interactive videos are a milestone in the evolution of videos. Not only are they more entertaining, but they also provide impetus to marketers, sales teams, educators, and trainers. To be ahead of the curve, start creating and hosting interactive videos by joining hands with GetShow.