This article describes five great ways whitepapers can be made more interactive.
Whitepapers are a major tool that can be used to great effect by companies hoping to influence prospective customers and partners. They can be used to promote products and services, draw attention to new thought leadership, or recommend solutions to problems in business. One of the ways whitepapers can be made to reach their full potential is by making them interactive.
Interactive whitepapers take static content and augment them by the addition of interactive elements such as animations and questions to increase engagement and participation from your readers. Audiences love interactive whitepapers because they become an experience that encourages action from the user rather than just a piece of writing. Interactive elements elevate the user from the position of reader only. They also benefit marketers by building richer customer profiles, lead scoring, nurturing, and allowing users to experience content without actually providing a lot of information.
With that in mind, here are five ways to make your whitepapers interactive:
Quizzes and polls
These are, of course, one of the most well-known and most-used types of interactive content implemented today. However, it is a great way to learn more about your audience. Quizzes and polls can be presented as serious business inquiries or with a light-hearted take. Ultimately, the goal is usually to learn something useful from the participants—such as whether or not they are close to buying a product or service, or if they are willing to provide information for follow-up. At the end of the quiz or poll, users should be allowed to see results or benchmark data so they can compare their choices to those of their peers.
Assessments or graders
Assessments use a question-and-answer format so customers can give detailed and objective evaluations and analysis. They can be used as prospect appraisal, market gauging, product rating, and more. Assessments are one of the most common types of interactive content used. Assessments are very useful to the people who complete them, and you can use the information you have gathered to create great follow-ups.
Video
Videos can be pre-recorded information, tutorials, or interactive animations embedded in your whitepaper. Forms, hotspots, calculators, polls, questions, and other elements such as YouTube annotations can be embedded into a video to increase the interactivity level. Video content has a very high return-on-investment and gives marketers a great way to express creativity while getting their message across to the audience.
Interactive infographics
Humans are highly visual beings, and the colorfulness of infographics pulls users into your content. Interactive infographics use visual appeal to get users to engage with digital widgets. One way to engage an audience is to ask them to complete several questions with the offer of a free, downloadable infographic with content based on their input at the end. Interactive infographics, of course, must be well designed and induce input from the user.
Calculators
Calculators are a great form of interactive content that requires a small amount of effort from users. Users appreciate calculators—especially those that allow them to figure out how much your product or service is likely to cost them. It’s a great interest-level value. Users enter some data and the calculator creates a (usually numerical) answer based on a formula. Calculators offer precise and accurate results that are suitable for complex results.
Whitepapers don’t have to be boring. These are just some of the amazing ways in which you can make your whitepaper content interesting and interactive for readers.
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