Matthew is Founder and CEO of The DVI Group, a strategic communications agency that reimagines business video for brands around the world.
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Video is powerful — interactivity, even more so. Interactive video engages viewers, encourages them to invest emotionally in the subject and locks brand imaging in their heads. Most business sectors, whether B2B or B2C, can increase their ROI today by making their media interactive.
Yet, interactive video may take extra planning, preparation and knowledge of your target customer base. It’s a medium well worth the effort, but it’s also best to educate your clients before you pitch it.
That’s why it’s important to know its advantages well before making the leap. Below, I analyze interactive video and give you six (and a half) ideas for how to use it.
Why interactive?
It’s a valid question. First of all, several pieces of data point to interactive video as a key advancement for marketers in the coming years. For example, 62% of B2B marketers (registration required) are already using interactive video or plan to begin using it soon. They see the appeal for their potential clients, they see that interactive video increases time spent watching by 47%, and they’re jumping on board.
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Second, interactive video is the perfect tool for trainers and other e-learning professionals. Interactive videos provide experiential and immersive learning that can be even superior to traditional video learning, boosting retention.
All in all, interactive video is a valuable tool for the agency arsenal. (We’ve embraced it fully at my company.) But there’s a catch: What type of interactivity will your clients appreciate most? And how should you pitch it? Read on to find a few ideas.
1. Shoppable Videos
This is the holy grail of marketing savvy. It uses hotspots, a hallmark strategy for interactive video that places a clickable overlay on top of an existing video. Using unique, hyperlinked hotspots, this type of piece allows the viewers to click on products featured in the video, jumping straight to that product’s webpage.
This strategy would be tantalizing for retailers, travel agencies and the like. Any business whose products could be modeled on screen and then shopped for online would gain from a shoppable piece.
2. Chapterized Experience
Adding chapters is one of the simplest ways to make your media interactive, but it can also be one of the most effective. Short, digestible videos get the most traffic — this we know. But sometimes, a product explainer or e-learning module needs to be presented in a longer-form video that’s over 90 seconds. That’s where chapters come in.
Simple, labeled chapters allow a viewer to click on the parts of a video most interesting to them. It gives them control and confidence, resulting in a viewer more amenable to the service or concept you’re selling.
3. Click-To-Reveal
Have some extra info that won’t fit into a typical video script? If you’re deploying a more information-heavy piece, you’re likely to have a list of web addresses, citations, landing page links and other resources that would otherwise sound (or look) cumbersome within the main video.
Here’s an easy solve: Wrap additional tidbits like this into clickable hotspots that viewers can reveal on their own. This allows you to hide them in plain sight, but viewers can still benefit from them with the right motivation.
4. Quizzing And Questioning
Let viewers exercise their knowledge by including a quiz in a video. Multiple-choice hotspots or interactive text boxes allow viewers to select or type an answer to a question within the video itself.
This strategy is especially useful for HR professionals doing onboarding and interviewing, as well as instructors developing e-learning and additional certification. Even marketers could benefit from this type of interactivity with a product-focused personality quiz or something similar.
5. The Power Of Story
A more advanced type of interactivity is the choose-your-own-adventure video. This allows viewers to click through choices and eventually reach a different ending or outcome than another viewer, like Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
This is a powerful tool that can draw viewers in and foster real loyalty to a brand. It’s particularly useful for a business with invested customers, niche markets and high-investment products. These types of brands would benefit from advanced marketing that encourages emotional attachment and feelings of prestige.
An additional half-point: This type of video is expensive. It requires more filming, post-production or animation than the average product. I recommend only pitching this genre of video to your biggest clients, but if you play your cards right and they buy in, they’ll get a standout piece that can generate lots of buzz.
6. Distinct Fill-In Fields
Collect customer experience feedback, online reviews or other valuable information straight from your video pieces. This type of video includes embedded text boxes, allowing viewers to click inside and fill in their own text while the video continues (or pauses).
This is particularly helpful in communications sectors and marketing campaigns where interesting content can lead to action steps based on customer preference.
However you pitch it, interactive video has the potential to become an incredible force in the agency world. It has implications for almost every field, sector and customer base. So do some research and find out what those implications are for you.
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Author: Matthew Lopes, Forbes Councils Member
