Last updated on November 3rd, 2022
Interactive content has the potential to give more value to your customer because it captivates your user’s attention by not just visuals and text, but much more. If you use interactive content in your content strategy then you are bound to get more engagement and action from users.
This blog covers our interview with Maryada Dhanuka who heads marketing at Cuemath. Maryada sheds light on the importance of interactive content marketing and explains the right way to go about it. Before going ahead to the interview, here’s a little read about Maryada and Cuemath
About Cuemath
Cuemath was born with the vision to create thinkers and problem solvers of tomorrow. The team at Cuemath believes that this can be achieved through a robust foundation in mathematics by helping children learn mathematics the right way.
Learning Math can be difficult for most kids, mainly because of the traditional ways of teaching the subject which encourages kids to rote learn formulae. Cuemath addresses just this through its personalized program that is learning based on discovery and by doing.
Their multi-format curriculum approaches math in a holistic way; in the sense, the puzzle cards, workbooks, tabs and the math-box are all used to ensure that the children are engaged throughout and covers school math, mental aptitude and creative reasoning.
This self-paced program also helps students assimilate concepts at their own pace, making them confident in the subject, one session at a time. This essentially ties back to Cuemath’s core vision.
Cuemath’s a first-of-its kind ‘Mathematical Universe’ which is one of the most extensive gamification exercises undertaken in education. It’s a step towards enhancing the quality and method of math learning and teaching so the subject is seen as a life skill and not a liability.
About Maryada
Maryada Dhanuka heads marketing at Cuemath. She is responsible for driving all the marketing activities for Cuemath. Maryada has about 7+ years of living & breathing marketing. Prior to Cuemath, she has led the brand at Xiaomi India and Freecharge. She has also worked with marketing teams of Vodafone and Google in her earlier days.
Due to her experience of working with marketing teams of great companies in various sectors, she has learned newer ways of marketing to the right audience in each role of hers. Apart from her vast experience in marketing, she loves to travel and learn about new culture.
She’s always on the lookout for how brands internationally are reaching out to their target audience, be it through outdoor, print or digital.
What do you mean by interactive content?
As the term suggests, interactive content is any kind of content that makes the consumers take an action or engage with the content and not simply read or watch the content. It is a two-way dialogue between the consumer and the brand.
With the advent of the internet, content marketing became popular and with more and more brands focusing on content marketing, interactive content has come into play. We could say that the Internet gave way to interactive content marketing.
But according to me, interactive content is not limited to just online marketing, there are various ways that brands are making interactive content in the offline marketing space as well.
Why is there a need for interactive content in your brand’s content strategy
Interactive content has manifold benefits for the brand. When your consumers engage with your content by participating with it in any way, they build a relationship with the brand. It increases the quality of recall/awareness for the brand, leading to brand affinity.
Building brand affinity is one of the toughest tasks for any marketer and good interactive content gives you the platform to build this affinity. When brands successfully build affinity, there is higher brand loyalty and therefore greater consideration scores for the brand.
What type of contents are interactive?
Any type of content that drives engagement from the consumer is interactive. It could be as simple as a EMI calculator on a bank website, or a social post that is a poll on a current topic, a quiz or brain teaser, a short 1/2 question survey, interactive infographics, interactive videos & emails, and many more.
Not to forget there is a wave of interactive content coming with the VR (Virtual reality) technology which will make the watchable content a LOT more interactive and will allow for better experience building by the brands. At Cuemath, given the space we are in we use a lot of interactive content like Puzzles, brain teasers, quizzes, etc. to engage with the audience.
With these puzzles, quizzes we are also able to communicate the Cuemath way of learning math and communicate our product positioning to our audience. Here are some examples
Here’s a link to the above.
Here’s a link to the above.
Who is your target audience here?
So at Cuemath, our customers are the parents and our consumers are the kids. At the moment we operate in the space of building mathematical thinking in children in class KG – 8th Grade. Our journey of making our consumers (kids) fall in love with math (brand) starts once they begin consuming the product.
Before that, until sign up our target audience is the parents of these kids. In fact, with the Cuemath way of teaching, the Cuemath kids interact with Math. They learn the logic, pattern behind the formulae and math concepts. Children learn concepts like fractions, subtraction, addition, geometry with our interactive tools.
When they interact with these tools, they interact with our brands and our customers (parents) passively interact with the brand when they see these activities done by the kids, helping us build brand affinity.
How can you use interactive content in different stages of your customer buying journey?
You can make your content marketing interactive at any stage of the customer/buyer’s journey. At the awareness stage, you can work on interactive videos as videos are a great way of filling the top of your marketing funnel.
They generate the interest in your brand. You can get the interest going once your consumer has signed up by way of email ID or social login by engaging with them through interactive emails, surveys and polls. At the consideration stage make sure that the consumer interacts with the product or the service to strengthen their decision.
Do you think there are any brands that are doing well in this arena?
Not too many brands in India have ventured into interactive content in my opinion. However, one brand which does create great interactive experiences is Coca-Cola.
Their ‘Share a coke’ campaign created millions of conversations around the globe. This campaign was both online and offline. While you can term it as a brand activation, but in my view, every consumer was interacting with the brand.
Any tips to create good interactive content?
For creating any type of communication for the consumer – be it interactive or not, the thumb rule is, understand what your consumer wants. Deep dive into what they are looking for. Meet your consumer and understand the problem and how is your brand providing a solution to that problem.
Gather insights from various data and research results and tap on those insights while making your communication. Any consumer would have three kinds of barriers when they don’t adopt your product –
1) It’s not for me,
2) I already have it
3) You can’t deliver the promise.
Understand these barriers and create communication to build belief in your product/service. Talking about creating great interactive content – follow this thumb rule ‘what does my consumer want’.
For example at Cuemath we make the communication to build belief in the Cuemath way of learning Math, where parents understand that our way of teaching math not only makes kids great at math but at mathematical thinking too. When you understand what your consumer wants, you will not fail.
While meeting all consumers is not easy, meet as many as you can and ask the WHYs and you will arrive at a problem your product can solve. When not meeting formally you would come across a lot of consumer in your daily life, I spend time observing and consuming information and apply that along with research data to build any communication for the consumers.
Conclusion
Customers today are actively seeking value from the content you produce. A successful content marketing plan is the one that solves a pain point, answers questions and offers relevant information. Interactive content marketing is a powerful way to give users instant and tailored results. We thank Maryada for helping us understand the importance and relevance of interactive content marketing and sharing some extremely beneficial tips.
