The last six months have been a challenging journey for everyone. The world is changing, and digital media has become an even more essential tool for connecting, networking, and thriving as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and as we speak out and fight for racial justice. Brands, too, have had to master digital media, making online content marketing practically the only type of marketing going on right now.
As marketers and internal comms professionals, we’ve learned a lot in 2020. Let’s take a look at three of the most effective types of online marketing content, and how you can use them to keep growing your brand into 2021 and beyond.
1. Embrace Virtual Events & Experiences
It’s hard to imagine how the excitement of face-to-face interaction at a conference can be transferred into a visual space. After all, the opportunity to wander through the booths, run into acquaintances and colleagues, and attend live sessions is energizing and inspiring in a way that Zoom meetings … aren’t. This may be especially true given many people’s video-call fatigue after half a year (whew! did we just say that?) of remote work and phased reopenings of businesses and recreation.
But virtual conferences and events are a far cry from just another Zoom meeting. In fact, they present one of the most exciting content marketing and sales opportunities online. That’s because, over the past few years, the options available to presenters and to companies with custom trade show exhibits have expanded exponentially. Virtual experiences and booths today can include:
- Live-streaming video
- Embedded motion graphics and video
- 360-degree virtual reality experiences and viewing rooms
- Interactive hotspots
- Polls
- Q&As
- Live chats
- Interactive brochures, presentations, tutorials, poster designs, and other content
- Custom sound design
In fact, virtual booths offer a number of advantages over traditional, in-person booths, including:
- Affordability: Even when you’re investing in high-quality visual content and an interactive experience, you’re still saving loads of money on flights, hotels, booth materials and services, shipping, and more. This opens up opportunities for setting up a booth at conferences that you hadn’t budgeted for before.
- Accessibility: Your conference booth will be fully accessible to every attendee for the length of the conference — no matter where they are in the world, and no matter what other obstacles might have stood in their way at a physical booth. What’s more, your booth may feel easier to approach for those who don’t know yet what you do and might have been too shy in person to check it out.
- Scalability: There’s no limit to the number of people who can visit your booth or experience your live event at one time.
- Measurability: It’s always been a challenge to measure your return on investment for in-person events such as conferences. But with a virtual booth, you have infinitely more opportunities not just to measure the overall success of your booth, but of individual assets and interactions. That way, you can make constant improvements that are driven by data — and that will drive more conversions.
Check out Killer’s virtual conference, the Strategic Content Summit, for free access to 10 interviews with some of today’s biggest marketing influencers.
2. Explore New Options with Online Video Marketing Content
You already know just how engaging videos and motion graphics can be. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve been reminded of just how many ways video can be utilized by brands and individuals alike.
So it’s time to take stock of your online video content to determine if it could do more to achieve your marketing goals. If you’re only producing promotional videos, are there ways you can offer more value to your audiences through educational videos or explainer motion graphics? This type of motion graphic or video content can help your customers learn how to operate your product, or discover fascinating facts about your industry. The options are truly endless.
Let’s take a look at just a few examples of brand motion graphic videos to give you a sense of the full range of what you can do.
This motion graphic for a healthcare facility follows the story of a typical patient named George as he seeks treatment for an illness. The visual storytelling approach makes the video more relatable and the process easier to understand:
This series of animated short-form videos, or GIFs, showcased how a next-generation football helmet is made — and how it’ll keep players safer. The short videos were posted widely across social-media channels and were used to highlight different features of the product:
See all 6 videos here.
And finally, this inspirational motion graphic tells the backstory behind how Swiss Re’s reinsurance product is so essential. The piece appeals to the audience’s emotions to tell a story that extends far beyond the brand, on a scale of global impact:
To learn more about your options and discover ideas and inspiration, check out these free ebooks:
3. Adopt Interactive Solutions
Many of today’s consumers are (justifiably) exhausted with traditional modes of online communication. You’re probably feeling it too: social media is moving at lightning speed, emails are piling up as we seek to balance our work and personal lives, and video call after video call can feel overwhelming after a while. What’s more, all of these are relatively passive interactions with your brand, and with our attention spans stretched to their limit, aren’t likely to keep audiences engaged for long.
As a result, there’s more pressure on brands than ever to deliver something new and exciting — not just something your audiences haven’t seen before, but something that engages them in an active way.
Interactive content is the perfect solution. Interactive media design ranges from clickable maps and quizzes to fully interactive sites, infographics, and experiences. These types of experiences help users choose their own journey through the content, exploring in more depth only what interests them most. Meanwhile, quizzes and calculators help them input personalized information for personalized results. Just think about how invaluable Redfin’s mortgage calculator is, or how many times you’ve taken an online quiz.
There are no limits to the types of online interactive marketing content you can produce today. So first determine your goals, then work with your creative content agency partner to determine what’s the best solution for you.
For today’s brands, creating an agile online content marketing strategy isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s necessary for surviving and thriving not only during the current crisis, but in a post-pandemic world.
