New research shows interactive content is key to the buyer's journey

BOCA RATON, Fla., June 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- New research shows that interactive content is crucial to engaging and converting buyers during their purchasing journey.  A recent study, "Enhancing the Buyer's Journey: Benchmarks for Content & The Buyer's Journey" sponsored by ion interactive and conducted by Demand Metric, highlights the effectiveness of using interactive content experiences to cut through the increasingly cluttered content marketing landscape.

The findings support ion interactive's recent pivot to deliver scalable, marketer-managed marketing apps with its SaaS platform.

Interactive content in marketing apps such as assessments, configurators, online white papers, calculators and look books is much more useful and personal, resulting in highly relevant experiences that increase brand engagement, leads and sales.  

The robust report revealed many trends impacting today's content marketer, including:

• The most frequently encountered problem with content marketing efforts is "content doesn't create enough opportunities for interaction and engagement", noted by 58% of study participants
• Only 25% rated their content as slightly or very interactive
• Interactive content, such as apps, assessments, calculators, configurators and quizzes, generate conversions moderately or very well 70% of the time, compared to just 35% for passive, static content
• 93% feel interactive content is effective at educating the buyer and 88% feel it differentiates from competitors

Along with key findings to show support for effective tactics such as marketing apps, barriers for marketers were also revealed. The three most significant barriers to creating interactive content include staffing & resources, budget and time & agility—all areas that ion interactive has focused on in developing their marketing app platform and services.

"While we frequently see the positive impact of marketing apps across our customer base, it's terrific to see independent research that corroborates our experience," said ion interactive CEO, Justin Talerico.  "Demand Metric did a great job of shining a spotlight on how they affect the buyer's journey and why brands need to consider not just their content, but the experience of interacting with that content online."

The full report is currently available on the ion interactive website.

About ion interactive

ion interactive is a marketing apps platform that generates leads and revenue with engaging, highly interactive, digital marketing experiences that can be created and tested without developers. ion interactive is used to differentiate brands, increase engagement and improve conversions in content marketing, social marketing, email marketing and advertising campaigns.

For more information, please visit ioninteractive.com

SOURCE ion interactive