Content marketers, do you know which types of content resonate the best with your client’s target audience? According to a report by Ascend 2, improving content engagement is a challenge that 46% of content marketers face. If you want to improve your content marketing strategy going forward, here’s some advice you should take.

Do Your Content Marketers Know Which Form is Most Effective?

Creating Engaging Content

One of the best ways to get your client’s target audience to engage with your content marketing is to create interactive content. According to Ascend2, “Interactive content is content that is meant to encourage the engagement and participation of the user.” Here are the interactive media types that Ascend2 finds to be the best for consumer engagement:

Emails: 52% of content marketers agree
Videos and Livestreams: 47%
Polls and Quizzes: 35%
Infographics: 34%
Calculators and Measuring Tools: 27%
eBooks, White Papers and Research: 17%
Games: 11%

Which Media Types are Worth It?

Just because content marketers find certain media types to be effective doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily in your best interest to create. According to Ascend2, some of the most effective interactive media types are also the most difficult to execute:

Videos and Livestreams: 40% of content marketers consider these media types to be the most difficult types of interactive media to execute
Infographics: 38%
eBooks, White Papers and Research: 32%
Games: 30%
Calculators and Measurement Tools: 30%
Emails: 26%
Polls and Quizzes: 18%

If you’re in a rush to get results for your client, the execution of more difficult interactive media may not be plausible due to the time constraint. Instead, you should focus on the easier media, such as polls, quizzes and emails.

When Does Effectiveness Outweigh Difficulty?

Instead of leaving you to compare the two tables above, here are lists of interactive media types that are the most effective AND the least difficult:

Emails: The effectiveness of interactive emails far outweighs their difficulty to produce (52% vs. 26%)
Polls and Quizzes: These interactive media types also have effectiveness that far outweighs difficulty to execute (35% vs. 18%)
Videos and Livestreams: While video and live streams are ranked the most difficult interactive media type to execute, their effectiveness still outweighs the difficulty (47% vs. 40%). Just make sure to go into production and execution knowing the difficultly level you’ll be facing

On the other hand, the interactive media types that content marketers have ranked more difficult to execute than effective are:

Games: 30% of content marketers say that games are difficult to execute while only 11% say that they’re effective
eBooks, White Papers and Research: These interactive media types require a lot of research and effort from product experts, content writers, designers, etc. So, it’s no wonder that 32% of content marketers consider them to be difficult while only 17% say that they’re effective
Infographics: There’s only a 4% difference between effectiveness and difficulty for interactive infographics, but difficulty still wins
Calculators and Measurement Tools: Again, only a 3% difference here, but they’re still more difficult to execute than they are effective

Just some stats to take into consideration before updating your content marketing strategy.

Which Media Types are Best for Your Client’s Particular Target Audience

Now, all those stats above are averages. They’re going to vary based on the target audience. You need to know which types of content marketing resonate best with your client’s target audience before you and your client can craft the most educated strategy. To get that information, all you need to do is look up your client’s target audience’s AudienceSCAN profile on AdMall by SalesFuel. There, you’ll discover which types of advertising media swayed the highest percentages of this audience to take action within the last year.

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