Today’s marketers have it tough. How can you break through all of the noise and distractions in today’s increasingly crowded media landscape? Most brands think louder is better – the more you shout about your brand with ads, the more you will convince your potential customers.
That is increasingly ineffective. Third party cookies are (just about) dead, mobile device tracking has been severely curtailed, and ad blockers are becoming more prevalent. If you want to reach customers these days, you have to get them to consciously choose to engage.
But how? What if there was a way to easily create campaigns that were both fun and informative, generating qualified leads while engaging (and entertaining) your audience? Enter interactive content giveaways.
It’s a simple, yet elegant, concept. You create a compelling interactive quiz, poll, or personality test with a no-code quiz maker like Riddle.com. That ease of use means your campaign can be live quickly, without the cost or delays of having to use an agency.
To get information for the giveaway, you add an in-quiz email collection or lead generation form with a strong call to action. The important element is to provide something of value to each quiz taker. You can offer anything from free samples to special discounts or free personalized assessments.
Why use interactive giveaways?
Let’s dive into more detail about why you should turn to interactive giveaways. It all comes down to more views, more engagement, and more leads.
Interactive content gets noticed, and clicked. We have all been there, passively scrolling through posts and articles during the day, without really engaging with the content. The Fiesta Bowl knows how effective quizzes can be: “65.8% of site visitors initiate engagement with our interactive content.“
The simple act of clicking turns passive browsers into active participants, a huge step forward for your marketing campaigns. Instead of semi-switched off viewers, every quiz or poll taker becomes directly connected with your brand.
Interactive giveaways boost time on site
We crunched the numbers, based on the 2.59 billion questions that were answered in Riddle-powered quizzes in 2023. Users stay 4X longer on pages with interactive content (3 minutes 56 seconds) and opt in more often (quiz lead forms do 9.3X better than pop-ups) <LINK to Riddle marketing infographic report – to be published>
For giveaways, that means more people will complete your form, see your offer, and move one step closer to being happy customers.
Better ROI for your paid advertising
Are you planning on driving traffic to your interactive giveaway using paid advertising like Facebook or Google Ads? Quizzes, personality tests, and polls can also lower your costs per participant because they are inherently more interesting to users. Instead of a sales pitch or an ad page, users get the chance to discover something about themselves.
Your ads will get higher clickthrough rates (CTR) which translates into lower cost for ads (eCPM). You’ll also receive far more participants for a lower cost because your giveaway form will be completed more often than other online options.
More engagement and more leads, at a lower cost – that is a powerful recipe for marketing success.
Ideas for interactive giveaways
There’s an endless variety of ways to incorporate interactivity into your giveaway strategy. The central element is that you want the user to engage, click, and participate – not merely view – your marketing campaign.
Here are just a sample of ideas that work well:
Product recommendation quiz (with discount code): You can build a personality test or branching logic quiz that helps users discover the right product for their needs. Include a special discount code for each product, plus a link to its URL on your site, and you have a ready-made conversion opportunity.
Interactive blog post (with quiz contest): Writing a blog article is just the start. Next, you want to make sure people read – and understand – what you covered. Embed a quiz at the end of the article with a giveaway (e.g. ‘A free year’s subscription to top 5 highest scores’). You could even add a quiz timer and a leaderboard to show who is in the lead.
‘The audience asks’ Q&A (with prizes for best question ideas): Are you going to interview a guest or influencer on your site? Forget the standard questions most interviewers use. Get your audience involved:
- Create a simple form – ask your audience for their question ideas plus their social media handles.
- Make a poll and embed on your site – get your audience to vote for their favorites.
- Give a shout out on social – tag the winning questions’ authors to generate natural social media buzz.
‘Predict the outcome’ challenge (with discounts or prizes based on results): Who doesn’t love to guess the future? Asks the audience to predict the outcomes of everything from product launches (e.g. ‘What features will be on the new iPhone?’) to sporting events, politics, and entertainment. Poll formats work well for this (e.g. ‘Pick 3 choices’) as well as our unique score predictor. The closer the user’s prediction, the better their discount code or prize they will win.
Prizes are important, but planning is critical
We recommend a simple five step process before you actually start creating your interactive giveaway.
First, get colleagues in a room and come up with six to eight ideas. No idea can be too ‘out there’ – they all help spark creativity. But then narrow it down to your favorite, based on audience appeal, ease of implementation, and projected impact.
Next, define your goals (and expectations). There can be a tendency to think one interactive giveaway can accomplish all of your marketing goals. Be strategic, and choose the one to two most important, from leads to brand awareness or driving sales.
Once this groundwork is prepared, decide on the type of format that will best accomplish your goals. Certain formats have different strengths. Personality tests, for example, are the most insightful, and also have the best virality and lead form completion rates. However, polls and short quizzes are quicker, snack-sized experiences, which will get you more interactions, but probably fewer leads.
Now, the (most) fun part… creating engaging content. There’s an art and science to writing compelling interactive quizzes, but in general, keep it as short as possible (six to eight questions for quizzes, three to five questions for polls or surveys) for today’s time and attention-limited audiences. Make sure it reflects your brand; from tone of voice to styling and white-labelling, match it seamlessly to your site.
The last step is to test, improve, and repeat. Be sure to have four or five friends test out the whole experience, and give their constructive criticism about what worked and what needs to be improved. You could even do a small media buy to get 100 people to take part in your interactive giveaway. If you are not seeing enough people enter your giveaway, you know you need to keep making changes.
Beyond the prize: the lasting impact of interactive giveaways
Every marketer knows that the landscape is constantly evolving. You need to keep innovating to capture attention and drive results. Subtly yet impactfully engage your audience in your service or product instead of shouting your message loudly. Today’s consumers crave a more interactive experience, one that sparks their curiosity, and provides them with something in return.
So, leave the passive, old-school banner and other online ads, and embrace the power of interactive content giveaways. By creating quizzes on a platform like Riddle.com, you entertain and educate while collecting valuable emails and other zero-party data. With better brand engagement and more customers at a lower cost, you can transform your marketing. Now that is a giveaway every marketer can use.
