What is Interactive Marketing? The Ultimate Guide with Creative Examples

While clever advertisements, slick promotional videos, or traditional landing pages are all great ways to learn about products, today’s consumers expect more from brands.

Interactive marketing shares the same goals as these more conventional methods but gives visitors more flexibility over their experiences. Instead of quickly skimming over, they can click, hover, and perform other actions that give them greater control while connecting with content at a deeper level.

We’re going to cover the many forms of interactive marketing and how dynamic content works in getting people’s attention, inspires engagement, and goes beyond the norms of regular marketing.

Common interactive marketing formats

Interactive videos

When people want to find out something new they often turn to videos. Explainer videos, tutorials, and other formats simplify complex topics and allow viewers to take their time, pause, and rewatch until they get what’s being communicated.

At the center of what is interactive marketing is giving people greater control and interactive videos offer even more options in how they’re experienced. Chapter menus, questionnaires, product links, and clickable hot spots give them additional options for learning more and further engaging.

Interactive showrooms

Immersive 3D experiences give potential customers the chance to see products from every angle. One of the main objectives of what is interactive marketing is to inform potential customers and virtual showrooms provide additional details that may influence customers in making a purchase.

Scrollytelling advertorials

Advertorials are generally labeled as sponsored or as partner posts. While they’re paid content, they blend in with the rest of a website, combining marketing messaging with meaningful information. They bring depth to what is interactive marketing by covering real-world problems, and showing how the companies that sponsor these pieces are a part of the solution.

Scrollytelling advertorials take advantage of design techniques like parallax scrolling, fade-in effects, and other dynamic visuals in delivering information and keeping people interested in the content they’re navigating through.

Built with Vev and hosted on Politico, ‘The Hidden Value of Mining’ gives the construction manufacturer Holcim a platform for communicating the importance of repurposing building materials and their company’s commitment to sustainability.

Quizzes and surveys

If you’ve ever taken a product quiz you’ve experienced firsthand what is interactive marketing. Quizzes and surveys can serve multiple purposes in collecting customer data, helping people find what they’re looking for or simply providing entertainment.

Warby Parker makes finding the right frames a more lively experience with this interactive quiz.

Interactive product galleries

What is interactive marketing but an opportunity to transform passive website experiences into something more exciting? Interactive product galleries make looking through different options a more active and lively process.

Interactive product galleries can communicate a large amount of information in a compact space. Visitors can pick options like color schemes or other characteristics and see immediately what products will look like. Some companies even utilize artificial intelligence and augmented reality to let customers try on items virtually.

Browser based games

From retro-throwback 80s style video games to lush and beautiful 3D experiences, browser based video games are a great way to keep visitors engaged and give them some out of the ordinary. At its core, what is interactive marketing is a way to get users to further engage, and games invite them to stick around and have some fun.

The Fabulous Cartier Journey lets visitors pilot a blimp through a gold-tinged cloudscape while collecting golden rings. It’s a dreamy and luxurious experience that fits so well with Cartier’s brand identity.

Animated data visualizations and reports

Data can be another deciding factor for potential customers. Animated and interactive data visualizations make data more interesting to interact with and easier to understand.

Experiential marketing

Experiential marketing lets people become part of a brand’s experience. It can be something physical like a pop-up shop or event, or online like an augmented reality space or an interactive web store where visitors can create customized products.

The use of no-code tools for interactive marketing

The impact of no-code for interactive marketing

No-code tools take the complexity out of creating interactive marketing content. Decreasing the time from ideation to launch they help brands get new interactive content out to the public, see how it performs, and make changes or create something new.

The best no-code tools for creative marketers

Best for web design: Vev

Whether you’re new to web design, or have been at it for years, we developed Vev to demystify the process of creating interactive content. While Vev has the capabilities to integrate custom code, you don’t have to know any HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to create something engaging and compelling. Designing interactive marketing websites and other content is efficient and simple through Vev’s visual editor, pre-sets, and components library. Setting up user-initiated triggers like clicking, hovering, and scrolling are also easy to include through Vev’s easy-to-follow Interactions panel.

Best for interactive visuals and motion graphics: Rive

Rive stands out in its versatility in creating vector-based animated graphics that won’t impede load times. Whether you want to build complex multi-step animations, or something more subtle like dynamic call-to-action buttons, Rive offers a straightforward app for designing interactive visuals. If you’re using Vev as your website builder it’s possible to integrate animated .riv files directly into your web designs.

Best for interactive videos: Vimeo

While you’ll have to sign up for a paid account to create interactive videos, Vimeo offers a streamlined UI for editing videos and adding chapters, cards, product links, and other dynamic elements.

Powerful examples of what is interactive marketing

Lidl, The Dish

We all have our go-to meals that we make throughout the week. But no matter how skilled you are in the kitchen, eating the same things over and over can get a bit monotonous.

The supermarket chain Lidl provides culinary inspiration in its website section The Dish. Built with Vev it features grids of ingredients, video clips, clickable elements revealing more information, and a vibrant color scheme. It brings together classic graphic design and interactive marketing in offering an experience that feels like a supermarket mailer come to life.

Wyzowl - IKEA

Wyzowl specializes in video production and has some impressive interactive marketing pieces in its portfolio. This spot for Ikea has a cinematic sense of action that feels imaginative and quirky, while featuring links to its products that pop up throughout.

CNA x Chanel, The Power of Red

Wyzowl specializes in video production and has some impressive interactive marketing pieces in its portfolio. This spot for Ikea has a cinematic sense of action that feels imaginative and quirky, while featuring links to its products that pop up throughout.

Pfizer

Created with Vev, Pfizer's Let’s Outdo Cancer features personal stories, guidance, as well as detailed information about its research and clinical trials. There’s much that’s covered, but elements like horizontally scrolled sections, call-to-action buttons, and interactive cards give visitors freedom and control over how they take in the different types of information. The tone is open and accessible and it’s a powerful piece of interactive marketing that communicates the science of what Pfizer does, along with information that helps both patients and loved ones dealing with illness.

Ikea

Advertorial content is most effective when it feels like a natural part of a website. Sponsored by Ikea, this interactive article built with Vev by the Norwegian Verdens Gang gives plenty of helpful advice about tidying up, as well as featuring Ikea products that can help in getting better organized.

PTC

Not every piece of interactive marketing needs to be something big and elaborate. This holiday card from PTC Technologies designed with Vev wishes, “Happy Holidays” along with a three-dimensional globe that visitors can spin around. It’s an eye-catching animation that makes finding out where they are across the world way more engaging than a bullet point list.

Smart

Dynamic product images that change based on choices like color, model, size, or other characteristics are a great way to show visitors what’s possible and to get them excited about becoming customers. Smart, a Norwegian electric car company, lets people customize its cars with different options in an interactive product gallery. It’s an effective piece of web design that lets potential customers see the possibilities based on their tastes, letting them dial in exactly what they might be after.

M&M's

Experiential marketing is another form of interactive marketing that gives consumers something that goes beyond a company’s regular offerings. M&M’s Flavor Remix lets customers create their own custom bag of candy. They get to choose flavor options as well as picking out packaging. It’s a great piece of interactive marketing that lets customers become a part of the product creation process.

Univision Fix-it

We always like seeing more traditional entities like cable companies getting creative with interactive marketing. Univision put together an augmented reality styled game that teaches people how to set up and use their products through a series of missions in helping different characters out. This game is a light-hearted interactive marketing piece that’s informative as well as humanizing who they are.

Get started with interactive marketing

Understanding what is interactive marketing is the first step towards creating more interesting and engaging content, the next is to start designing. Vev’s presets, tools, animations, and visual canvas lets you transform static designs into dynamic and interactive experiences that captivate visitors and draw them deeper into the stories or information you want them to learn.