30-second summary:
Ceros polled a thousand industry professionals to see what works (and what doesn’t work) when it comes to creating compelling content.
The poll found that immersive content was overwhelmingly used by the most effective marketers, versus static content like PDFs.
Immersive content is defined as words, charts, data visualizations, and other content that a reader interacts with or experiences, rather than reads passively.
Most companies don’t develop enough immersive content due to a lack of resources, in-house skills and buy-in from leadership and instead stick with static content such as blog posts and e-books.
Ceros is an experiential content design platform whose clients include a variety of top-tier organizations like Red Bull, CBRE, and Bloomberg. These companies use the platform to collaborate on, create, and publish compelling visual content without the need for code. Ceros recently polled a thousand marketing, PR, and design professionals to better understand how their organization approaches the creation of immersive content.
Ceros defines immersive content as, “Words, charts, data visualizations, quizzes, et al.—that a reader interacts with or experiences, rather than merely reads passively, as they would a static piece of content such as a PDF or white paper.”
The survey includes marketing and design leaders at a variety of large, mid-sized, and small companies in both B2B and B2C sectors and five global markets including the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K.
Source: Ceros
Content created in partnership with Ceros.
Immersive content creates an exceptional experience
Ninety percent of respondents in the Ceros survey agreed that immersive content—that is, content designed to create an experience—performs better than static content.
Even so, the reality is that most companies overwhelmingly produce static content like blog posts and e-books over more interactive content like calculators and quizzes.
Ceros writes, “While there’s broad agreement that immersive content is, in fact, more engaging and the majority of people we polled expressed a desire to do more interactive, those same people say they are still more likely to produce and share static content.”
Immersive content is effective content. Respondents noted that the most effective marketers were more likely to produce content like games, interactive publications, and calculators while less effective marketers stuck with PDF e-books.
So, if everyone agrees that immersive content is more engaging (and effective) than static content, why aren’t more companies creating it? In a word: resources.
Over half the respondents polled listed a lack of budget as a barrier to creating more immersive content. Other hurdles include a lack of in-house skills and difficulty with getting buy-in from leadership.
Effective content creators value good design
81% of marketers surveyed wished their company published more multimedia, interactive, and immersive content. It is, after all, marketing’s job to get the customer’s attention.
Marketers listed the biggest threats to marketing’s efforts to reach customers as social media fatigue, the changing marketing landscape, and burnout.
Making content that stands out is more critical than ever. Marketers know this because they’re the ones fighting an up-hill battle for consumer attention.
Nearly all the marketers surveyed value design as part of the creation process, with 55% indicating design was highly valued and 43% noting it’s moderately valued (just 2% said it was not valued at all).
Source: Ceros
Creativity is also highly valued and/or moderately valued by 98% of respondents. Valuing creativity and design in marketing materials goes hand in hand, since the two factors are inextricably linked to the design process as a whole.
Has your company’s content achieved an immersive ideal?
When asked if their company had achieved an “immersive ideal,” meaning they consistently published content that elicited emotion and engagement from consumers, only 16% of respondents said yes.
So, what sets these content rock stars apart from those at the other end of the content spectrum?
Well, several things. First, 50% of the high content performers said their company rewards risk-taking compared with 18% of the low performers.
More than half of high performers indicated they had the skills needed for success versus just 19% of low performers.
Additionally, high performers were much more likely to feel pride of ownership over their content and be comprised of a team that values creativity. Taken together, these attributes equal a focus on highly creative, unique (even bold), and engaging content.
Ceros’s interactive report, The Embrace of Immersive Content, is available in its entirety here. Immerse yourself in the experience today!
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Source: ClickZ
Link: The most effective marketers use immersive content
