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Today, capturing a customer segment and keeping it is harder than ever for online businesses. There is so much competition that you need to stay ahead of the game. Rich media is essential for doing this and will elevate your company above others in your sector as part of your strategy. But what is rich media really, and how can it help? Here, we detail the many useful ways that rich media such as polling, animation, and live streaming can help your modern ads campaigns.
Enhancing the User Experience
One of the key ways modern online businesses like to stand out from others is by evolving, shaping and improving the customer experience. This is mainly done through website development but can be applied to anywhere a customer interacts with your company. Specialists such as Vulcan Agency can help develop your website into something special. However, you can also use engagement tools provided by social media platforms as well.
Rich Media is Essential for Engagement
Further to engagement tools, you can’t afford to ignore these. Rich media campaigns that engage the audience are 7.44 times more effective than standard advertising on the web. Engaging rich media includes things like polls, animation and sound and even live streams. The point is to convey information in an easier way so the audience doesn’t have to think too hard. Engagement through entertainment is powerful and should be considered for any campaign.
It Helps Create Better Ads
Okay, so we know that the web is basically a giant billboard! But that isn’t a bad thing. It helps keep sites running for free and makes the internet economy go around. But for so long, ads were just, well, ads! They popped, sat there, and did nothing. For the most part, standard web ads are plain annoying. However, with some added elements, ads can become part of the web experience. Animated, playful, and informative ads capture attention so users don’t mind them.
Increases User Interaction
It’s all too easy to flood the web with static ads. But is this really enough? Users want more from an ad campaign these days and from the brand in particular. Rich media is the perfect way to interact with your audience in a meaningful way. With social media posts, informative videos and tools such as polling, you are no longer a passive or faceless business. You can become something people engage with on a regular basis, offering masses of data you can work with.
Rich Media is Essential for Brand Awareness
The whole point of advertising on the web is to create a brand and cultivate a loyal following. This is, of course, much harder than most people think. However, when you get it right, rich media is a powerful tool for raising brand awareness. Here are a few examples of how.
Improved metrics and insights
You can glean a lot more data from rich media campaigns than other methods. For example, you can view impressions, how long people interacted with it and total number of views.
Recalling your brand
A branding shoot won’t go to waste as people recall brands through rich media campaigns by up to 70% more effectively than with static ads and banners as we retain interactive data well.
Standing out from the competition
Your beginner ad campaign is much more compelling when there is some kind of interactive or entertaining nature. Something that the main competition probably isn’t thinking about.
Of course, there are many more advantages to using rich media. But even if you get improved insights, it can lead to better business. Working with your marketing team, consider how you can use rich media moving forward and include it in ads and engagement for future campaigns.
Unleashed Campaign Creativity
Photoshop skills in developing static ads is a skill in itself. But what if your marketing team is getting a bit bored? Boredom can lead to stagnant creativity in the office, which can result in a bad ad campaign. Introducing something fresh and dynamic can ignite the fire under your creative team and get them excited about working on ad campaigns once more. Programmers, artists, and sound developers can all work together on something stunning if they are motivated.
Retaining Customer Attention
Interactive, engaging ads are the current gold standard for web advertising campaigns. Users don’t want annoying pop-ups, header banners, or mid-post ad bars. These annoy people, and most don’t even notice them anyway. However, rich media ads are excellent at capturing attention, so users look away from what they are doing and notice your ad. If you have developed the ads correctly with the user in mind, there is a higher chance of a click-through.
Rich Media is Essential for CTR
Further to clicking through, rich media can help increase CTR for ad campaigns. In fact, tests have found that rock media ads can increase CTR by up to 267% compared to static ads. Of course, this means potentially more conversions, so why would you ignore this potential? All it takes is something related to your product to catch the eye. For example, a poll ad asking, “Which Type of Gamer are You?” is immediately intriguing and can link to gaming chairs.
Easy to Implement on Multiple Platforms
The beauty of rich media is that you can use it across many different platforms. Whether it’s your blog or business website, a storefront or social media, most support rich media. Each may have their own though. For instance, some may not support Flash but you can use polls. It’s really down to segmenting ad campaigns for different platforms. However, there is no rule that even says you need to use various platforms but it really can help capture a wider audience.
Summary
Making the user experience better is one of the main reasons why rich media is essential these days. You can also use it to build upon your brand awareness through interaction and engagement. Rich media is also available across many different platforms such as social media.
