Marketers everywhere are using polls and surveys to maximize the utility of their marketing campaigns, but with interactive polls, marketers can more effectively engage their viewers for better polling results. Interactive content types, including polls, drive 2x the conversions over standard content types, making it an integral part of successful marketing strategies. With interactive polling products, companies can take advantage of the benefits of the age old strategy of using polls and surveys, and modernize it to receive feedback in real time.
Benefits of Polls
Polls enable marketers to get insights into what their consumers think and what they want to see from the company. Marketers can smartly use Polls to really understand the needs of their customers, whether its getting thoughts on current or future products or just getting a better idea of whom your consumers are. With every vote, you step closer towards painting the picture of your average consumer.
Polls also serve to foster engagement with your consumers. Many costumers submit their opinions via polls as they are very quick and easy, and allow the costumer to feel as though they are providing valuable feedback to the company. Letting customers know that their voice is heard and cared about helps build confidence in the company.
There are many services being used by marketers right now to take advantage of the insights provided by polling. One example is twitter polls, which can be seen used by Airbnb below. Airbnb allows people to list, find, and rent homes. They ran this poll on twitter, which allowed them to engage their followers and gauge their preferred getaway destination. This way, they can better tailor future social content to the preferences seen in the poll.
Drawbacks of Simple Polling
There are many benefits to using polls as a part of your marketing plan, but there are some drawbacks to standard polls. Polls are not visual in nature, and often fail to attract consumers who may be scrolling past. The lack of visual media within polls leaves more to be desired. If consumers scroll right past your poll, the poll will be unable to accumulate a significant number votes to draw valuable data from the poll. Also, the polls only drive one click worth of engagement and the audience is moving on to something else.
How Interactive Polls Help
Now, there are polling solutions that address these drawbacks, including interactive polls. One advantage of interactive polling is the ability to embed media such as photos and videos. The visual nature of the content catches the eye, making it hard to miss and easy to share. Additionally, effective visual content allows you to drive home your point in a quicker and more meaningful way that customers will remember. For example, imagine if there were images and videos to go along with the Airbnb example above. This would make it a better experience for the user, and in the future when they go to travel, they will remember the Airbnb poll with the beautiful imagery and be more likely to use Airbnb for their lodging.
A great example of the power of interactive polling is when Wikia Fandom page used them to vote for the “E3 GAME OF SHOW.” Not only do they have the images you seen outright, you can also click to see a description and video trailer for each game. Based on the information given and any previous loyalty a fan may have, fans voted for their favorite game, and Wikia saw huge engagement on the campaign.
The increased engagement seen from the use of interactive polls also allows companies to get a significant amount of data, and lets them to do so in real-time. Real time data from polling allows marketers to better focus their future marketing campaigns to better fit their audience, or get instant feedback on current or upcoming products to make sure they design according to the wants and needs of their customers. This allows companies to better allocate their time and resources to satisfy their consumers and reach their goals as a company.
Conclusion
Marketers need to continue to take advantage of the usefulness offered by interactive polls, and given the resources available, marketers need to take the steps necessary to step up their polls. Making polls more visual and interactive to better engage their audience is a critical step in making their polls a success.