Businesses are always on the lookout for creative marketing strategies to spread the company’s message and promote brand names. In this sense, gamification has become a popular marketing strategy to reach customers online and via connected mobile applications, like online casinos do with their “deposit 5 play with 50” offers. Several gamification or gaming techniques, like incentives, scoring systems, ranking lists, and competition, attract consumers to create connections, build brand loyalty, and give the customers reasons to keep coming back and purchase the products and/or services.
The ultimate aim of gamification in marketing is to increase profit by boosting sales. These are customer-oriented games that help brands reach closer to their objectives. They aid in promoting repeat business, boost the company brand, increase engagement, and collect consumer data.
What is Gamification in Marketing?
The gamification definition refers to concepts and techniques you take from games and apply them to your marketing strategy. Even if you have not heard of it before, you have likely experienced it at some point. At some point, Hasbro and McDonald’s joined hands to create a Monopoly game based on fast food.
It is known as gamification. These concepts can be actual games, points, and trophies. The idea behind this is to mirror games that can engage visitors.
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Benefits Of Gamification
Some gamification benefits include:
1. Improved and Increased User Engagement
Since your visitors will take specific actions with gamification, these engagement rates are often better and higher than those achieved via previous marketing campaigns. Improving the engagement with the customers is the first milestone of a long-standing collaboration between the brand and the brand and the consumer.
2. Grows Brand Loyalty and Awareness
As mentioned previously, customers who remember the company’s name in the back of their minds for sufficient time after getting a fantastic experience playing a game are essential for your business. It is because, firstly, they get emotionally attached to your company name; in turn, they will become more loyal customers than those who are actively disengaged or indifferent.
Based on studies, it has been found the engaged consumers comprise nearly 23% premium in terms of relationship growth, revenue, profitability, and wallet, as compared to an average customer. It is very true in insurance industries, hospitality, restaurants, consumer electronics, and retail banking.
3. Gather Useful Consumer Data
For businesses, consumer data is probably one of the most important assets. Combined with gigantic databases, machine learning systems, the Internet of Things, and AI, these can provide brands with the required tools to target potential and the best customers at the right place and time. However, gathering this data is not too easy. This is where gamification knowledge management can come in very handy.
By offering fun games to play and chances of winning a reward or prize, customers will be willing to share potential data, which you can use to understand your target audience.
4. Better Conversion Rates
Since your customers will engage more with your gamified elements, they will also likely respond to your CTA, rather than other marketing methods like a traditional banner, to win prizes and rewards attached to the interactive gaming experience. In turn, your conversion rates will also improve.
For instance, imagine that your brand holds a quick interactive quiz on your website and offers a 20% discount as the prize. Therefore, the customer will want to take advantage of the discount and use it to purchase your e-store or website.
5. Better Promotional Offers
At times, consumer data can be rather emotional and subjective than rational. As a result, a particular offer on any product or service may be interpreted differently, depending on the circumstance and context of the approach.
For instance, users may likely ignore a clickable banner that shows the message “10% off for the next two hours”. However, they will feel very excited if they are rewarded the same 10% for passing two or three levels in their games. Why? Consumers will get the sensation that they have actually ‘worked for’ the discounts; they will value it differently than handing them freely.
6. Educates Your Consumers About the Products and/or Services You Provide
Many companies use the gamification concept as an easy and fun way to explain the benefits of their products and/or services. One of the best gamification examples is when Emmi Good Day launched its line of dairy drinks with 60% less sugar. In this game, users needed to catch the milk while avoiding the sugar cubes to gain points. This way, the company educated its customers about the healthier recipe for its products.
7. Increases Customer Interaction
The ultimate goal for marketers is to attract and grab the attention of new potential customers. One of the most commonly used ways to do so is using ad units; however, pop-ups and banner ads are often ignored or rejected by users who are tired of seeing these ads. Therefore, companies spread their message via easy-to-play and fun games to reach new potential audiences and convert them into customers.
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Implementing Gamification into Marketing
Here are some steps that gamification companies often follow and have been linked to campaigns with higher success rates:
1. Know Your Target Audience
The thin line between the success and failure of a marketing strategy will eventually depend on how you are targeting your potential audience. If you are not creating new information for your potential customers who will eventually buy your services/products, you cannot get any new business. Therefore, you have to create dedicated content to get new leads to land on your site.
It is advised that you take time to research your audience—look into customers that have already purchased your services/products and those who you would like to become new clients. You need to understand what your customers want and whether you will be able to provide it to them or not.
When it gets down to select a game, the location, interests, gender, and age matter. Some games have more male percentage than females. Knowing who your target audience is will allow you to come up with the right time of the game to reach that gamification business demographics.
2. Set Your Goals Beforehand
Of course, there are many ways that you can take advantage of gamification for employee engagement; however, moving ahead without a strategy is not advised. You need to understand many aspects that go beforehand – will your games educate the audience of your new product/service? Will the game create hype around your brand?
It is quite surprising that brands will want to launch a marketing campaign but are unable to identify what they are looking for. Simply trying to make some noise just to stay in the customers’ minds is not a conscious or long-term goal.
If you understand how a game can help understand what you are trying to convey and achieve, you can shape the decisions for both the elements and content of the game. All these developments will ensure that the success of your game can be measured based on your objectives.
3. Keep It Simple
Since the primary goal of gamification at work is to achieve a desired outcome via a designated path, it is recommended that you keep the game mechanics straightforward and simple. When you are in the gamification business, you do not want to overcomplicate things. For instance, it is better to avoid complicated point systems that are difficult to comprehend or involve complex rules and regulations. There are many gamification marketing examples that have done exactly the opposite, so not many things worked out for these companies.
It is recommended that you keep everything as basic as possible so that your customers can easily understand how they can earn prizes and rewards. Gamification does not have to be complex; the harder the game, the harder your marketing will be.
4. Have A Content Calendar
When you are sharing promo content on your social media sites, it can be tough to have discipline. Your entire campaign can be ruined if you miss even a single post. In addition, you need to remember the content you want to upload on your company’s social media accounts. Inconsistent posting can make your customers think that you do not care much about your online presence at all.
A content calendar will organize your efforts and ensure that you are posting the correct information when it’s needed most. You just need to glance over the calendar in the morning to see the schedule. In the case of gamification in the workplace, simply having the game on your platform does not mean anything if it is not being promoted. If it is not being promoted, does it get played?
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Final Thoughts
When you are looking for the right gamification platform, you need to understand who the games are for. You also need to know what needs to go out concerning your strategy and the amount you want to invest. All these points are very important and can easily be overlooked while dealing with the excitement of commissioning a new game for your website.
The type of marketing campaign you create for your gamification news will depend on how well you know your target audience and the number of preparations you can make. If you want to keep things easy, you will not be able to attract the right customers. However, if you understand and work your way through what your audience knows and is doing, you could easily grab the users’ attention and bring in new clients for your business.
Would you add anything else? Write your ideas in the comments!
This article is written by Jeremy Ambrose. Jeremy started his own small business on the Internet a few years ago. After many failures and difficulties passed, he decided that he wanted to share his experience and knowledge with other people.
Web developer and SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience in open-source web development, digital marketing, and search engine optimization. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions (RSWEBSOLS)".
