Spice up your marketing by implementing gamification

Time has passed and gamification has quietly become a common tool in a marketer’s bag of tricks.

Simply put, gamification in general is the act of turning something into a game to achieve a certain purpose. From a friendly competition in a sales team to a parent pretending to turn food into an airplane, anything can be turned into a game.

For marketing teams it can be a useful strategy to increase customer engagement and retention by adding the components of games to a campaign. This doesn’t necessarily require lots of games – as many people might dislike the thought of playing – rather it’s about implementing the fun elements of a game into a different setting.

Games are usually engaging, help creativity and tap into our competitive spirit while encouraging most of us to behave differently to how we would normally act. When it comes to brands, gamification is a great tool to get more exposure and increase effectiveness, while improving the customers’ experience all at the same time – providing a positive and longer lasting engagement with the brand.

Five successful gamification tactics marketers can implement to spice up campaigns:

1. Unlocking achievements
   Many businesses produce useful content or offer something valuable for customers and they can add an extra layer of fun to the customer experience by only making certain content available if customers unlock them based on certain activities and achievements on a website. This is a great way of keeping them engaged but only if the rewards are valuable enough – such as free samples or trials, goodies or the ability to post and comment freely. An achievement-based gamification strategy can encourage interaction and give users something to strive for while at the same time tying in well with membership programmes to keep people engaged. However, this tactic can only work if the rewards are worth it. If it’s not enough to inspire engagement, there is no point creating a complex system of achievements and measurement and then marketing them if all that effort will be wasted.
2. Quizzes
   Quizzes have never been more popular. They are the perfect way to challenge someone’s knowledge and really get them thinking about a particular subject. By adding a competitive element to it, the reach of the message can easily be extended even further if the nature of the content inspires people to share it with their friends and contacts to challenge them for a game as well. Quizzes also go well with images and can prove to be a great way to liven up pages with graphics and potentially even sounds.
3. Adventure or exploration
   Videos are popular and receive high levels of engagement but making alternative endings and interesting story lines can take things even further to the next level. Custom built videos can allow users to develop the story themselves by making decisions to influence the outcome. If the fact that alternative endings are available is made public, it can inspire more views and keep people engaged. If it’s interesting enough, players will return to see what happens when you do something different or if they can achieve a particular outcome.
4. Brainteasers
   Riddles and brainteasers are great to challenge and engage users. A strategically placed, tricky question can inspire people to click thought to find out the answer, potentially spending more time on the website that they normally would have. By including a share function, people may even send on the question to their friends and contacts, especially if the answer was difficult and they want to brag a little.
5. Animated games
   Small animated games can be very popular, but it takes real skills to make them simple yet engaging and thus this might be that area where involving a third party is advisable to make the games look slick and fun.

If you can tie it to your proposition, mini sports games testing hand-eye co-ordination can be easy and quick wins, for example. Leader boards are great, too (see ‘Achievements’ – above) as they could again encourage people to show off and challenge their friends, so make sure there’s an easy-to-use share function.

Does gamification work?

No wonder marketers love gamification campaigns as some astonishing statistics are available on how successful these tactics can be. eLearning company Growth Engineering, for example, reported a 50 per cent increase on the time an average visitor spent on their site after a gamification strategy was implemented.

Gartner estimates that by the end of 2014 more than 70 per cent of the world’s largest 2,000 companies had deployed at least one gamified application. Similarly, vendors claim that gamification strategies can lead to a 100 to 150 per cent increase in engagement metrics.

Base it on the target audience

No matter what path marketers choose to go down on when it comes to gamification (the more creative and original the better), the key is to have clear goals and business objectives in mind. A clear definition of the target audience needs to take centre stage in the planning process – what sort of games would they like? What would resonate with them and what would they be more receptive to?

These are all essential questions and must tie perfectly into your proposition and what you offer. This is why it’s critical to have a clear set of objectives and know exactly what you wish to achieve with your gamification strategy. If you have identified a particular group with high potential you wish to engage then all the insight you have on that group should be built into the campaign to appeal specifically to them. This may require building in third party data sources for greater levels of insight as well.

Techniques like gamification are great and hold immense potential for brands engaging their target audience, but they are only ever as good and effective as the data and insights they are based on. A very clear understanding of your data and audience is absolutely key before you embark on creating any gamification strategies to maximise the potential these tactics hold.

For similar content from Experian Marketing Services, visit the Latest Thinking Blog.