5 Ways to Use Gamification in Marketing

Gamification is the integration of game thinking and game mechanics into non-game experiences to motivate engagement. You challenge your audience with a question or task and they are rewarded for participating, completing or winning. Examples include puzzles, forms, or anything requiring audience interaction.

1. Competition drives motivation. We as humans are naturally competitive in one way or another. Be it through gaming against each other or ourselves, we love to top our previous scores and outdo others. As a brand, be aware of this as you build game strategies inside your company and in your marketing strategies. Create competitive energy using leaderboards, progress bars, badges, and/or points, and watch your customers’ participation levels soar. Having daily, weekly or monthly competitions where you reward the top players is a simple way to achieve this.

2. Encourage users to challenge real friends. Now, this may seem simple enough, but there needs to be some strategizing behind it to really take off. Encouraging users to challenge their friends and offering promos to reward them is a great way to incentivize social engagement and help spread the word about your brand.

3. Provide incentives. This is one of the most critical pieces to a successful gamification strategy. Great prizes keep users coming back for more, create fun competition, and can lead to upselling. Prices can be as simple as the top name on the leaderboard to discount codes to product samples.

4. Loyalty rewards. Give extra points towards in-game purchases when the customer makes a real-life purchase. This draws unknowing customers to the game, increasing online engagement, but can also work the other way. If you have a complex game that the user needs tools to win, they will need to make purchases from your business to earn points that can be used on tools. The buyer motivation works both ways, ultimately leading to customer loyalty.

5. Add in FOMO elements. The fear of missing out is a real thing. Ask any teenager. By offering chances to get ultimate prices in your games for only a limited time, users will be encouraged to play now! The best example of this is when you give your customer the chance to win 50% off a product or service upgrade if they claim the deal in the next 60 seconds. This can produce some incredibly fast engagement results!