This was the third ad he skipped to watch a 5-minute video. Frustrated, he used AdBlockers to block other ads from popping up. Popups disturb user experience on websites – they cannot be the future of marketing. Additionally, a report from Statista showed people blocked ads, resulting in brand marketing loss. However, loyalty point systems and coupons increase engagement and sales. Therefore, how can brands leverage these game elements as better marketing strategies? Can there be a plug-and-play model to gamify marketing without worrying about cost and usage? In web3, how can brand leverage metaverse and NFTs to increase their market share and capture Gen Z and Alpha's attention? These are questions for brands that gamified marketing can solve.
But what is gamification?
Using game design elements in non-game projects and applications to make them fun, engaging, and exciting is gamification. Or gamification is activities and processes that solve complex concepts with game characteristics. This gamification is widely used in digital marketing, websites, productivity tools, and other software. Video games are built to captivate and entertain players; therefore, players are fully immersed in a game. Additionally, research shows that video games increase dopamine production, the feel-good chemical that leads to game addiction. So extending gamification to education will make learning fun and exciting. For example, you can incorporate game elements like leaderboards and points in websites, applications, marketing, and others. This could work wonders for your promotional campaign to reduce bounce rate and improve engagement. Coca-Cola, and Nike, among other brands, are using gamification to improve their marketing. For example, domino’s Pizza’s revenue increased by 30% by creating a gaming app where users could create their Pizza.
What is marketing Gamification?
Marketing should be fun and engaging – hence, gamification. Incorporating challenges, rewards, milestones, and other game elements in digital marketing strategy creates engagement and other business goals. Games make people more competitive, make companies relax, convert customers, and engage their community. Motivation is the end goal of gamified marketing for customers to make certain decisions. It nudges the audience to buy any product and promotes positive and emotional connections in communities. To top it all, it helps to boost marketing performance.
The benefits of gamification in marketing
1. Better brand awareness and market reach
Games weaved with marketing are tools for brands to create premium content for their followers. Brands leverage games to reach game enthusiasts and interact with the brands as a better marketing strategy. Through reward systems, points, leaderboards, and badges, brands will achieve new reach as gamers effortlessly share the brands’ games across media. Nike, Pepsi, Dell, and the likes reported a 13% increase in comments, a 22% increase in shared posts, and a 68% content discovery rate, according to Gigya. In most instances, users share their contests and dare their friends to compete, resulting in organic marketing for brands.
2. Reach diverse markets
A minor difference between millennials and gen z could be a strong frame for brands to leverage in their marketing campaign. Millennial loves challenges – a great feature of games. On the other hand, Gen Z prefers visuals as they are ushered in by smartphones and other digital technology. Therefore, their taste in digital marketing is high, and gamification brings many benefits. Gamified marketing provides leverage with competitive video games to serve both generations. This adds to the brand’s strategy to reach a diverse audience.
3. Community engagement
Gamified strategies engage customers and build the brand’s community. In-game incentives like rewards, prices, discounts, and badges are marketing techniques to convince customers to be part of the brand community. From the community, users know, like, and trust the brand’s product and value. Additionally, users invest emotionally in the brand, resulting in a higher chance of buying the brand’s products. From studies, gamified content increases brand engagement by 100-150%.
4. Easier data collection
Data collection is easier with gamification as most games require filling personal data tailored for personalized user services. Apart from this, the data provides metrics ad insights about the audience for brands to provide custom and tailored services for customer satisfaction.
5. Increase conversion rates
With better user engagement, conversion rates increase. This is not mutually exclusive. Gamification sure increases engagement, which is expected to improve conversion. This is because playing games is fun and exciting. Also, people buy when they don’t feel they are being sold to. Hence, gamification is a nice strategy to insert your call to action where it feels natural and not compelling for users. For instance, you may sell a product when a user spin-to-win a discount on your website. Most users will opt-in to use their luck.
6. Build brand loyalty
Apart from building a community for your brand and customer, gamification helps build loyalty. It is easier for past customers to buy from you than acquiring new customers, which is five times costlier. Gamification is the solution to building a loyal fan base. FarmVille is a brand that uses game integrations to engage web users. Customers will play games to continue their winning streak, for the gaming rewards, and competitively win the level they failed. Revolving your marketing around this three will build fans’ familiarity and loyalty.
7. Gamified marketing is affordable.
Gamification is cheaper than most other marketing methods. It is also more time-effective than the traditional marketing strategy. In addition, there are brands like Play2Learn that offer a B2B gamified marketing that can turn your brand’s concept into games for you.
8. AdBlockers-free
Video and popups interrupt users’ website navigation and browsing experience. Therefore, people use adblockers to navigate websites. Statista 2019 reported 25.8% blockage of advertisements on their devices. This results in limited marketing reach and a loss in advertisement costs. Gamified advertisements are risk-free to adblockers, according to Gamify.