Gamification in Your Content Marketing Strategy: Helpful Ideas and Tools

Content Marketing is constantly increasing the number of tools to increase the reach of the target group. One of them is gamification, with which you can increase the engagement of the company / brand, increase customer loyalty and personalize them. And all of this does not happen through advertising or complex strategic plans, but in a playful way.

Corresponding research, the global gamification market is growing by 27.8% per year in volume and will reach $ 22.9 billion by 2022.

Let’s take a look at what gamification is, why it works, and how you can incorporate it into your own marketing strategy.

What is gamification?

Gamification is a tool based on the application of a game element in the structure of a non-gaming business niche. It is closely related to the intrinsic competitiveness of consumers and the love of rewards that triggers certain actions dictated by content marketing.

A great example: people use the Apple Watch and the Nike app to challenge and train. At the same time, both companies are constantly sending the names of the leaders in the program to motivate users even more. There is one key difference between them, however – Apple Watch uses gamification for the main operation of the device and Nike as part of its marketing strategy.

Why is gamification needed?

Gamification is a great tool for attracting a huge stream of users in non-standard ways. Not only does it work as an object of personal benefit to users, it also leads to their moral satisfaction.

Using the tool in conjunction with a line of rewards will provide the person with an enjoyable experience and they will keep coming back to you. For example, after you get a result, you can offer the user a 10% discount coupon for purchases or even give them a valuable item for free.

Gamification is an effective part of a marketing strategy as the user receives material benefits for his activity.

What are the benefits of gamification?

First and foremost, gamification motivates users. It can serve three purposes at the same time:

• User training;
• Monitoring the progress of the marketing strategy;
• Entertainment for the audience.

This will help attract loyal customers and increase brand awareness. At the same time, gamification will also provide an incentive to find solutions and create many possibilities for complex and at first glance impossible tasks that the user does not dare to solve in a normal environment.

The 3 basic rules of use

We recommend that you familiarize yourself with the three main rules for using gamification.

1. Don’t rush!

Gamification is a fairly large project that requires clear planning and a gradual adoption. You don’t have to build an entire application right away like Nike did. For starters, it’s enough to offer a small reward for the customer sharing a link or answering a few questions.

2. Marketing goals in particular

When working with gamification, keep your original marketing goals in mind. The joy of the constant growth of the audience can lead you astray and instill an imaginary confidence that everything is fine. Perhaps the increase was artificial – people visit your website or application just for entertainment and leave immediately after the game. If the goal is to increase click-through rate, then everything is fine, but if the goal is to increase profit and brand awareness, you will lose.

It is important to regularly evaluate the correctness of the actions, taking users to different pages of the site, focusing on the product itself, not the game.

3. Find out who your audience is

Assess your audience before taking the tool up and running. There are 4 types of players:

• the murderers;
• successfully;
• Researcher;
• worldly people ..

Each species has its own goals in the game, so the rewards should be different.

Also, rate the audience based on age and gender. The better you get to know your audience, the more effective the introduction of gamification will be.

4. Make gamification fundable and scalable

As with any content marketing initiative, the chances of success are very slim if the advertising is not simple and integrated into the strategy itself. When rewarding people for sharing something, think about how you are going to pursue it and the workload it puts on the team. When you start a challenge, think about that Social media plan and process before making a final decision. It will help you model the initiative to maintain a scalable promotion plan.

What are the risks?

When developing a gamification model, marketers need to be aware of the risks.

If the game is poorly played or simply not suitable for a large audience, it will do significant damage to the company’s reputation. Even if an incorrect audience assessment is made, marketers can make a mistake on the theme of the game and gamification becomes a loss again.

Quality game criteria

The game must be of high quality, fully modified and tested before launch. Main criteria:

• a well-designed theme that won’t hurt players’ feelings;
• clearly formulated rules, drawn point by point;
• there needs to be real-time feedback;
• all results must be correctly diverted to the scoring immediately after the end of the game;
• the ability to play on mobile devices;
• uninterrupted game operation;
• transparent display of all successes of the players with the possibility to follow them.

It is important to inspire players to perform and to add excitement, rather than causing them to break down with constant interruptions in the game.

How do you integrate gamification into your marketing strategy?

You don’t have to be part of a large company to implement gamification. It doesn’t require large budgets and resources. It is enough to have a small brand or personal blog and customize the tool to suit your budget.

Here are 5 tips for incorporating gamification into your marketing strategy.

1. Follow the example of successful competitors

As at the beginning of any marketing strategy, the first thing you should do is analyze your competitor’s market. What works for others will likely work for your company too.

But don’t rely on big brands to succeed on a budget or small product. This will only lead to an overestimation of your skills and the breakdown of even the little ones you have.

Rely on competitors who are in your niche and have a roughly identical look and feel to your brand.

Study competitors, see what works, and build your own tool based on their experience. You can also take someone else’s idea and embrace it in full, but that may not please both the person you loaned the game from and your client.

2. Keep it simple

Users will not play a game with very complex rules or an incomprehensible reward system. This gamification will only turn your audience away from you. If you have trouble understanding the rules yourself, what should a player do?

For example, it is better to create a step-by-step game with separate action groups, through which a person can gradually learn a new phase.

Only give players information in clear language that is useful to them.

3. Ask a professional

Gamification is difficult to implement. Many companies fail in the start-up phase due to wrong tactics and a lack of elaboration. Do not be afraid to ask for advice, turn to the appropriate professionals, use the collected courses and other open information on the subject.

Sometimes it is worthwhile to delegate this task entirely to specialized specialists in order not to come to a negative result.

4. Everything must have a purpose

When creating a game, you need to understand why it is needed and what the outcome should be from implementing it. Tools are also needed to measure the success of the campaign and to analyze it on an ongoing basis.

Without the goals set, it’s not clear why you should change your marketing strategy over the long term.

Install analytics tools and keep track of how many people entered the games, when, how many left them, and where they went next. If the goal is not achieved, it may be necessary to change your strategy or to wait a while.

5. New technologies = new opportunities

In the age of high technology, they shouldn’t be avoided. The introduction of AR, VR, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) into gamification will enable better audience interaction.

If you are part of a large project and have a sufficient budget, adopting the technology will make things a lot easier. AI can become a great analysis tool, and AR and VR are going to be really addicting the game. They will offer even more personalization, attractiveness and more incentives for players.

diploma

Gamification is an ideal tool to build a target audience, encourage users to take various actions on the website / social networks, as well as an opportunity to significantly increase awareness and engagement of the company / brand.

It is used throughout our daily lives, and we were often given candy or other material rewards for good school grades or for helping tidy up our homes. Therefore, this tool is so close to us that we react to it quickly in adulthood. Marketers should also approach gamification and embed it in a strategy to make it the primary weapon in the pursuit of human approval.