Application of gamification into digital marketing strategies

More and more businesses are turning to gamification as a way of growing their customer base. It is simply the process of making a transaction between your business more than just a transaction – it becomes something that the user enjoys in the same way they enjoy a game. Gamers enjoy games because they earn something from them – it could be pints, it could be that they get to go to the next level or it could simply be the domination over other players. As the owner of a small business that is looking for more engagement from your clients it is high time you used gamification as part of your digital marketing strategies.

The figures speak for themselves – it is estimated that by 2018, the gamification market will be worth 5.5 billion and it will have a growth rate of 67%. In other words if you are not employing gamification as part of your digital marketing strategies you will soon be behind your competitors. So what does it look like in a small business? Gamification is not a new concept. It has been around for thousands of years. In the context of a small business, you can think of basic things such as giving discounts, coupons or any other such rewards that make the public want to engage with your business.

Technology, however, has made it possible for us to move away from coupons and discounts. You can now come up with many different ways to keep users engaged. There are many examples that you can draw from. Tabasco, the makers of the spicy sauce that goes by the same name, are an excellent example. They gamified their product by awarding points to users depending on how many drops of the sauce they used. These users soon became a community; they would get together around activities that connected with spicy foods. This simple action, which was impossible to track, earned them more than 1 million new customers. These people are not going anywhere any time soon – the community keeps growing.

Nike is another good example; when they realized that they were losing market share they added a tracker to their sneakers and called in the Nike+. Nothing had changed – they were the same sneakers but because runners could track their activity they found it a lot more fun to run in Nike+ sneakers. Today, more than 16 million runners use Nike+ sneakers every day.

The great thing about using gamification as a part of your digital marketing strategies is that with a top marketing company to correctly analyze your Analytics through SEO it is highly quantifiable. You will know whether you are successful by how many people are playing the game. If you are not successful you can always change to a different gamification process that is better suited to your users.

You have to be careful with gamification – you want to create something unique. You may be tempted to create an app and slap it on one of your products. Don’t do this because users will sense your lack of creativity which they may even mistake for desperation. No one wants to do business with a desperate party.