In digital marketing, brands are always refining how to drive deeper audience engagement. Strongly engaged customers lead to higher brand awareness and help drive marketing goals like higher sales and strategy development.
Gamification offers a wide variety of benefits. And when it’s leveraged correctly, it can become a core part of driving KPIs and uncovering key audience insights. Let’s take a closer look at gamification marketing and how brands should get started in executing this unique customer engagement strategy.
At its core, gamification marketing is a strategy that takes game-like elements, such as scoring points through actions taken, to boost customer engagement. It’s a unique way to get a brand’s desired results through something fun and entertaining. For example, many mobile apps let users earn badges and other rewards for interacting with the brand.
Brands are always looking for ways to acquire customer data and learn more about the voice of their audience. In a crowded digital landscape, it’s more challenging than ever to cut through the clutter of blogs, emails, and ads to engage with your target audience. One of the best ways to do this is through gamification marketing.
Gamification helps brands learn about their target audience by providing a structured platform to observe their behavior and preferences. Every point of engagement like getting points, earning badges, or interacting with a leaderboard provides insight into how a target audience prefers to interact with a brand.
Gamification marketing taps into a person’s competitive nature to make them more likely to engage with your brand. Getting a prospect to take a marketing survey is a tough task on its own. But, if taking that survey earns them bonus points in a March Madness competition hosted by your brand, getting a response suddenly becomes much more likely.
You’ve likely run into some form of gamification marketing before. It’s a customer engagement strategy that brand reward programs have been using for a while. In their most basic form, customers and prospects earn points for making a purchase. There’s nothing wrong with simple programs like these, but brands are leaving a lot of possibilities on the table.
The key question for any gamification marketing strategy is “does it influence buying behavior?”. Gamification has evolved, and brands like Touchpoint Games have tied it to sports and made it easy for anyone to join in on the fun. As part of the platform, Touchpoint Games lets brands create trivia questions that could include watching a video, taking a survey, promoting social media channels, and more.
At True Digital Communications, we work with Touchpoint Games to create a branded March Madness competition—Murphy Madness, named for our Chief Happiness Officer. Our clients and prospects make picks for each round and earn points for correct guesses. And they can earn bonus points by answering questions about our brand and services.
A big part of what makes Murphy Madness unique is that it’s our own branded pool. Customers and prospects are invited to join through branded emails and get reminders to engage with each round of March Madness. Every round there is a new set of bonus questions to earn extra points on top of making weekly picks. By getting participants to repeatedly engage with the True brand each week, prospects are more likely to convert.
Chris Briggs, Founder and CEO of Touchpoint Games says: “Any brand that relies on relationship-driven sales is a great fit for gamification marketing.” Touchpoint Games gives you the ability to create branded sporting event pools to entertain and engage customers to help brands reach their marketing goals. These brands compete in crowded markets with similar products and need a way to break through. In these situations, differentiation comes down to price, customer service, and relationships.
With gamification marketing, relationships are the easiest way for brands to compete. Through an interactive experience like March Madness or an NFL pick pool, your brand can hold the attention of your target audience and keep them engaged. When people are engaged, they're more likely to retain information and remember your brand.
Some of the best customer engagement strategies get the target audience excited to interact with a brand. These programs are more effective when prizes are on the line. People like to compete and feel in control. Having a system that simply offers points doesn’t have the same impact.
Like any digital marketing strategy, the first step in using gamification is outlining your a clear goal. What you want to accomplish will have a direct impact on how a program like March Madness takes shape. Identifying your main challenge is crucial. For example, if your brand needs:
If your brand is ready to take the next step and leverage gamification marketing to help achieve your goals, True Digital Communications and Touchpoint Games are here to help. Stand out from the competition and give your relationship-based sales a boost with gamification.
And for insight on other digital marketing best practices, be sure to sign up for the True newsletter.
.jpg)
