How Businesses Are Using Gamification to Spice Up Their Marketing

By cwainwright@hubspot.com (Corey Wainwright)

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You win!

It’s a short, simple phrase, but a powerful one — and it’s the basis for gamification in marketing.

By incorporating game elements into marketing efforts such as brand awareness, reward programs, or new product promotions, businesses can turn basic campaigns into connective efforts that keep customers coming back for more.

The challenge? While it’s easy to find anecdotal evidence of gamification making marketing efforts better, it’s more difficult to track down a gamification guide that helps marketers make this approach work for them. In this piece, we’ll walk you through gamification basics, common strategies, and real-life examples to help your campaign take the lead.

Put simply, it’s the process of turning any process into a game. For marketing teams, it could be turning your inbound marketing into a game in order to achieve a specific outcome. Your audience (customers, leads, fans, followers, readers, whoever) engages in a game that offers the chance to win something, and in return, you get a marketing boost.

It’s sort of like when we host a webinar and say whoever tweets the webinar’s hashtag the most gets a free ticket to our next marketing conference — it taps into people’s competitive spirit and drive to win, and gets our content more exposure on Twitter. Again, a win-win scenario, and one that’s more creative than just asking someone, “Hey, can you tweet this link?”

Some common gamification strategies for marketing teams include:

Website Games

Website games take many forms. They can be simple, “spin the wheel” pages that pop up when customers click through to products or when they arrive on your site, or they might be virtual scratch cards that let buyers earn a discount on their favorite products.

No matter the type, the key to website games working is keeping them simple and relatively unobtrusive. Make it easy for users to play, always let them win something, and let them quickly close out games if they’re not interested.

Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are also a great way to gamify the customer experience. By offering customers points, stars, or other currency after they make a purchase and tying these currencies to discounts or special offers, brands can keep their target audience coming back.

Completion Meters

Another way to engage customer interest is through completion meters. This is an especially useful tactic for brands looking to keep customers interested in their mobile applications. By giving users a goal to reach or another level to earn — along with commensurate benefits — companies can drive ongoing engagement.

Virtual Badges

Virtual badges or rewards for specific actions can help keep customers coming back and encourage them to earn the next digital award, especially if it’s tied to a discount or other benefit.

It’s one thing to know the basics — it’s another to implement gamification efforts that directly benefit your business. Here’s a look at 10 real-life examples for your brand to try.