How to Bake Gaming Mechanics into Your Next Marketing Campaign
Ingrained deep into each of our psyches is the desire to be acknowledged with a pat on the back or a “good job” every once in a while. In an age where “friend” means clicking an “accept” button on a website rather than doing the heavy lifting required in building friendships of yesterday, the pat on the back has also taken on an easier to achieve virtual format. Watching content you create get a thumbs up or seeing your virtual stock rise with the addition of more “friends” and “followers” or assessing your stock pile of virtual livestock, badges and gifts is all the reward some people need to engage over and over with a product, brand or event.
Consider Twitter, Facebook, Farmville, SCVNGR. Watching your follower and friend base grow and engage with you on Twitter and Facebook is rewarding while the endless collecting of cows and crops on Farmville or badges on Foursquare gives you a sense of superiority or envy as you compare your assets to those of your neighbors. In the case of SCVNGR, the completion of particular sets of actions gives a sense of accomplishment as you reach a finite reward that you can redeem. These are simple yet effective implementations of gaming mechanics into marketing campaigns to drive both loyalty and usage among consumers.
When layered on top of a social network, gaming mechanics can be applied to almost any rewards based or loyalty marketing campaign to drive engagement with a product or service directly. The key here is to layer a rewards system into a core existing action within your product or service. For example, 30 years ago, American Airlines introduced the first Frequent Flier Program. The program was simple, they rewarded you with points for every flight you took with them, they sent a statement to you each month so you could see your points accrue, then once you earned enough points and reached a particular milestone, they allowed you to redeem those points for more flights. The key action here was flying American. The game mechanics that made American Airlines’ program successful then are the same making others successful to this day: collecting, points, access, status, rewards.
Let’s Break Down How Game Mechanics Work in Marketing and How You Can Use Them in Marketing Campaigns
1. What are the goals of your campaign?
If the goals of your campaign are to build a community, motivate users to contribute, build loyalty for your brand or product or get your customer to act as brand ambassadors to their sphere of influence, you could easily layer game mechanics on top of your marketing campaign.
2. What is the core action you want a customer to take with your product, service or website.
The most likely answers to this question are: buy, inquire, contribute content, engage with other members, refer friends, or enlist customers as brand embassadors.
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