When it comes to interactive content, you can’t beat video games. They’re immersive, entertaining and a rich medium for unique storytelling. Where else can you fight a dragon with nothing but a cool hat and a good attitude?
I’ve spent my fair share of time munching dots in “Pac-Man” and meticulously caring for my horses in “Red Dead Redemption 2.” But the real magic happened when I picked apart my favorite games and realized their successes could work just as well in content marketing — admittedly with fewer ghosts and cowboys.
This is gamification content marketing. Here’s how to land a high score (and make sure you don’t take an arrow to the knee along the way).
Marketing + Gaming: The New Mario and Peach
Before you can start implementing gamification, you have to know what you’re working with. That means breaking down the elements that make games work in the first place.
Now, if you ask me, that would include fishing minigames, animal taming and plenty of hats for your in-game character. More sensible people would probably list elements like these:
- Scoring points.
- Completing achievements.
- Earning rewards.
- Competing with other players.
- Playing by certain rules.
When you take a gaming element from this list and put it into another context, such as education or content marketing, it’s called gamification. Ideally, gamified experiences should be so immersive, engaging and entertaining that they feel like being a kid at an arcade.
That’s why I believe marketing and gaming are like the new Mario and Peach — a fun relationship that keeps everyone coming back for more.
What does that look like? Here are just a few examples:
Audience Preferences
As a marketer, one of your most important jobs is “giving the people what they want.” These days, audiences are especially motivated by the promise of entertainment — and through gamification, you keep that promise without sacrificing marketing goals like clicks or conversions. It’s a great way to build trust with customers who want to see you prioritize their preferences over your sales.
New Formats
One way to spice up your digital marketing strategy is to vary your assets, from blogs and social posts to animations and infographics. Gamification adds a new option to your arsenal, helping avoid the boredom trap and keep things fresh for both your audience and content creators.
Interactivity
Video games work because they respond to the player’s actions. Gamified content does the same thing. It turns your audience into the main character, rewarding activity with interactivity and assigning immediate value to their decisions.
Personalization
Personalization is one of those digital marketing buzzwords we all know and love, but gamification introduces an important new layer: autonomy. Users choose how they interact with your content and therefore shape their own experiences, essentially doing the personalization work for you. All you have to do is hand them the controls.
Experiential Marketing
There are a lot of ways to master experiential marketing, and incorporating gamification is just the power-up you need. It all boils down to scalability. While many experiences require audiences to be in the right place at the right time, a gamified marketing campaign can live wherever the internet does — which means more people can engage with your brand on their own terms.
The Gamemaker’s Guide to Gamification Content Marketing
The important thing to remember about gamification marketing is that you’re not creating a game. You’re creating content and then making it feel like a game by carefully leveraging gamified elements.
That means you have to spend a lot of time thinking about how those elements fit into your larger marketing strategy. For example:
- Goal: Increase customer engagement.
- Gamification strategy: Create daily “missions” that have users returning to your site regularly to complete fun tasks.
- Goal: Build brand loyalty.
- Gamification strategy: Design activities that reward users with exclusive content that makes them feel like they’re part of a selective inner circle.
- Goal: Gather contact information.
- Gamification strategy: Require users to create an account to save their achievements or goal progress.
Keep in mind that there’s a difference between casually integrating a few gamification elements and designing a full-on gamified campaign. The former can be for fun or to add some personality to your website; the latter should focus on specific marketing goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Both can work — you just need to know which you’re aiming for.
What Every Gamification Marketing Strategy Needs
If you’re planning a gamification strategy, you’ll need the right tools in your inventory. Here’s what to bring along for the adventure:
- Research: Perform both audience and market research to understand what people are looking for, how preferences shape behaviors and where gamification might align with their brand expectations.
- KPIs: Decide ahead of time how you’ll define and measure success for your campaign; examples include reducing bounce rate, increasing impressions, improving customer lifetime value or boosting net promoter score.
- Accessibility: Keep in mind that not everyone likes to play on hard mode. Ensure you design your campaign to have accessible, realistic objectives that build fun instead of frustration.
- Technical expertise: Your site must be able to support the various activities, scoreboards, progress tracking and points assignment that come with gamification.
- Quality content: Remember, gamification only works if it’s built on solid content. That includes clear instructions, calls to action, animated site graphics, landing pages for different activities and more.
Gamified Content Marketing: The Good, The Bad & The Game Over
As much as I love video games, sometimes the cake really is a lie — which is just one way of saying the gamification technique isn’t always right for your content strategy. That means it’s important to know the benefits and potential pitfalls.
Pros
Experiences
Reading about the ocean is great, but you won’t know what it’s really like until you’re wading through the waves. The same is true for audiences trying to learn about your brand. If you give them direct, personalized experiences through techniques like gamification, they build first-hand connections with your business.
Relationships
Gamification is the perfect chance to build lasting relationships with customers. Loyalty programs, leaderboard challenges, rewards and achievements encourage people to visit you again and again.
Opportunities
While customers are learning about and interacting with your brand, you get the chance to do the same with them. Gamification creates all kinds of opportunities to learn about audience preferences, demographics, contact info and more.
Cons
Limitations
Gamification may not resonate with all audiences or industries. For example, some people just want you to get to the point, so your gamification efforts might seem like obstacles. Meanwhile, audiences might think gamification feels wrong in a sector such as health care or legal services.
Challenges
There are all kinds of technical challenges involved in making just one gamification element work as intended. Beyond that, you also have to know how to design them to hold interest for extended periods of time — especially as attention spans dwindle.
Distractions
Even a loyal customer may feel that gamification is a distraction if it’s done incorrectly, inefficiently or in the wrong context. The last thing you want to do is chase people away.
3 Examples of Gamified Content Marketing
Ready to see a gamification marketing campaign in action? How about 3? Let’s see what makes this technique work in the wild:
KFC
The brand: KFC, or Kentucky Fried Chicken, is a fast-food chain specializing in — you guessed it — chicken.
The games: KFC created a “dating simulator” starring its mascot, Colonel Sanders, which I know actually exists because I played it for research purposes. (If you’re curious, the Colonel and I decided to stay friends.) KFC Japan also launched a mobile app to promote a new shrimp product, earning a 91% engagement rate and a 106% increase in store sales.
Why it works: This marketing effort definitely targets particular audiences, but it’s just the kind of thing that gets people talking — and that boosts brand awareness in a big way.
HerUniverse
The brand: Her Universe is a fashion company and lifestyle brand for pop culture merchandise.
The game: Click the center of this simple but effective wheel and you’ll see it spin — and offer a nice discount, too.
Why it works: The wheel visually promises an immediate reward, although you have to provide contact information to get the coupon code. Nonetheless, this tactic can help encourage purchases from shoppers who might otherwise have abandoned their carts.
The brand: Bath & Body Works is a personal care and home fragrance company. If you’ve ever walked past one of their stores, you know it when you smell it!
The game: The BBW app tracks user purchases and assigns points depending on how much you spend. Rack up enough of those points and you could snag yourself a free candle, air freshener, perfume or other item.
Why it works: If you want to reward customer loyalty, this is how you do it. Watching that little meter fill up with BBW points is a great way to motivate shoppers, especially when there’s a free item at the end of that blue rainbow.
Get Your Game On With Gamified Content
If I can leave you with just one piece of advice, it’s this: Video games — and, by extension, gamification — are just one more kind of storytelling. As long as you keep your brand’s story in mind and see your audience as the main character, you’re sure to find your princess in the right castle.
