Gamification: How To Use Gaming in Your Content Marketing
Last update: 22 March 2024 at 12:57 pm
5.00/5Gamification is the use of various techniques from the game world for marketing purposes. What are the advantages of gamified content and how can you apply this interactive dimension to your content marketing? We open our blog to Qualifio, a specialist in the subject, who tells you a bit more!
It is no secret that consumer attention is becoming increasingly difficult to capture. The digital content and experiences available to all of us are multiplying. This often means that brands have to work harder, faster, stronger to attract and keep users interested.
In an age when content is king, specialists are breaking their heads to find a way to distinguish their own from one of their competitors. However qualitative your content may be, you will often need to find an original way to promote it to your targeted visitors to hope to convert them, retain them or increase their frequency of purchase. This is where gamification comes in…
Gamification in Marketing – Content, and Branding
I like to play, you like to play… Everybody likes to play. Humans naturally tend to be of a competitive nature. That’s why gamification in marketing is so important in the communication of many brands, especially in loyalty programs that offer rewards to consumers for every purchase made. Games have the power to produce brand engagement.
More and more brands are therefore using gamification strategies as a part of their marketing strategy. One example is the Nike Run Club that incorporates challenges into its app for its users to challenge each other in an engaging way through running. Users can enter various different challenges created by the brand or themselves and compete against other running fanatics or simply set goals for themselves. Not only is the program free, but it also gives you running tips and rewards along the way. Just like Nike, to help your business get on the gamification marketing strategy, look into a gaming agency in the United Arab Emirates or in your country to get you started.
Another business that has used gamification in its marketing strategies is Heineken. As a regular sponsor of the Champions League, it is common to see their advertisements alongside the pitch and during commercial breaks of various matches. They often offer a simple game for spectators to play during halftime via a website or an app such as Star Player.
If everything goes well, the idea is that the gamification strategy draws attention to your gamified and leads to awareness, recurrence, commitment, sympathy, and even conversions from your targets.
The advantages of gamification
- Reader loyalty: Gamification increases the recurrence of your interactions with your audiences by offering them, for example, to participate in contests that may allow them to win rewards.
- Increase your traffic: the dynamic nature of gamified content increases the overall traffic, number of pages viewed and the average time spent on your channels. An even greater opportunity in terms of monetization if you offer advertising content…
- Reinforcement of your message: “gamifying” your content, using a quiz, for example, will allow you to reinforce the attention of your reader and thus the impact that your message will have.
- The virality of your content: by allowing, for example, your target audience to share their score with their friends via social networks, you offer them an incentive to relay your message, which will allow you to improve your notoriety and brand image, and to find new prospects.
And the list does not end there. Gamified, or interactive content can also help you achieve other goals. Examples include collecting data (and profiling your prospects to target your ads) or building and animating your community through user-generated content contests in which you encourage them to submit a text, photo, or video on a specific theme. So there are many advantages!
Gambling is serious
What about using the game in B2B? Distraction and pleasure do not necessarily mean that your content loses its quality or even its seriousness. On the contrary, the game can bring richness to your content. An online quiz could and can produce interesting content, educate your leads, or encourage them to take concrete action. These can include buying a product, downloading content, or creating a profile. See the “jackpot” animation offered by the Gulli television channel.
Gamification can therefore be suitable for almost any industry. For example, this strategy is used by sectors such as training, healthcare, and human resources (see Sibelga’s IT Hero recruitment campaign) to make their services more attractive. If the form varies (contests, personality tests, battles, etc.), the substance remains the same: implement rewards to those who carry out actions beneficial to your brand, whether it is purchased, visits to your site, or sharing on their networks.
3 golden rules for “gamified” content that works!
Whether you’re looking to attract prospects or build customer loyalty, it’s obviously not enough to just offer gamified content for it to work. Increasing the interactivity of your communications is something you learn. We share with you the recipe for successful gamification:
1. The creativity factor
It’s the originality of your content that will make it fun, even addictive. It will also ensure that your brand stays in the consumer’s mind and brings them back. So don’t hesitate to use techniques such as awarding points or badges, ranking for its competitive aspect, the pressure of time thanks to a time set when the participant starts, win a prize, or even customization.
2. A link with your content
For gamification to work, it must be consistent with your content. If you involve your readers in a quiz, ensure the questions and rewards are related to the content presented. You must avoid that your readers only become interested because they want to win a prize. An attractive reward is enough to attract a large number of participants, but they still have to be potential buyers for your sales!
3. A long-lasting relationship with the consumer
To make sure that your target audience wishes to not only participate in the contest but also become consumers, you must first understand them. A personal relationship will allow you to better talk to them and therefore create some sort of engagement. Gamification can help you achieve this goal.
On the one hand, we have the one who gets points, and on the other, the one who gets to know their customer, their profile, and their habits. In a hyper-competitive context, this offers the opportunity to do one-to-one, i.e. individualisation. The whole customer relationship benefits, explains Olivier Rousseaux, digital manager at Hello Agency.
In conclusion, we are all big kids. That’s why gamification is a great way to encourage interaction, showcase your content or products and ultimately recruit and retain new customers!
How to set up the gamification of your content?
If this seems a little complicated, even out of reach (developing an animation can indeed be expensive and time-consuming). Fortunately, there are tools that will allow you to “gamify” your content and encourage your audience to become more interested in your publications. For example, Carrefour, Guerlain, Gulli and Sibelga use Qualifio. It’s a reference platform that allows you to publish interactive content (quizzes, contests, surveys) on all your channels. It also allows you to collect data.
