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Written by Professional Academy Guest Blogger Randolph Bunnell
The business environment is harder than ever. With the consumers more exposed than before due to technology, businesses need to up their marketing strategies to be able to appeal to a wider customer base. Gamification has emerged as a viable marketing strategy for forward-thinking companies and in this article, we will highlight how it can be used to help businesses convert.
Gamification is the use of gaming elements to market a company’s products. These elements include milestones, challenges, and rewards that are incorporated into a company’s digital marketing strategy for effective client communication and to attain specific business results. There is the need to make corporate marketing strategies more engaging and gamification helps with this. The playful nature of games means that companies are able to take an easy approach when selling its products and this helps them appeal to more people. Games are also stimulating and they bring out the competitiveness in each and every one of us. This plays into the marketer’s hands since they are able to get more people to engage with the brand in an attempt to outdo each other. This increases brand engagement and it makes it easy to convert leads into customers.
The end goal of gamification is to motivate customers to make certain decisions. It plays on how a customer’s brain works so as to influence them to buy a company’s products. It also promotes positive user engagement and this goes a long way to help brands build an emotional connection with its customers. The good thing with gamification is that it can be used by companies of any size to boost their marketing performance and this post explains how that can be done.
Gamification can positively impact a company’s marketing efforts in the following ways:
People are intrigued by games and gamification makes it easy for brands to create fun content that their followers can engage in. The people who engage in the games are able to discover the brand’s products in a fun and interactive way for better marketing efficiency. By exploiting completion rewards, leader boards, and badges, brands can get the participants to share the game on their social channels. This increases the brand’s reach thereby making it easy to attract new customers.
A study by Gigya that analyzed the marketing strategies of brands like Nike, Dell, and Pepsi showed that gamification resulted in a 13% increase in the post commenting, 22% more post shares on social channels and a whopping 68% content discovery rate. Through gamification, users publish their high scores on social media and challenge their friends to a contest. This stimulates interaction among users in an organic way and brands get more social media attention and following as a result.
Millennials like to be challenged and that is what games are about. Generation Z, on the other hand, are very visual having being raised in the era smartphones and digital technology. These two generations have greater demands on digital marketing that gamification helps to solve. Gamified content provides them with what they prefer when it comes to product marketing which is bite-sized and easily digestible content that is highly visual. Gamification, therefore, adds a creative edge to a brand’s marketing efforts and this allows them to remain competitive and relevant to its users.
Businesses are able to engage their customers better through gamified content. The incentives offered at the end of every game such as badges, rewards, and price discounts are useful when it comes to convincing customers to actively engage with a brand. Through the engagement, the users are able to learn more about the company and its products and this helps with the company’s marketing efforts. Users are also able to develop positive feeling towards the company and this increase the chances of making a sale. Studies indicate that there is a 100 – 150% rise in user engagement as a result of gamified content and for the businesses that are looking to effectively engage its audience, gamification is the way to go.
Gamification makes it easy for brands to collect valuable user data. Users have to enter their details to participate in a game such as the name, address, and residence and this data can be used to offer the users personalized services. The data also gives the businesses valuable insights about its audience composition and this makes it easy to tailor their products and services to satisfy the needs of its customers.
Conclusion: Gamification is an effective tool that businesses can use to market their products and services. It helps increase a brand’s visibility as well as allowing businesses to collect valuable user data that they will use to offer personalized services.
Author’s Bio:
Randolph Bunnell is an experienced copywriter and marketing consultant. He has a deep knowledge of digital marketing and SEO. Randolph also has a medical background and enthusiastic about healthcare technologies.
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