Everyone loves to play, regardless of age and status: both children and respectable adults. Therefore, game techniques are increasingly penetrating non-game processes every year. We encounter gamification everywhere, but we don't even notice it. The game has infiltrated education, training, business processes, and of course, marketing. Let's talk about what gamification is and how it is applied in marketing.
What is Gamification
Gamification is a strategy that uses games to attract and retain customers. When you build a tower of pizza slices in an app to earn bonuses — that's gamification. When you train on a simulator to practice an action algorithm — that's also gamification. And even when you go for a run and turn on an app to track your results — that's also it.
Photographer: Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/ru-ru/photo/163064/
The popularity of gamification is best understood in numbers: according to the research company MarketsandMarkets, in 2020, the gamification market amounted to $9.1 billion, and by 2025, it is expected to reach $30.7 billion. Additionally, according to the consulting company Intuition Engineering, 89% of employees in American corporations believe that they would be more productive if their work were gamified.
Gamification in marketing is the use of game elements in marketing communications. Various contests, quizzes, competitions, sweepstakes, games where a client can earn points and then exchange them for discounts, products, or services from the company are most commonly used.
There is no limit to the areas where gamification can be applied. Its elements are used to promote online stores, services, educational courses, banks, restaurants, apply in personnel management, etc. However, it is important to remember that in some cases, gamification is not appropriate. For example, in medicine, legal agencies, or public services, games can evoke negative emotions.
What Tasks Does Gamification Solve
Everyone loves to play, and through play, you can achieve primary goals:
- Attract attention to the brand and make it recognizable;
- Enhance lead generation: potential customers are more willing to leave contacts, subscribe to newsletters, or perform other target actions during the game;
- Retain customers: people don't like to part with bonuses, achievements, and privileges earned during the game. Therefore, they are more likely to continue using your product or service;
- Provide unobtrusive advertising;
- Increase loyalty: the stronger the positive emotions experienced by the customer during the game, the more loyal they become to the brand.
Why is Gamification So Popular
Everyone loves being winners, receiving rewards and recognition, possessing superpowers. The game satisfies these ambitions and desires. Additionally, it offers real bonuses and discounts. And the time spent playing does not seem wasted to the consumer: they have relaxed, felt like a hero, and received benefits.
Let's give an example: Yandex launched a game "Plus City," where users create a virtual city, build buildings, and populate the city with residents. At the same time, they earn points for their "Yandex.Plus" account. To build the most beautiful city, different services need to be connected and utilized. The advantage for Yandex is that players use the services more actively. The advantages for players are relaxation, victory in games, satisfying the need for creation, and the ability to earn points that can then be used to pay for purchases, service usage, and taxi rides.
Another reason for the popularity of gamification is the change of generations. Boomers, Generation X, and millennials (born in 1946-1964, 1965-1980, and 1980-2000 respectively) remember a world without phones and computers, but they like to play in their free time, though games are not a priority for them. Zoomers — those born after 2000, live in a world of technology from birth where the game is a common element of everyday life. They are more likely to trust brands that speak to them in the same language.
What Gamification Can Be Like
Depending on who the gamification is targeted at, it can be external, internal, and behavior-changing.
Thus, internal gamification is aimed at the company's employees. Its goal is to unite the team, improve the product's quality and customer service, and increase sales volumes.
Source: https://mentamore.com/covremennye-texnologii/gejmifikaciya.html
For example, in 2009, Microsoft decided to involve employees worldwide in detecting and fixing errors in Windows 7 dialogue boxes. Since the operating system's dialogue boxes are translated into many languages, translation checks take a lot of time. The company organized competitions: for each error found, different country representatives were awarded points. 4.5 thousand participants checked about half a million dialogue boxes and identified 6.7 thousand errors. Japan's representative office won: they designated one day for all employees to search for errors.
External gamification is aimed at clients and users. It helps increase product or brand awareness, attracts new customers, and raises loyalty. Here's an example: at the beginning of 2023, the supermarket "Lenta" launched the game "Olivier Race." Players had to quickly chop virtual "Olivier" salad, but without mixing up the ingredients and their quantities. The bonus was a promo code that could be used for online orders, as well as participation in a prize draw. Thanks to the game, in January, "Lenta" increased sales.
Source: Behavior-changing gamification is aimed at the broadest target audience. This type of gamification helps form new habits. For example, Nike released a running app. It monitored heart rate, tracked kilometers covered, counted calories burned, and more. Players were more motivated to engage in sports and, consequently, buy sports shoes. Users tracked their achievements for years and did not abandon running even after the app stopped working in Russia: by then, their new habit was already formed.
Source: https://mentamore.com/covremennye-texnologii/gejmifikaciya.html
Here are a couple of examples of successful behavior-changing gamification. The "Sportmaster" app has an activity tracker. Everyone who takes a certain number of steps daily receives bonuses for shopping. And Volkswagen, to change citizens' behavior and encourage them to throw trash in the bin, installed a musical trash can. As a result, in one day, 72 kg of trash was deposited in the musical container, which is 41 kg more than in a regular container nearby.
Principles of Gamification
Let's remind that the main task of gamification is to engage and retain game participants so they can eventually receive the necessary product or skills, and you can increase sales. Therefore, the main principles of gamification are:
Voluntariness: participants themselves decide whether to play or not. Refusal to participate should not have negative consequences.
Clear and simple rules: avoid confusing formulations, conditions, and restrictions. The participant wants to enjoy the gaming process, not sort out complex processes.
Not too difficult, but not too easy: complexity can gradually increase, but the game should remain clear and accessible to both beginners and advanced players.
Motivation and reward: the game should have a final goal, such as premium status or a significant discount, for internal gamification — a bonus or valuable gift. However, rewards should also be provided for specific achievements on the path to the global goal.
Development: the game itself should change, improve, and evolve so that players don't get bored.
No punishment and pressure: losing bonuses, punishment, and loss of acquired status are often perceived painfully by players and deprive the desire to continue playing. Rewards can also be demotivating. Let's assume some players use an activity tracker and compete with themselves, improving their results. If the developer adds a rating table on the main page, these users will start experiencing stress as they can't get into the ranking due to health limitations or lack of time. To avoid stress, they will either refuse this app or completely stop exercising. The solution is to make a separate tab with the rating for those who value the competitive element.
How to Launch Gamification
Simply launching the game is not enough. To achieve results from gamification, several important principles need to be considered.
Goal: determine the purpose of implementing the game and how it will help your clients. For a store, it could be purchasing certain products, for an online school — completing a full course, for a bank — the number of purchases with a card or opening an account.
Target audience: describe the players as precisely as possible to understand who will be playing and which games suit your target audience.
Develop game activity cycles: alternate complex tasks with simple ones to maintain players' interest.
Remember the fun: the gaming process should bring joy to the players.
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Choose tools that will help achieve the goals and then evaluate the results.
Implementing full-fledged gamification is a complex and costly process requiring the development and deployment of technologies. However, the result is worth it: customer loyalty increases, new customers appear, and product or service sales grow. If you're not sure the brand is ready to implement gamification, use its simplest elements: quizzes, tests, and surveys. They’ll help engage the audience and provide an interesting introduction to a new product.
In general, playing is fun and exciting. And people enjoy receiving positive emotions. So let's play!
