Topic-> Behaviour Mechanics
From Foursquare on the iPhone to an online game of Farmville, not to mention the frequent fliers popularized in the Academy Award nominated film, Up in the Air, playing “everyday games” has become nothing short of a pop culture obsession. Driving unprecedented consumer engagement to smart brands like Chase and the US Army, loyalty programs and marketing games are marketing’s best bet for the future of advertising.
It’s easier than you think to bring the power of games to your business. You can start adding game mechanics to your marketing mix in 5 easy steps:
- What consumer behaviour are you trying to drive? Don’t just think about broad or bottom line objectives (‘more engagement’, ‘greater brand exposure’) when considering ways in which you’d like to effect the behaviour of your consumer base, but instead, focus in on easy-to-achieve activities that will have an overall impact on your bottom line. For example: incentivize the sending of product endorsements to friends. The more specific you can be, the easier it is to build game mechanics around. Some behaviours are best left un-incentivized, however!
- Assign points to those behaviours. Think about how much value each of the behaviors has to your business and assign points to each action accordingly. Points should be weighed relatively, so if opening a new account is ten times more valuable than clicking on an advertiser’s link, make sure the point system reflects that reality.
- Create a leaderboard to display points. Just like the Employee of the Month plaques at restaurants, create a socially-networked leaderboard that allows users to feel like they are accomplishing something relative to their friends and peers — A little encouragement goes a long way.
- Develop challenges and message them. Just like Frequent Flyer promotions, creating simple challenges can have a profound effect on user behaviour once they are connected to your community. Keep your challenges fresh and topical by knowing your players – get a riveting insight on exactly who is playing.
- Make ‘fun’ your goal! Whether your business is finance or funerary, making fun a principal objective will substantially increase consumer engagement and generate remarkable new revenue opportunities. Generation G – today’s tweens – are driving ‘funnovation’ in every industry.
Harness the power of games to create extraordinary customer engagement with Game-Based Marketing. Gamification is revolutionizing the social web and mobile apps. By leveraging points, levels, badges, challenges, rewards and leaderboards – these innovators are dramatically lowering their customer acquisition costs, increasing engagement and building sustainable, viral communities.