What Is Gamification And Why Employ It As A Marketing Tactic?

Gamification involves adding gaming mechanics into non-game environments. 

The purpose of this is to increase engagement and participation. The goal is that gamification on a website, event stand or learning platforms for example, will increase interest and people will interact with the mechanism whether that’s sharing information, competiting against others, improving their own skills or just simply engaging with the content.

Gamification can be used in many different ways, including education, for businesses internally and retail. Let’s look into these further below.

Why Use Gamification In Education

Gamification is especially useful if the topic or subject isn’t particularly inspiring or is seen as more of a chore or task rather than something a person is willing to do. 

This is why gamification works well in an educational setting when you want people to learn something, but they don’t realise the importance. So you get them to learn by making it fun instead. Learners tend to only recall 10% of what they read, and 20% from what they hear. But they can remember up to 90% of an interactive gamified task. 

Some examples of this are scenario led games, reward collecting after completing a gamified task and leaderboards etc.

Duolingo is a great example of this! 

Why Use Gamification Internally

However, gamification can also be used in the world of work too, it will help increase engagement with content an organisation is publishing. It’s helpful in retail settings too, but we will go into that later on. 

Mixing together the educational and business aspects, gamification is a fantastic way to increase employee engagement with learning programmes or new product launches. It can also be a very good tool to use when it comes to upskilling employees. 

It has been reported that 96% of employees enjoy gaming elements in their tasks and that employee happiness can be increased by 89% with a gamified workplace too. 

Why Use Gamification For Business Purposes

Gamification isn’t just an internal or educational tool, but it can also be used to increase engagement of customers. Game-based motivation increases user-engagement by 48% which is great as the increased engagement will mean that they are more likely to interact with the business and convert into a sale. It can then lead onto increasing customer loyalty and becoming an ambassador for the business, so good positive reviews are given and the word of mouth referrals increase.

Some examples of this are loyalty reward schemes, dominos pizza tracker and the eBay tracking system.

Why Use Gamification in Retail

The global gamification market is expected to grow by 25% between 2020 and 2025, and retail holds the largest share. It’s an incredible fact, but gamification has been shown to increase customer acquisitions by as much as 700%. These tactics are used by some of the largest companies worldwide, for eBay it raised engagement and loyalty by 30%. Using gamification in retail can help in a number of ways, such as: 

• Engage your visitors and customers 
• Helps improve the shopping experience, 
• Attract new customers
• Retain existing ones
• Aids in accessibility 
• You can gather valuable customer data 

Some examples of gamification in retail are, treasure hunts, loyalty cards, spin the wheel for a discount and virtual reality and augmented reality experiences.

Burger King is a perfect example of successfully gamification to boost customer engagement and loyalty. By introducing in-app games like Balloon Burst and Cloud Float, the fast-food chain has seen increased app usage, custom visits and spending. These games also serve as a powerful tool for attracting new customers and building stronger brand popularity. Burger King put an emphasis on the importance of creating authentic and enjoyable gaming experiences that align with the brand’s identity and resonate with a wide audience.

The company believes that focusing on long-term customer relationships through gamification is more effective than relying solely on short-term promotions.

As marketing experts we have created and assisted in many gamification projects, some we can talk to you about others we can’t. But if you went into your local convenience store, maybe it was a SPAR, during November-December 2022, you may know what we are hinting at. We also assist EE on a regular with internal product launches, helping them to engage staff. Whether that’s with a simple spot the difference puzzle or the creation of a watch and learn video, with quiz elements. With all the websites we have been involved in too, we have implemented many rewards schemes and loyalty programs.

We don’t just use gamification for our clients, we like to use gamification tactics to increase our engagement and lead generation . Take a look at a few we have built for ourselves below.

https://xmas.citcom.co.uk/#home

If you’re interested in gamification for your business, get in touch with our team.