Play is fun, entertaining, exciting, and informative, which explains why games are mainstream and all around us. Play is natural for human beings, be it computer games, board games, TV game shows, sports games, and escape rooms, among several others. This is why games are becoming more applicable even in non-game environments such as B2B marketing.
1. What is Gamification?
Gamification refers to the incorporation of game mechanics in non-game environments. In other words, marketing involves using the elements and principles of gaming to incentivize users’ engagement and activities in order to drive results. Common examples of gamification in the B2B world include quizzes, loyalty programs, and contests.
You can integrate a game in your B2B marketing for several reasons, including creating a unique experience, making messages more memorable and coming across effectively, encouraging certain behavior, increasing involvement, or making it fun to learn about your products, services, and brand.
The benefits of gamification in B2B marketing are tremendous. For instance, leveraging gamification techniques in marketing guarantees more customer engagement, improved brand awareness, more time-on-site, and increased loyalty.
2. Gamification Techniques
Gamification is a wide and extremely diverse marketing concept. So, for the ultimate experience, it’s wise to consider factors such as budget, applicability to the nature of the business and desired outcomes when selecting techniques. Nonetheless, the following techniques are relevant to B2B marketing of any business, regardless of nature or size.
Determine a Reward
Everyone loves rewards, whether a consumer or a business owner. However, when setting up a reward, keep in mind what you can offer and what reward would be meaningful to your audience. A variety of reward options exist that you can consider, some of them effective at fulfilling their purpose depending on your business.
- Access to exclusive content
- Facetime with the executives and directors
- VIP tickets at events or invites to limited-entry events
- Discounts on certain products or services
The secret to an effective reward system is determining the type of reward that would encourage the intended behavior or attainment of a goal. For instance, a discount reward is excellent at boosting sales but considerably ineffective at encouraging your audience to engage on your blog.
Interact with Polls and Quizzes
Polls and quizzes should inform your social media strategy. Companies with high social media engagement have multiple polls and quizzes on their timelines, across all social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and many others. Social media is a two-way street; nothing brings about more interaction like polls, questions, and calls for feedback.
Incorporating polls and quizzes on your social network timelines can work for you in a variety of ways. For instance, polls and quizzes are attractive and effective at increasing user engagement. They also generate leads, provide instant social proof, free product feedback, and improve brand positioning and awareness.
Increase User Curiosity
Curiosity is a compelling tool for engagement. You can incorporate curiosity into your gamification strategy in a variety of ways. For instance, on social media, create a sequence of video publications and clarify that it is part 1 of a 6-parts series, or use a cliffhanger, so your users don’t know when or how the story ends. The element of curiosity will keep your audience glued to your timeline or channel and will keep visiting your platforms for more.
Besides curiosity, use an element of surprise. Using recognizable game elements such as missions, characters, gameplay, arena, etc., is excellent. However, occasionally, add unexpected and unpredictable elements to the game to keep it exciting.
Interactive Webinars
Webinars are an excellent marketing tool that gives a business a wider market outreach that it would otherwise not be accessible under normal circumstances.
It goes beyond gaining a greater number of people; it allows a business to connect and interact with its audience on a personal level. Webinars are particularly effective when a business already has an established online community. Making webinars interactive and exciting by adding gamification elements is an effective B2B marketing effort. Gamifying webinars through elements such as polls and voting, for example, makes them more engaging and interactive. In addition, it allows the audience to interact more and engage with the brand.
Users Task Completion
People naturally don’t like uncompleted tasks. It makes them feel uneasy. For this reason, you take advantage of the urge to complete a task to influence certain behaviors and actions. A classic example is something like “your profile is 50% complete” on LinkedIn, which motivates a user to work on setting up a complete user profile. The same techniques can be used in B2B marketing.
3. Incorporate Gamification in Your Business
Don’t hesitate to try out gamification for your business. After all, it is what great marketing is all about. You can explore various gamification forms to benefit your brand by enhancing its awareness, interest, and loyalty. The proposed techniques are a good place to start.
While effective gamification can increase traffic and conversions, you can’t afford to play around with your SEO and Digital Marketing campaigns. Call KeyScouts for a free assessment of how to utilize gamification to get better results from your digital marketing program.
