Before showing you how Gamification can help you promote your business, let’s define what Gamification is. Wikipedia says that it “is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences”. In essence, it uses people’s inclination to play to make them perform certain actions that they would otherwise find boring. This can be anything from answering a poll, launching an application on their mobile device or teaching new skills to their staff, etc. There can be thousands of other examples. Now let’s get to the most interesting part :)
How Gamification can be used to leverage the success of your business?
Gamification improve your customers activity and loyalty by two means.
Status badges
Award your customers with status badges for completing certain actions or reaching certain activity levels. Customers can then sport badges by sharing them across social networks – Facebook, Twitter, etc. To maintain customers excitement make sure to show them their next goal as soon as they reach the current goal. For example: “You have visited 2 of our shops and got the “Frog the Traveller” badge. Visit all of our shops and get “Columbus!” badge.“ Having a clear goal, your customers will try to reach it to receive more badges and improve their rankings. Trust us it become quickly addictive :)
Bonuses
You can also encourage your customers activity by giving them bonus points for certain actions. Bonus points can later be exchanged for something tangible – discounts on purchases, free gifts, etc. Customers can share how many bonus points they earned in social networks the same way they do with statuses. In their turn statuses earned can also be converted to bonuses – whatever scenario your marketing department can think of. What other loyalty improvement program costs as little and requires as little effort?
Usage suggestion
Here are some ideas how Gamification can be implemented for any business:
- Thank the user as soon as he installs your application – he deserved it. Give him his first badge and some virtual currency so that he can try out the advantages of a higher status;
- Give incentive to the user for each of their actions that is useful to your business. For example, if you need to attract customers to one particular store of your chain, give them higher scores for visiting this particular store;
- Use awards — from virtual currency and badges to quite tangible gifts and discounts;
- Introduce most active customer ratings, give them more privileges in service;
- Encourage social connections among customers – and they will come back and bring their friends.
Examples of existing applications using Gamification
Now, with a better understanding of Gamification mechanisms, you can look at different services taking advantage of it from a new perspective:
- EpicWin – turns scheduling and to-do lists into an indi-game;
- ShopKick – for shopaholics. Uses “walk in” instead of “check in” — enering a shop and marking a product in it;
- Miso – earning badges and scores sitting on your sofa;
- Like buttons on Facebook;
- FourSquare — get badges and statuses for check ins;
- SCVNGR — logical development of FourSquare idea — complete easy tasks, earn scores, get discounts, collect coupons. etc.;
Many content users and clients can confirm that this really works.
Interested?
Gamifications is a great way to boost your business . Don’t procrastinate and start implementing it today – call us and we will prepare a detailed plan for a successful implementation of Gamification techniques and strategies.