Viva’s Blog: Gamification: Time to play?

Gamification, the use of game mechanics and design techniques to motivate people to achieve a particular goal or task, has emerged as a powerful marketing tool. Savvy business leaders use it as a customer acquisition and retention tool as well as a workplace solution to train employees, encourage collaboration and drive innovation.

The power of gamification is huge as it addresses major trends: the coming of age of Generation Y (the generation born in the 80s and 90s) and the exploding digital space.

Gamification – How is it different?
Before you consider adding gamification to your marketing program, it’s key to understand what it is and how it can help you achieve your business goals. Games, rewards programs and gamification engage people on different levels and have different purposes.

Games have one objective – to entertain players. The goal is to capture the audience’s attention as they immerse themselves in the game. Games often feature sophisticated animation and captivating story lines.

Rewards programs focus on encouraging loyal behavior. Members are rewarded for their repeat business with some type of tangible benefit such as airline miles, hotel stays and discounts.

Gamification is about on enabling customers or employees to achieve their goals. Successful marketers establish goals that are meaningful to their “players” – customers or employees, which result in engagement at an emotional level. When customers and employees achieve their own goals they become emotionally engaged, which is how companies benefit. An emotional connection to a brand is far stronger and more valuable than a transaction-based relationship.

Gamification – Is it right for your brand?
Just like other marketing opportunities, gamification isn’t for every brand. To win, it starts with articulating your business objectives. Gamification can be used to encourage customer loyalty, generate brand awareness and motivate employees.

There are a variety of techniques, some easy to implement and some requiring advanced planning, coding and technical expertise. What’s important is that you start with what you’re hoping to accomplish, who you want to engage and how you’ll determine if you’ve been successful. Two big winners are LinkedIn and TripAdvisor.

LinkedIn
The professional network LinkedIn uses many gamification design elements to continuously enhance its value to its 300 million members. New members receive a gentle nudge to share a lot of personal information when they sign up as the “profile completeness” bar displays their progress. While it’s easy to quickly increase the percentage at the beginning, reaching one hundred percent completion acts as a motivator to meet LinkedIn’s objective of very detailed profiles.

LinkedIn then added the “profile strength” gamification tact to encourage people with profiles that are already 100% complete to continue providing updates such as job changes and new titles.

LinkedIn astutely understood that those two gamification design elements relate to self-reported characteristics and to increase the stickiness of the service, they needed to encourage member interaction. Their solution, LinkedIn Endorsements. While the value of an endorsement is debatable, the networking site uses game-play tactics like displaying the “Top 10” listing of skills and presenting the endorsers’ headshots in a chart format to motivate members to complete the easy form to endorse a connection.

TripAdvisor
Consider TripAdvisor, the US-based travel website that boasts more than 75 million reviews and opinions from volunteers – people who appreciate being recognized by the brand as a trusted source of valued information. TripAdvisor’s gamification program focuses on status, “You’re just 9 hotel reviews away from your Hotel Expert badge”, milestones, “You’ve written XX reviews, X,XXX readers have read your reviews, and readers are from XX countries”, and personalization – “Would you recommend any of these places in DC?”

TripAdvisor makes sure that every consumer touch is personal, fun and motivating.

Gamification – Will your customers or employees benefit?
People need to benefit from participating in your gamification effort. Simply giving points or badges won’t cut it. Once they’ve reached a goal, players have to feel like they’ve accomplished something special for themselves. That’s why effective gamification efforts must offer players desirable engagement. TripAdvisor would be less “sticky” if you only saw your badges and data when you logged on. Instead, they smartly send emails to alert you to the data (your accomplishments) and stroke your ego.

Gamification – Do you have the resources?
Implementing a gamification strategy requires time, technical resources, and a long-term commitment to keep it fresh, updated and engaging.

Gamification – Is it time to play?
Done well, gamification can result in amazing customer and employee loyalty and emotional engagement, all without spending any media dollars. Are you ready to play?