A powerful social engagement strategy to boost engagement is to integrate elements of gamification into your marketing, social media, community and other digital brand experiences. Gamification is the term used to describe the use of game-design principles (points, levels, leader boards, social sharing, rewards) to drive community engagement and organic growth and to enhance your social reach, achieve marketing goals and build brand awareness.
As a marketing strategy, gamification works because it introduces active elements of fun and competition, taking your marketing from a dull and passive experience and turning it into an inclusive activity that allows any brand enthusiast to participate. Gamification will also enable you to create opportunities for interaction that can help you build trust and create opportunities for authentic and emotional connections with your community.
Gamification is now widely used across all sectors, from entertainment to banking and healthcare. For example, Penny is a personal finance app to help track spending habits, and Fitbit uses gamification to help its community reach their health goals through social validation, achievement-based objectives and other gaming mechanics.
Trivia HQ, created by the founders of Vine (acquired by Twitter), utilizes many aspects of gamification to engage its community and build its brand simultaneously. What makes HQ different from other mobile games is that it re-creates the shared experience of watching a TV game show, where people shout out the answers and win actual cold hard cash, right on their mobile device. Here’s how Trivia HQ works: Every day the game goes live (3 pm and 9 pm ET), with the host asking a series of 12 trivia questions that players answer in real time. The game mechanics are simple (social validation, leader boards and rewards). If you get the answer right, you move on to the next question. If you answer incorrectly, you’re out. At the end of the game, the winners split the cash. If nobody wins, the money rolls over to the next game until there’s a winner.
The reason HQ is succeeding is that it paired gamification with a screen that’s always within reach – the smartphone – to be a conduit for a shared experience, sponsored content and revenue.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Gregg Witt and Derek Baird, excerpted from their new book The Gen Z Frequency ©2018 with permission from Kogan Page Ltd.
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