How to Effectively "Game" Your Brand

Successful brands of today know that the key to success is connecting and engaging with the audience. You can’t just capture their attention – you have to learn how to keep it. You want your audience to stay longer in your website, interact more with you in social media, and effectively remember your brand and spread the word about it to other people.

This is why most brands now utilize an array of marketing strategies to promote their brand. And one of the most interesting and fun ways to do this is to “game” your brand.

So what exactly does “gaming” your brand mean? Well, it’s all about giving incentives to your customers, encouraging them to play, and giving them tangible or intangible rewards. Basically, people enjoy gaming – getting rewards, winning prizes, unlocking mysteries to discover new things.

Sometimes it’s not even about the incentive or reward, but the game itself. People enjoy being challenged – they like the thrill of solving a puzzle, and they love competing with fellow gamers.

But how exactly do you effectively launch a brand campaign that includes gaming? Here are some things you should first answer:

     1. Does your brand and gaming fit well with each other?

Not all brands and gaming go hand in hand. There are certain products or services that just don’t fit well with “gamification”, and it may brand’s like that more harm than good if they pursue gaming in their marketing campaign.

On the other hand, if your brand is all about fun and creating your own culture, then adding gaming to the mix can definitely give your brand a boost and encourage more interaction between your brand and your audience.

Think about how gaming fits into your brand’s current marketing campaign. Does it seem like the odd one out, or does it blend well with your other strategies? Don’t force gaming for the sake of adding it to your marketing mix – think of how well it fits in with your current plans first.

     2. Are your customers comfortable with “gamification”?


Before you even begin “gaming” your brand, you should start with understanding your audience. What do they like? What tickles their bones? Are they willing to try anything, or are they more cautious about new products and experiences? Would they be comfortable with “gamification”?

By knowing your audience, you can get a rough idea of whether they would be interested or not in gaming, and if they are, you’d be able to create a gaming experience suited especially for their tastes.

     3. What do you wish to gain from “gaming” your brand?

It would be silly to simply include games into your marketing mix without understanding your goals and knowing what you wish to gain from it. Do you want to promote brand awareness? Encourage brand interaction? Obtain more customers?

Getting into gaming should be more than just copying what everyone else is doing. You need to understand why you’re doing this and what you want from it.

     4. Is the game relevant to your brand and community?

It is essential that the game you put out for your brand is relevant to your community; otherwise, how would it work in promoting brand awareness? You want your audience to play the game, yet continue to remember your brand while playing it. You don’t want them to simply enjoy the game and then forget about you.

This is why the game you create should be something that relates to your brand, something that keeps your brand at the forefront of people’s minds. Think of Oreo Pinata and how the game really showed the consumers’ passion for Oreo. It wasn’t just about winning the contest, but the enjoyment of the game and how the community rallied around the brand that they loved.

     5. Does the game create a community around your brand?

This is perhaps the most essential question you need to ask yourself. If the game doesn’t form a community around your brand, then why release the game at all? You don’t want people to mindlessly immerse themselves in the game and forget the world. What you want is for them to enjoy talking about the game and your brand, share the game with other people, and encourage others to play. Otherwise, what’s the point of creating a game for your brand?

“Gamification” can definitely help you create brand buzz, but it’s important that you evaluate whether your brand fits with gaming and understand what you want to gain from it. Don’t just get into gaming simply because other brands are doing it – you want to ensure that gaming works for your brand, not against it.

Why Gaming Plays a Part of Marketing

We are exposed to a lot of games and it is part of growing up. Today, there is a wide range of ways where people can play, like video games and games available on social media sites. The reality is that gaming attracts a huge audience. This makes gaming a good marketing opportunity. 

We are not just talking about creating a game where gamers can see your brand while playing it. Marketers and website product managers are using a marketing strategy called gamification. Gamification is a way to engage audiences into meeting a marketer’s goal by using game-design techniques. The purpose of using game-design techniques is to push audiences to progress until they reach a goal. Goals depend on what a company aims to achieve.

Advantages of Adding Gaming as a Marketing Strategy

A lot of businesses are using the gaming technique to keep customers engaged and interested to a certain product or service. It is always a good idea to hold consumer interest and with the right gaming plan, this will prove beneficial to any marketer. Gamification is not playing games; it is more of using the dynamics of gaming as a web marketing strategy. It is a way of getting the right behavior from your audience. To achieve this, you present them with challenges with rewards at the end of every challenge. This gives them the sense of progress and something that they will enjoy.

If you are worried about your audience, according to Forrester, just about everyone is playing games. Anyone who uses the Internet can easily be attracted to the right game. This is why gamification is used by a lot of companies as a web marketing strategy. And through gamification, people are encouraged to do tasks that are ordinarily considered boring.

Companies who use Gaming

Companies are including gaming as part of their efforts to attract and maintain customers. Here are some companies that are gamifying their web marketing strategy.

·         Nike – Nike is gamifying the exercise experience by using an iOS app. The app allows you to save runs, set goals, and challenge friends who are also using the app. Users will recognize the Nike brand and will continue to buy Nike+ supported shoes. The app stays too because it makes working out fun and you can compare workout results with friends. Once you reach your goal of outrunning your friends, you can either get bragging rights or you get a healthy and balanced body as a prize.

·         Starbucks – the company together with Foursquare, rewarded customers who checked in to multiple locations and gained a “Barista” badge. A customer must check in to 5 different Starbucks branch before they can unlock the badge. Loyal customers get $1 off as mayors special. This strategy engages a customer to keep choosing Starbucks every time they feel like having coffee and to keep using the Foursquare app to earn badges.

·         Groupon – this company is the fastest-growing company, ever. It uses game-design techniques in a way that a progress bar shows how many have brought a deal or how many are needed to unlock a deal, the amount of savings you get once a deal is unlocked, then the rewarding feeling of getting a good deal.

·         Twitter – social media sites are good examples of gaming. Twitter uses gaming in a way that users are engaged to attracting followers. Those who do not have a Twitter account hear about it and create their own account and starts following others. The quality of your profile determines how many followers you can attract.

Gaming offers a lot of advantages to any company, but it requires careful planning. It is important that you have an objective in adding gaming to your website. Stick to your business goals and figure out what you want to achieve and how you can achieve it with gaming. Once you have your objectives, create a path to your goals and think how you can make your audience behave in a way to meet your goals. Think of ways of how to reward your audience. It can be anything from monetary (discounted products), followers (sense of importance), or anything that will make a person feel good about themselves.

In the end, incorporating gaming into your web marketing strategy rewards you with customer loyalty and the possibility of gaining more customers through word of mouth.

Author:
Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog and CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm.   She helps create connection, credibility, community and cha-ching through mobile marketing and social commerce around your brand. She is co-founder of#brandchat - a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding.