PR ON THE GO February 13, 2023

How Gamification Can Help to Attract New Consumers and Retain Old Ones

Founder Advice

Julia Voloshchenko portrait

Public Relations Specialist in IT with 4+ years of experience. With excellent communication and strategy skills, Julia helps technology companies spread their message to major media outlets.

New technologies are increasingly entering people's daily lives, and businesses have to think about introducing unusual practices and approaches to attract new consumers. One such practice is gamification.


What is Gamification?


According to Gartner, gamification is a concept that relies on game mechanics, methods, and principles for non-game activities, such as recruitment or education. Gamification techniques are actually ways to increase staff motivation and loyalty. Usetech, for example, has implemented its own loyalty program and thus increased employee engagement by up to 87%.

Gamification is based on several traits of people's character: they are competitive, cooperative, and accomplished. Some say Richard Allan Bartle's typology applies here. Bartle distinguished psycho types or groups of gamers:

1) Careerists or hoarders. Their greatest joy would be to win awards, points, medals, and other things for their actions. Their primary goal is to achieve goals and solve ever-increasingly difficult problems. It is believed that the majority of people (somewhere around 40%) belong to careerists. And they stay the longest in gamified processes and monetize them.

2) Killers. For them, superiority over other players is of great value. They love competition, they love seeing their name promoted in rankings and tournaments. There aren't many of them — only 10%, but along with hoarders, hitters are also one of the monetizable groups. Since they love competitions and rankings, they will pay to take part and for the opportunity to dominate and win.

3) Explorers. For this group, searching for bugs and other mechanics in the system or game is preferable. They are interested in finding out how everything works, what language is written and how it works.

4) Socializers or communicators. They enjoy interacting with others in the game and are open to cooperation and teamwork. They enjoy offering help and creating collaborative communities to communicate.

Of course, this is not a complete description of psychotypes, but I will not dwell on that in this article. Let's move directly to the use of gamification in marketing and examples of its use.

Gamification in Marketing


What's good about gamification? They've been talking about it for a couple of years, but not everyone implements it because they don't fully understand the benefits. When old motivation methods and loyalty programs don't work, it's time to turn to gamification.

What goes into gamification in marketing? These are loyalty programs, based on gamification; bonus programs and cards, contests and surveys. The choice of interaction mechanics depends on the type of your business and on your goals. You can develop standings or lists of select consumers, but again, it depends on the type of business you have.

Example: a contest or survey with rewards (promo codes, discounts). New or existing customers are invited to take part in a contest or survey for which they can receive a guaranteed reward.

If you have an active community, and you want to raise brand awareness, you can do a challenge game. Active customers would post the results on social media, sharing with their friends and thus attracting new customers to your brand.


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Examples of Gamification


A classic example is Starbucks, which in 2012 launched gamification in the form of the My Rewards loyalty program with star accumulation. As a result, the company has increased its revenue and the number of customers.

Another example is Amazon Prime. For a fee, members get access to unlimited free shipping on millions of items for 2 days. Other benefits are also included in this fee.

The Benefits of Gamification


1) To keep the attention of customers. Often visual accompaniment or advertising banners cannot retain new and old customers as before, and gamification elements can solve this problem.

2) Attracting new customers. New audience interaction mechanics allow you to attract them to your business and engage them in communication.

3) Increasing community loyalty. Actively engaging with customers increases their loyalty and trust in the brand. It gives the impression that there is a living person behind the brand.

4) Increase in sales. Gamification allows you to increase sales due to its mechanics.

5) Competitiveness. Original methods of attracting customers make you stand out among all the others on the market.

When Should You Not Use Gamification?


1) There's no match with the audience.

2) There’s no match with company goals.

Every case and business is different, so choose a practice based on your goals. Ask yourself questions: Why do we need gamification? How can it help us? What is our goal? Based on the answers, you will understand what gamification practices can help you and lead to effective results.

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