Some might think that including games in your marketing plan is silly. But, there's no denying that it will help your brand stand out from the crowd and avoid monotony. After all, in this day and age of so many brands trying to make a name in the industry, you need something that will help you cut through the competition, and gamified content might just be it.
In this article, we take a deep dive into how games are inspiring marketers to improve their strategies and what benefits gamification has. Keep on reading!

What Is Gamification?
Before we start talking about how gamification can help your brand, let us first discuss what it is for those who do not know. Gamification is a process that incorporates game-like elements into non-game settings. Leveraging such elements helps brands to attract customers and improve retention and engagement.

Gamification adds levels, achievements, leaderboards, and badges to a real-world atmosphere and entices customers to engage with the content if they wish to earn rewards. Incentives are intended to modify customer behavior and lead to the formation of repetitive activities, such as utilizing a product, visiting an app, purchasing something, and so on.

Therefore, gamification is acknowledged as a way of designing behavioral patterns to boost creativity, productivity, and engagement. That's why it is employed in education, advertising, business environments, human resources, and other fields.

Gamification in Digital Marketing
Digital marketing trends are always evolving. Marketers are constantly on the lookout for elements that can boost engagement. Gamification is the new kid on the block, and it's gaining popularity fast in the digital marketing world. By incorporating games into your digital marketing plan, you are gamifying your content to increase digital engagement and participation.

By gamifying your content, you allow your audience to attain rewards like trophies and points. This increases sales and fosters more active partnerships, improves ROI, strengthens customer loyalty, and drives customer satisfaction. Companies battle more intensely for viewers' attention in today's crowded media ecosystem, while customers try to avoid too many brands. As a result, marketers find it increasingly difficult to convey brand assets through traditional means while still capturing a portion of customers' attention.

In this setting, gamification marketing has emerged as an appealing business strategy method since it bridges the gap between customers and companies by appealing to the human impulse to play. Who doesn't love to play games and earn rewards? Gamification has succeeded in generating pleasant experiences that promote brand recognition and drive engagement and conversions by having customers pay for digital as well as real-life incentives.

Many of the world's most well-known businesses have had tremendous success using gamification marketing. For instance, Ford Escape Route, a game introduced by Ford Motors, helped the company generate $8 million in car sales. Not just that, but it helped the company receive a lot of Facebook likes and Twitter followers. Another example would be Domino's Pizza which increased its sales by 30 percent thanks to its strategy that allowed customers to make the pizza of their choice on the website and then order.

How Can You Incorporate Gamification Into Your Content?
Now that we have learned the basics of gamification in digital marketing, let us dig into how you can incorporate such content into your business strategy.

1. Facebook
Facebook, or any other social media platform, works for this strategy. However, Facebook shows a better user engagement, so it's best to try this out on Facebook. The primary idea here is to grab your audience's attention using call-to-action posts that will make them want to engage with your content. Give your viewers a puzzle to solve, for instance. And leave a caption saying, "If you want more such puzzles, visit xyz.com today".Strategies like these increase the audience's curiosity, and a good chunk of those who participate in the puzzles will visit your website. Apart from just puzzles, you can use polls or quizzes to intrigue your customers. Ask them to comment on their answers and reply to them, saying whether they are correct or not, and don't forget to leave a link to your website when you reply.
2. Website
Yet another place where you can incorporate game-like elements is your website. You must already have a website for your brand, so all you need to do now is improve its content to attract more viewers. The homepage is the key here; make it so intriguing that it will make the customer want to know more. Take the example of the google search engine. Upon special occasions, it offers games to its audience (Olympics). Moreover, whenever you search for a word, you can play a little game where you can answer questions similar to the word you searched.

Or, you could take the example of Domino's Pizza which introduced a tool that allowed visitors to customize their own pizza and then order accordingly. Depending on the type of brand you have, incorporate similar ideas. For instance, if you have a clothing brand, leave a small quiz on your website related to fashion, and if the answers are correct, the winner gets a discount coupon. Similarly, let's say you have an eyewear brand. Allow the customers to try on the eyewear they like in their own pictures. This helps your brand break away from the monotony and allows the customers to have a little fun while purchasing.

3. Emails
Apart from social media and websites, emails are yet another great tool to get your customer's attention. But, to do email marketing, you need your customers' email addresses. So, all you can do is email your past customers whose emails you already have on your database. This is a great way to re-engage your customers and make them try out your service again. However, the one problem with email marketing is that many customers overlook the emails you send them.

Hence, the subject of an email is the key. Make the subject so captivating that the customer will be compelled to open the email and read more. This is the perfect opportunity to "gamify" your emails. "Jessica, are you up to the challenge?" Or "Have you got what it takes, Brandon?" are great examples of captivating email subjects.
But, what about once your customer opens the email? What happens now? You still need to retain their attention. You need to include puzzles and quizzes in your email and leave call-to-action taglines like "Only 5% of people can answer this correctly -- are you one of them?" This will inspire the customer to take the challenge. Hence, if they answer it correctly, offer them some discount coupon which will make them visit your website.
How Is Gamification Beneficial? Let's see how gamification helps to grow your brand.
1. Customer Insights Gamification enables marketers to acquire customer data. By compelling customers to engage with you, you can conduct a lead search and get to know more about what your audience likes and dislikes. You can use special tools like, for example, SignalHire to find leads. Its filters by location, skills, and other keywords will ensure you a successful result.

2. Increase Awareness
Gamification marketing allows brands to attract new audiences, raise awareness, and target certain demographics, like Gen Z, who grew up with gaming.

3. Increase Innovation
Brands can improve their relationships with customers by incorporating gamification into marketing. These interactions increase engagement, emotions, as well as positive connections, allowing businesses to become more fun, appealing, and innovative.
Final Thoughts

Gamification is taking the marketing world by storm. It is time you incorporate escape game-like elements to your digital marketing strategy and see your brand grow. Remember that the virtual world is more engaging than ever, and the competition uses gamification to gather the attention of leads. Don't fall behind.