Game-Based Marketing: Inspire Customer Loyalty Through Rewards, Challenges, and Contests

Advertising is dead. You may not realize it, but you and everyone you know engages, possibly unsuspectingly, in some form of a game multitasking as an ingenious marketing device. Game-Based Marketing illustrates the pervasiveness of games today in business marketing, and how to better use them to create an engaged and loyal customer base. Game-Based Marketing will:

• Explain the growing phenomenon of game-based marketing and how it works
• Show marketers how to develop games to incorporate into their marketing strategy
• Share fascinating examples of marketing games already in play including Jigsaw.com; Chase Picks Up The Tab; the iconic McDonald’s Monopoly Game that reportedly generates nearly one-hundred million dollars in incremental revenue per year; and United Airlines Mileage Plus where team pint competitions and real-world scavenger hunts for miles accrue millions annually.

Provocative and instructive, Game-Based Marketing’s message is clear: Use the tools in this book to put games in your marketing mix now… or you’ll be out of the game altogether.

Top 5 Ways to Gameify Your Business

From Foursquare on the iPhone to an online game of Farmville, not to mention the frequent fliers popularized in the Academy Award nominated film, Up in the Air, playing "everyday games" has become nothing short of a pop culture obsession. Driving unprecedented consumer engagement to smart brands like Chase and the US Army, loyalty programs and marketing games are marketing’s best bet for the future of advertising.

It’s easier than you think to bring the power of games to your business. Using the breakthrough lessons in Game-Based Marketing, you can start adding game mechanics to your marketing mix in 5 easy steps:

1. What consumer behavior are you trying to drive? Don’t just think about broad or bottom line objectives (“more engagement”, “greater brand exposure”) when considering ways in which you’d like to effect the behavior of your consumer base, but instead, focus in on easy-to-achieve activities that will have an overall impact on your bottom line. For example: incentivize the sending of product endorsements to friends. The more specific you can be, the easier it is to build game mechanics around. Some behaviors are best left un-incentivized, however, a topic we cover closely in Chapters 1 & 2.

2. Assign points to those behaviors. Think about how much value each of the behaviors has to your business and assign points to each action accordingly. Points should be weighed relatively, so if opening a new account is ten times more valuable than clicking on an advertiser’s link, make sure the point system reflects that reality. Want to learn more about just how point systems function? Check out Chapters 3 & 4.

3. Create a leaderboard to display points. Just like the Employee of the Month plaques at restaurants, create a socially-networked leaderboard that allows users to feel like they are accomplishing something relative to their friends and peers—A little encouragement goes a long way. You’ll find a plethora of leaderboard dos & don’ts in Chapter 4.

4. Develop challenges and message them. Just like Frequent Flyer promotions, creating simple challenges can have a profound effect on user behavior once they are connected to your community. Keep your challenges fresh and topical by knowing your players – Chapter 7 gives you riveting insight on exactly who is playing.

5. Make “fun” your goal! Whether your business is finance or funerary, making fun a principal objective will substantially increase consumer engagement and generate remarkable new revenue opportunities. Chapter 8 shows you the future and how Generation G – today’s tweens – are driving ‘funnovation’ in every industry.

There are plenty more tips in store – from why cash, or even real-world prizes just don’t matter as much as you think, to how you can compete against well-funded incumbents without much capital. Buy Game-Based Marketing today and learn the key secrets of leading-edge marketers - and how you can harness the power of games in your mix to create, engage, and excite your customers.