The social web has elevated ‘social gaming’ to a whole new level. These days, you can instantly maximize your business exposure just by providing ‘customer rewards’ such as loyalty points, badges or even prizes just for participating in on-site activities or being a part of your community.
Here are just a few ways that you can begin to implement gamification into your marketing campaigns:
Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs have been in existence for years but with the popularity of social web platforms, it’s never been easier to implement. With loyalty programs, the idea is to encourage a “build-up”.
Loyalty programs are successful because they are based around a long-term strategy where customers save up points or work towards higher program levels where the rewards continue to increase in overall value.
Here are a few resources that will help you build your own customized loyalty program:
http://www.punchtab.com
Incentive Offers Through Response Levels
People enjoy earning things and when they feel as though they have had to accomplish something in order to receive the reward, it’s also more valuable to them than if it were merely given away.
Keep this in mind when creating incentive-based offers and always match the offer with the level of engagement or action-based response.
For example, completing a 2-minute customer survey might reward them with a 5% discount, whereas taking advantage of a product special may reward them with an additional 10%.
Badges
Badge based programs are one of the easiest to set up and can be offered through your website, blog or on your Facebook page.
You can easily build your own personalized badge program here: http://www.badgeville.com/
While badge programs are simple in both concept and execution, they are a great way to test the waters, measure your customers’ overall interest, and evaluate response rates before moving towards additional gamification integration.
For example, if you are a smaller start-up business, creating a badge based reward program is not only a fast and easy way to build brand awareness but it’s also affordable and requires no more than a bit of programming.
You can launch your badge program from your Facebook business page and build up your following all at the same time!
If you are interested in using Facebook in a big way as part of your marketing strategy, while using the gamification techniques in this guide, you may want to check out some of the resources listed below.
Social Power Report http://socialpowerreport.com/
FB Income System http://fbincomesystem.com/special.htm
Social Power Plugin http://socialpowerplugin.com/
The correct tools are what can make or break a solid strategy and with gamification, maintaining the connection, and providing your customer with a good experience is important so learning as much as you can from the very start makes excellent sense.