How can Gamification level up your Business?
Tags: Augmented Reality, AR, Marketing

Don’t turn your nose up at this; games are not for kids anymore! We’re going to prove to you how gamification can be a significant *game-changer* for your business (ah ah!).

What is gamification?

With gamification, we mean the introduction of game mechanics, behavioral elements, and design techniques in non-gaming contexts. In short, it involves taking those elements that trigger achievements and competition, and applying them to different things, in this case, your business.

It can consist of giving points and badges (most basic game mechanics) for completing some tasks. To better understand this process, here are some excellent examples we collected for you!

Run, baby, run! — Nike

In 2012 Nike launched a campaign called NikeFuel. Users were encouraged to compete against each other to gain points through activity tracking.

After reaching a certain number of points, the NikeFuel app unlocks unique trophies and rewards, generating motivation and a sense of community for Nike’s customers — not only to keep doing sports but also to share their social media results, increasing the brand’s awareness.

Caution: gamification is hot! — Starbucks

Of course, you already know which brand we’re talking about: Starbucks’s well known when it comes to customer loyalty.

That’s why they launched My Starbucks Rewards, a gamification program in which customers gain starts with every order, that can be later exchanged with free drinks and specialties.

To keep everything more exciting (like a real game!), they also introduced three levels users can reach by their degree of loyalty — the process is pretty simple and includes in-real-life rewards — definitely a great marketing strategy!

Not only B2C — Mc Donalds’

Let’s now move behind the counter and see how McDonald’s implemented gamification to improve employee engagement!

In 2014, McDonald used a gamification-based approach to speed up and promote a better understanding of the new checkout system implemented in more than 1300 stores worldwide.

After a year from the implementation, these were the impressive results:

145,000 pages visited, making it the most used training portal of all time in McDonald’s (even if it wasn’t mandatory for employees)

A reduction of 7.9 seconds on a customer’s average order time

An average increase of 15 pence per user, equivalent to £18,000 per store. The total annual benefit in the UK was £23.7 million.

This system triggers the competition between employees, getting points if they complete orders on time, and the customers satisfaction high. Good job, golden arches!

Now that we’ve seen how the big brands implemented gamification both on the B2C and B2b sides of their business, let’s see how you can successfully get all the benefits as well!

How can Gamification Boost Business Results?

As we have seen, game mechanics can help businesses enhance their engagement, customer loyalty and learning, and onboarding processes. Let’s go into details.

Engagement

Gamification allows companies to improve engagement and increase loyalty.

By creating goals and achievements, gamification creates commitment among users, turning every activity into fun. Customers are encouraged to perform some tasks and share them online to gain points and rewards. Brand awareness at its best!

Learning and onboarding

Onboardings are often tricky tasks that can change the way employees see your business for good… or not.

As McDo did, gamified platforms let employees easily track their work progress, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and keep the motivation to succeed high.

Helping them get through tedious and complicated classes through gamification can improve their performances and increase their loyalty towards the brand.

Sales

Do you buy groceries at the supermarket? If you do, you know that they usually have rewards programs in which you need to collect points (maybe in the form of stickers) to get prizes — well, this is a gamification technique!

Giving customers rewards for every purchase can help you boost sales, making the whole decision process easier and funnier. For example, a potential customer is more into buying a product or a service if he knows he will be rewarded with something else afterward!

Gamification applied: the power of Augmented Reality

How to apply gamification into your business strategy? Of course, you can provide stickers, fidelity cards… but why not using Augmented Reality?

Integrating videogames concepts into real life, helps customers engage with your brand in a new incredible way. Let them earn points every time they scan your products and engage with unique AR content, or make engaging AR marketing campaigns that involve gamification mechanics, exploiting smartphone potentialities!

Ayel’s platform allows even brands with smaller budgets to create their AR campaigns and integrate gamification into their marketing strategy. Why don’t you take a look at our website here?

In this article, we explained why gamification techniques could successfully help you improve your brand awareness, boost sakes and ease onboarding and learning processes, and why AR is an excellent way to exploits this potential.

If you’re hungry for more, don’t hesitate to visit our website or get in touch with us!