noun: Ga-mi-fi-ca-tion

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m pretty slow on the uptake when it comes to knowing what the latest trends are or intuitively understanding every buzzword that comes flying through my door. One thing to be said for this blogging exercise is that I’m trying the whole learn-more-by-reading-other-bloggers and lo and behold…I’m learning a crazy amount of new things about e-marketing. The next time a new buzzword comes around, trust me, I’ll already know what it means.

While doing market research for a company that wants to motivate kids to exercise through the use of interactive mobile games that require physical movement and incorporates an online reward system, I heard the words “gamification” and “gamifying” being tossed around a lot. I had no idea what was going on. Then I came across this infographic (thank goodness for infographics) on the ReadWrite Enterprise blog and “gamification” was no longer gibberish to me! As this was a moment of enlightenment for me, I thought I’d share my findings with you because gamification is rapidly becoming a powerful tool in the marketer’s arsenal.

There is a huge opportunity for businesses to incorporate gamification into their marketing strategy with so much of the Internet being gamers. Check out these stats:

In case you’re like me and didn’t know exactly what each of these groups stand for, I thought I’d point out that Casual Gamers, which encompasses Social Gamers, are Internet users who play games online at least once per month. Casual Gamers (excluding Social Gamers) will play games via web browsers, while Social Gamers play games via social networks. Mobile Gamers, who use mobile phones to play online games at least once a month, represent a goldmine for marketers as they can be reached more times throughout the day and can therefore be enticed to engage in revenue-generating gaming more frequently.

I think it’s part of human nature to enjoy playing games and the younger generations are increasingly gaming-oriented, with iPhones essentially becoming a baby’s first pacifier.  Companies are realizing that they can (and should) be incorporating gaming effects into their marketing strategies in order to captivate their target audience and therefore keep them immersed in their webpages longer. Not only do they create a captive audience, but marketers can harness the power of gamification to influence their audience to act in desired ways.

Just because gamification is still a foreign word to some and might sound super technical, I don’t think businesses should be intimidated. Scratch the name and the principles behind it are very simple. All it takes is a little understanding of human psychology: we love being rewarded for our actions! It makes us feel good and it motivates us to keep acting in a such a way that we will be rewarded again. As soon as businesses understand that gamification is simply using positive reinforcement to increase desired behaviour in their customers, creating a ‘gamefied’ strategy will come naturally. Customers will appreciate and value a business that acknowledges them for taking a desired action (such as making an online purchase, writing a positive product review, or checking-in at store so others see where they are and what great deals they might be getting) and rewards them for their efforts. This appreciation will foster customer loyalty and we all know the immense benefits of loyalty to the success and health of a business.

My only hesitation comes from marketers possibly trying to incorporate gamification into everything just for the sake of capitalizing on this trend. I think we as natural gamers have the intelligence to know and feel when something is being forced. An unnatural fit between the brand and gaming won’t fly with consumers and may cause the strategy to flop. It’s those brands that can almost organically marry their brand together with gamification that will succeed and engage their audience best. At least, that’s my two cents on the matter.

Happy gaming!