In a competitive market where businesses are struggling to retain and conquer new customers, gamification has proven itself as an effective marketing strategy. More than half of all companies have already implemented some kind of gamified system for their commercial purposes.
From Pokémon Go’s integration with real-world environments to using IG filter for posting stories on social media platforms, more and more companies are looking at the power of gaming to change habits. Gamification can be an effective strategy for addressing branding issues, consumer connection, product value, or even workplace efficiency.
The Rise of Mobile Technology Gamification has two primary benefits for marketers: it increases employee or customer engagement, and it changes their perception about products or services.
In this case, mobile technology plays an essential role in connecting consumers to gamified systems. With 5.27 billion people worldwide using smartphones, mobile devices provide an easy way to integrate gamified systems into daily lives. As more and more tasks become automated through smart technology, we can expect a greater level of connectivity between brands and users.
The rise of automation will also impact the workforce in the coming years. Many of the careers on this list are those that require a high level of technical skills, which means many of these workers could easily become candidates for automation sooner rather than later.
At first glance, this may seem like an incredibly negative trend for the workforce and economy overall. But if we look at it from a different perspective, this level of automation could create an opportunity for more individuals to participate in higher level jobs that require the same skillset as those which are being taken over by machines.
The increased reliance on automated technology will force workers to focus their efforts on tasks requiring human intelligence—like creativity and emotional engagement—that can’t be replaced by artificial intelligence. Gamification can support this transition to a digital workforce and help organizations find new ways of engaging customers.
How Should Marketers Approach Gamified Systems?
Customers are engaged when they believe your brand or product has value, and there is no more effective way of demonstrating that value than through a game. By incorporating gaming into your marketing strategy, you create a game that your audience wants to play.
Creating challenges is also a good way for employees to earn recognition and rewards from their employer. Consider how every successful social media app uses the basic principles of gaming to make life both easier and more fun.
What This Means for Marketers in the Future?
One of the most exciting trends within gamification comes from how we reward participants. Traditional rewards are nice, of course, but they’re not as powerful because they aren’t directly tied to the activity that was being completed.
Gamification ties actual activities with rewards, allowing people to easily see how their efforts create value for both themselves and the overall brand. The most common rewards are badges and trophies.
For example, you can use an interesting or catchy IG filter on your product’s promotion on Instagram stories to increase engagement. Another trend is how gamification is being incorporated into the Internet of Things (IoT). As we enter an age where literally everything around us becomes connected, it’s important that smart products can do more than just monitor their own functions.
With the help of IoT and gamification, customers can be rewarded for improving their health or learning some new skill. The gamification of IoT will also make it easier to improve the experience of smart products and services, such as wearable devices that monitor a person’s activity or self-driving cars that help avoid traffic jams.
What Will Our Digital World Look Like in the Future?
If you’re looking to gamify your marketing strategy or use the principles of games to improve customer engagement, it’s worth considering how our digital world will be different in 10 years. We’ll likely have more personalized experiences that provide real-time insight into what we need and where we are going next.
These experiences will help us work smarter, not harder. For example, smart buildings will learn about the people who walk in and adjust temperature, lighting, and other settings to make them comfortable. They’ll also track what equipment is being used and reward workers for keeping everything well maintained.
These predictions may seem far removed from how we currently work but if you look at even something as basic as a mobile app, you can see how gamification already plays a major role in modern business. In the past decade, a number of businesses have created applications that reward customers for using their products and help companies learn more about customer habits and preferences.
As we enter an age where IoT becomes commonplace, it’s likely that our everyday devices will use additional forms of gamification to improve the functionality of all products and services.
Takeaway
Gamification will be an important part of the future market, but how gamification businesses change depends entirely on the gamification providers. Whether you are looking for new ways to engage your customers or create new goals for your workforce, gamification could be the way to go.
To date, there has been a lot of development in this area but much of it is proprietary information that cannot be easily accessed or shared. This is why players in the gamification market decided to design an API for integrated game mechanics thereby providing businesses with an accessible platform where they can develop and evolve integrated game mechanics for their products and services.
It’s been seen that an open platform dedicated to gamification will encourage competition between companies, which in turn will drive innovation and create new technologies that we could not have otherwise even imagined.
