Home Blog Marketing Marketing StrategyGamification in Marketing: How to Play the Game and Score Big

Gamification in Marketing: How to Play the Game and Score Big

by Leah Messenger , Senior Content Marketing Manager

11 Min. June 8, 2023

Who doesn’t like having fun?

That’s exactly why gamification is used so often in marketing strategies – actually, 93% of marketers have confessed their love for it. And the benefits of gamification (which you’ll read all about in this post) suggest we – as buyers – all have got quite a thing for it too.

In this guide, we cover everything you need to know about gamification marketing, including what it can look like, why it works, and examples of gamification in action.

What is gamification marketing?

Gamification is a clever way to engage and motivate people with the concept of game-playing. It’s something more and more businesses are adopting into their sales and marketing strategies, because it can be used to help your brand in a number of ways, including:

Lead generation
Customer acquisition
Website performance
User experience
Customer satisfaction
Customer retention

In fact, 50% of startups use gamification, which makes sense. Gamification really hooks people in, and gets them wanting more – without them needing to know anything and everything about the company they’re interacting with.

The effects of gamification on marketing

So, why does the art of gamification work so well in marketing strategies?

In short: it’s psychology.

Whatever type of gamification you go for, if it’s done well, users become invested in the game you present them.

By using gamification marketing, you tune into the majority’s healthy sense of competition, everyone’s love for validation, and your own knowledge that the more engaged your customers are, the higher the return for your business. That might be time-on-page, that might be in spends, that might be more referrals, that might be a bunch of things that benefit your business and its metrics.

Speaking of benefits, let’s look into those.

3 (big) benefits of gamification in marketing

Done effectively, gamification can bring your business a few benefits that we think you might be interested in…

1) Increase user engagement

Game-based motivation increases user engagement by up to 48%.

Because of the interactive nature of gamification, engagement rates are typically higher and better than other styles of campaigns you can run. In fact, gamifying your website can boost browsing time (or time-on-page) alone by around 30%.

And you know what higher engagement means? A higher conversion rate, as well as referral rate. Ideal for lead generation from inbound leads, cross-selling, and upselling.

2) Gain customer data

If you’re looking for a new way to generate leads, this is definitely a fun option – an option that requires creativity, hard work, and tracking, but fun all the same.

But it’s not just email addresses and other contact information you can gain through gamification like a lead capture form at the end of a quiz so they can get their results. Depending on the type of game you go for, you can gain all sorts of information about the people hitting your website. Things like:

Buyer behaviors
Location
Preferences
Are they even our target audience?
- Yes: Great news
- No: Damn, time to reevaluate that campaign
You get the jist

To make sure you do get the right audience playing your games and avoid wasting all the hard work gamification can require, use Similarweb Digital Marketing Intelligence. You’ll gain full insight into your target audience, the keywords they’re searching for, the keywords your competitors are getting hits for, and the best ways to distribute your campaigns within your specific industry.

3) Build brand awareness and customer loyalty

Another great thing about including gamification in your marketing strategy is that you get people to engage with, interact with, and subscribe to your brand, without the need for your sales teams to get on the cold calls or emails.

That means you get brand awareness and inbound leads, without having to directly educate. You just reel them in with your gaming adventure, whatever style, shape or size it may be.

Lead qualification = absolutely necessary though, as you might get a few that are out of the realm of your ideal customer profile just because it’s #fun.

On top of that, you can use gamification as a way to keep your customers engaged and up-to-date, helping with customer loyalty and retention.

How to use gamification marketing in your strategy

Alright alright, so what can gamification look like for your brand?

We’re not saying you have to create the next Super Mario, but introducing some kind of gaming element that incorporates your brand, your product, your goals, and that little bit of fun can mean you reap all the benefits mentioned above.

Here are just some of the ways you can include gamification marketing into your strategy:

On-page games: Create a game that users can’t help but share to others to increase your brand awareness, indirectly educate users about your solution, boost your website performance, and promote inbound leads.
Regular challenges: Encourage regular visits, returning visitors, and user engagement to help make sure that users are getting the most out of your product.
Calculators: When you’re in an industry that includes some difficult mathematical equations, offer a calculator to do the math for your users – financial and mortgage advisors, we’re looking at you. (Top tip: This example is great for backlinks).
Leaderboards: Touch on everyone’s competitive side and create a points system on a company, national or global level to retain engagement and interaction with your website or app.
Badges and awards: Everyone loves being recognized, and who can say no to winning virtual badges or awards?
Countdowns: As simple as it sounds, a countdown works well with people’s engagement as they create a sense of urgency and encourage action, whether that’s putting something in the calendar or making a purchase before the timer runs out.

5 successful gamification marketing examples

Now, for some examples of great gamification marketing in action – here are just five campaigns we know, love, and will probably keep falling for:

1) LinkedIn: Progress bar

One example you probably haven’t managed to miss is the LinkedIn progress bar, motivating you to optimize your profile to its fullest potential.

This means completing – or strengthening – your profile by filling out everything from your name and current position, to your full professional and educational backgrounds.

Note: LinkedIn’s progress bar is never at zero, because nothing is more demotivating than starting from scratch and having a long way to go. Clever.

The visual of a progress or completion bar drives users to accomplish goals and create goals, benefiting in customer experience. But the thing is, this isn’t only benefiting your own customer experience of the social media platform; the more information you put in, the more you’re benefiting others’ experience of the platform too.

Think about all the recruiters who specifically want someone who did a Math degree, or has at least 3 years of experience in SEO. Think about event planners looking for specific roles in tech companies that are local to the area, or know how to speak Spanish fluently.

We see you, LinkedIn. We see you. Yet we still absolutely cannot have our profile strength in anything but the green zone – it’s impossible.

2) Peloton: Leaderboard

There’s nothing like a bit of healthy competition, and as well-known pioneers of fitness, Peloton choosing a leaderboard as their example of gamification makes sense.

Let’s take Peloton bikes for example. The Peloton leaderboard here shows everyone that’s in a class with you during a ride, whether it’s on-demand or live, and there’s also an all-time leaderboard with anyone that’s ever taken the class.

Why do they do this? Well, the position on the leaderboard is based on your output, and if it sparks your competitive nature, that’s going to make you work harder. And when you work hard and make the most of the at-home fitness regime, you’ll see results, therefore you achieve exactly what Peloton set out for: improved health and fitness.

Customer satisfaction even though you did all the hard work, making that monthly payment worth it? Tick. ✅

The same score system applies for all their products, and people know this kind of motivation works. There’s also something extra enticing about it being in the comfort of your own home, isn’t there?

The proof is in the pudding with Peloton’s organic traffic via desktop being mostly branded keywords, with the intent to purchase or sign in.

People want to find out more about Peloton as a brand, (even if they aren’t quite sure how to spell it) and check up on their performance. But let’s take a quick look at the volume of both organic and paid traffic:

That big spike in January 2021 comes as no surprise as it came at a time of worldwide lockdowns during the pandemic, meaning no gyms and not much else to do than worry about our health.

Peloton have maintained a reasonable plateau since the reopening of gyms, as well as a high average visit duration of over 5 minutes. Our Organic Pages feature gives us a little inkling into the specific pages which most people head to – we took a look at the past three months:

3) Duolingo: Streaks

For those of you that have tried to learn a new language with Duolingo (successfully or not), you’ll know the daily notifications they send through to your device, encouraging you to continue your streak.

(Or, you’ll know how to turn the notifications off on your phone in the fastest way possible after receiving too many of them).

A streak on Duolingo is the number of days in a row you’ve completed a lesson, so when you do one through the app or online, your streak will go up by one.

The more lessons you complete, the more you go on the Duolingo app, the more of the language you learn, the more customer satisfaction you have, the more likely you are to return as a paying customer.

4) Il Makiage: Quiz

Our next example of marketing gamification is from online make-up experts, Il Makiage; it’s their Find Your Foundation Quiz.

Given the rise of ecommerce, a quiz (that actually works) is a great way to engage online shoppers and help them buy the perfect foundation for their skin and skin tone, without having to leave the house. It works well for both the company, its prospects, and its customers.

The Il Makiage quiz has a good amount of questions – it nails the balance between being not too long so the user stays engaged and doesn’t click off the site, and not too short, so the user trusts they will get reliable results. In fact, they advertise it as taking only 90 seconds.

Plus, you know your gamification is a hit when people are searching for that specific feature:

5) Starbucks: Rewards for loyalty

Okay, so we know people love games – and we know we all love games where we win. But what happens when you actually win something? An actual thing, for no money at all.

Two words: rewards schemes.

Starbucks is just one example of a business that uses – and makes more money from – reward schemes.

How does it work? You know, giving away rewards but still making money?

Well… with Starbucks, the secret is that you only get rewards for frequent purchases. This may work well for those that already drink 3 Starbucks coffees a day, but it will entice those that consider a non-instant coffee a bit of a payday treat, to buy them more often.

Free stuff gets people going, especially as the cost of living increases. While, a lot of the time, we are actually spending more to get the free items, we are hell-bent on getting as many stars as we can.

☝️ And that obsession with collecting stars to get ‘free’ stuff, even in an economic crisis, is yet another reason why gamification works so well.

It’s us, isn’t it? We’re the problem.

3 ways to get your gamification inspo from Similarweb

If you want your gamification marketing campaign to knock it out the park, you want users to convert into customers. And to get users to convert into customers, you need to be hitting the right target audience.

While a fun game can boost your time-on-page and general website engagement, there’s not much use in that if they aren’t converting or telling their friends, colleagues, bosses and LinkedIn about you.

With Similarweb Digital Marketing Intelligence, you can find out all about your target audience, what they’re searching for, and what your competitors are doing better than you.

With our platform, you can:

1) Target keywords that will actually drive traffic

Using our Keyword Generator, you can discover the best keywords to target to promote your business. Not only can you generate keyword lists filled with related keywords, you can also ensure that your target search terms actually have search volume so no efforts are wasted.

Here’s what we can tell you about the term “mortgage calculator”, for example.

As you can see, there’s a huge search volume throughout the year. Meanwhile, that idea you had for that oh-so-specific ‘weight on the moon calculator’.

An interesting concept, but not something widely searched or even thought about.*

*(Cue a rise in this keyword’s search volume, as we predict it will have a similar response to when people say “you can’t lick your elbow”, and you now simply must find out how much you’d weigh on the moon).

2) Discover what keywords are new, trending, or up-and-coming

Thanks to our fresh data, you can get your hands on the up-and-coming and trending keywords that relate to your business, long before your competitors do.

These keywords might be seasonal and perhaps not a year-round favorite like “mortgage calculator”, or they might be completely new to search engines. Either way, you can find them and make the most of the opportunity with Similarweb.

Say you host a personality quiz on your website, and traffic isn’t looking so good. Take a look at the Keyword Generator and its yearly trend pattern. Including the word “fun” could be what takes your page to the top in the SERPs.

3) Compare your pages with your competitors’ to see what’s up

Out of all your pages and your competitors’, find out which are performing well and badly to inspire your website optimization.

How? Using our Organic Pages tool and comparison, that’s how.

Spy on your competitors and spot their high-performing pages (and the not so high-performing), including trending and recently discovered pages.

Let’s take a look at Il Makiage, a brand we mentioned earlier. In checking out its top organic pages, what do ya see – it’s the quiz. Online make-up brands: you know what you’ve got to (try and) do.

Our SEO Competitor Analysis tool also gives you the opportunity to compare your ranking keywords with competitors. Choose where they aren’t ranking so well or where they are weaker, and plan your (organic) attack.