Let’s face it; Facebook is full to brim with uninspiring posts which you scroll right past, without giving a second thought. Brands are competing for the attention of their customers – who are bombarded with messages from the pizza company, the beauty salon, the car dealers –every single day.
And when those posts are your business’s, it can be pretty disheartening. No likes, no comments, no clicks – the copy you spent half an hour crafting gives you absolutely nothing back.
But you simply need to focus on creating content which stands out. Introducing ‘gamification’. In the marketing world, this means making boring, unappealing offers feel fun, as well as sparking a connection and driving engagement with an audience, through – you guessed it – games.
Gamification bots
Remember that time you were mindlessly scrolling through your social media feed and came across a post which said ‘find out what your favourite crisp flavour says about your personality type’ and just had to stop and find out?
It might seem like a bit of a gimmick, but these sorts of quizzes can be used as an extremely useful marketing technique. Quizzes are engaging and require the audience to stick around and take action – it’s as simple as that!
Let’s say – hypothetically – that you’re an online pet store who sells collars for cats. You’re releasing new collars for Halloween. Although you’ve got a fair amount of Facebook followers, your posts don’t get much engagement, and you need a way to drum up some interest in your new products.
What do cat lovers enjoy thinking about? Well, their cats, of course. So make a quiz. You could title it “We’ll pick the best Halloween collar for your cat based on their personality!”. Set up a bot that asks a load of random questions like “What’s your cat’s favourite thing to do?” or “What’s your cat’s favourite food?” with a few options for each. At the end, your audience will find out which collar suits their cat best – andbe able to click a link through to the product page.
Simple gamification posts
If making a quiz seems a little complicated, but you’re still interested in gamifying your Facebook marketing strategy, why not make a super fun yet straightforward gamification post? The possibilities are endless here – but as an example, let’s use the book ‘Where’s Wally?’. It contains illustrations of huge crowds, but in every image, there is a guy with a striped shirt and hat on. The aim is to find him – but it’s pretty addictive! Simple games like spot the difference could be big, too.
Why not do something similar? Find an existing, copyright free game, or hire an illustrator or designer to make one for you – sites like People Per Hour and Fiverr could be useful for this. Make it reasonably tricky so, your audience gets stuck in, and incentivise it with a free product or voucher for the person who wins.
Landing page quizzes
The quiz we were talking about earlier? After you’ve tried it out on social media, give it a go on your landing page. By doing this, it opens up a whole new possibility – capturing information. A landing page quiz can be used no matter what industry you’re in – the quiz will primarily serve as a lead magnet. They take the quiz, but they only get to access the next page (which tells them the result), once they’ve given you their email. It really does work!
So, next time you’re coming up with a content plan for your social media or are looking to jazz up your landing page, think all things fun and games! Implementing gamification into your strategy is sure to bring rewards. Need more support with your social media marketing or need to kickstart your marketing? Contact 3twelve today.