Play the Game: Increase Revenue with Gamification

Answer:

Both gamification and crowdsourcing will successfully scale your marketing efforts.

First, a definition of terms:

Gamification: the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. In most cases, this refers to the use of these techniques in a non-game setting (like a small-to-medium business).

Game mechanics: an incentive system used to drive engagement and get people to play. BigDoor, a company that helps non-game companies use gamification to drive engagement on their websites, has seen site engagement increase by 30% after using their gamification platform, and a 3x increase in return customers.

Crowdsourcing: the practice of handing tasks traditionally performed by one person to a crowd of people. For an SMB marketing team, this allows hiring and work to be done quickly, with better results. What kinds of jobs can you hand off to a crowd? Copywriting, editing, design, video concept and production, translation, microtasks (intern work), SEO, paid search, and much more. With crowdsourcing, you can take a small marketing team and give it incredible reach – at a fraction of the cost and time investment of traditional hiring.

Let’s jump into how these tools can help your business, and how you can use them together.

You can use gamification to boost repeat business and social sharing, but you can also use it to motivate a crowd of workers. Most crowdsourcing platforms and marketplaces have some of these strategies built in to the way they run, but it’s important for you, as an SMB marketing team, to understand these types of motivational systems. When you do, you can help the crowd to work better to your goals, be in more control, and get the best possible results from crowdsourcing.

Working with a crowd can make your life easier in a lot of ways. Hiring is simplified: you can find the “right” person or group of people for the job almost instantly, and work can start right away. But once work begins, you must set expectations correctly, and engage the workers throughout the lifetime of the project. And theories that come from game mechanics can help.

For more on how game mechanics and crowdsourcing can help you increase revenue and engagement and scale your marketing department, check out Trada’s free webinar with BigDoor this Thursday at 12:15PM Eastern. We will share: