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Now you have my number, when are you going to call me?
I once knew someone who decided to get himself a girlfriend by playing guitar on the street and collecting phone numbers instead of money
(It wasn’t Jonathan Rhys-Meyers – you think he needs to do this to get himself a girlfriend?)
My friend told me he gave up after 4 days. “Not enough numbers?” I asked
“Not at all!” he replied. “I just didn’t know what to say to each one – and frankly I couldn’t figure out which one was which!”
Hardly SurprisingYou see, my friend had discovered the problem with having fans or followers or subscribers:
1. You don’t really know who they are
2. It’s not easy figuring out what to say to them
I see the same thing happening with brands who run social media pages and collect millions of fans or followers
You don’t know enough about them to deliver them content that’s interesting and compelling
It may be slightly easier in a CRM context where you’re starting with more data on each individual…
And in loyalty marketing it’s even better because you’re talking to someone who is already familiar and has chosen to buy your brand.
However, the onus of creating content and pushing it to consumers still rests with the brand – which is a burdenAnd they may not do anything with it – so it doesn’t get amplified
How can you keep generating content for your consumer community that is interesting and compelling? In any context – social media, CRM, loyalty marketing – there are only so many times you can send out a special offer or promotion or trial or even talk about a new launch. How do you consistently keep up a dialogue with consumers without running the risk of boring them with too much of the same content?
Involvement
Frequency of Purchase
What to say next? And When?For coffee lovers, who buy at least a cup every day, it’s not hard to talk to them frequently and keep the content simple – focusing on promotions or offers, new seasonal drinks and so forth.However, when you’ve just bought a car and aren’t likely to make another purchase of the same kind for a few years, what else is there to talk about? Quite a lot, actually – just not necessarily more offers and discounts
The challenge is to keep your consumers engaged with you, which raises the million dollar question:
What is Engagement?
I’ve heard several definitions of consumer engagement, and the one I think makes the most sense is Brand Love.Facebook likes, shares and other things are all good and fine – but real brand love results in consumers actively going out to bat for a brand – learn about it, share it’s content and contribute their stories, tell other consumers about it and so on – that’s worth a lot more than just a like in social media or forwarding a link
What do you do when you love someone?
Engaging Consumers
SEEING REACTING PARTICIPATING
Brand love should result in tangible, measurable actions. Content viewed, shared and generated. Recommendations, referrals, purchase, opinions shared… all linked to marketing objectives, all measurable and all very valuable to a brand. The question is, how do you get consumers to go from reacting to your brand content to active participation?
Gamification
The one consistent answer I’ve found to that is to make content inherently more interesting and engagingBy introducing an element of gamification – making it interactive, allowing consumers to participate and rewarding them for doing so
Application of typical elements of game playing (point scoring, competition with others, badges and rewards) to other areas of activity to encourage engagement
The Psychology of Gamification
The Technology of Gamification
It’s not a one-off activity to solve some immediate crisis
Ideally, gamification is a long term program to keep a consumer community engaged with a brand
• Lots of people sign up for a free trial of Adobe Photoshop• Most people never actually try the
product during the free trial period because they don’t know how to use it• Since they haven’t actually tried it for
free, it’s a lot harder to get them to pay for it
• Adobe has lots of user manuals showing how to use Photoshop• This content was converted into
gamified content and Adobe created Level Up Photoshop - gamified missions to teach common tasks like removing red-eye or whitening teeth in a photo – levels to get users to more advanced tasks• 4X increase in conversion as new
users learned the product and developed new skills
• First time investors in property have a lot of fears and perceived risks in buying property purely for investment• This prevents them from
taking the plunge• Australian Commonwealth
Bank wanted to remove some of these barriers and build it’s home loan business
Not just consumers• HP uses gamification to engage
its resellers• Project Everest - online platform
that offers resellers rewards for selling HP’s ISS & ESS products.
• Game-based, with e-learning and rewards schemes integrated into a seller’s profile
• The star prize was the holiday of a lifetime to each of the three target groups, but all of the resellers are offered rewards such as TV’s, discounted and iPads and music.
Not just consumers
• The platform literally had a Pacman-style game and online scratch-cards – it’s a fundamental shift towards gaming. The tagline reads: “Win prizes for yourself and your sales team!”
• 950 sales people out of possible 1200 registered (80%)
• Aimed for 50% of revenue growth – achieved 56.4% - over $1bn
Involvement
Information richRipe for gamification
Gamification works best in categories with high involvement that are also information richHowever, low involvement, information rich categories can benefit immensely from gamifying their content
There are literally thousands of gamified platforms out there – so no need to hire a CTO and build oneUse an existing platform at least initially so you can experiment quickly and cheaply
Gamification is not the only arrow in the quiver – it’s not a substitute for CRM or social media but an additional layer to make them all more effective
