How Gamification Satisfies Us
Social media has truly changed how most of us live our lives. Today, more than two-thirds of us are on the internet 15-18 minutes a day, tweeting pictures of our lunches and professing how much we love our significant others. This is because social media allows for immersion, achievement and social motivation — and so does gamification.
Achievement: Gamification appeals here most. The concept of achievement allows you to compete with others or even yourself — often with the incentive of being dubbed “the best.” This shows how much we relish the idea of competition: often we don’t even win anything tangible!
Social Motivation: We are social beings, and gamification satisfies this need by creating an environment where we can interact with others. Though we may like to interact in order to be named “the best,” as described above, just the act of interacting can often be enough.
Immersion: We enjoy the idea of “escaping,” and gamification targets this desire by creating another world in which we can immerse ourselves and get lost.
B2C entities are utilizing gamification quite well: foursquare.com is a great example of gamification, and how it achieves these three concepts. So start there, and begin thinking how you can utilize this very important technique in your own outreach.
Final Thought: As social media has shown us, we like these three concepts and they create brand loyalty. This is the direction toward which we’re moving, so start including gamification techniques in your outreach now.
Comment Question: Have you employed any successful B2B gamification techniques in your outreach?
Vann Morris is the Director of Buying Behavior Studies with the Atlanta B2B advertising agency, MLT Creative. She is a Social and Behavioral Scientist who is currently working on her PhD in Communications, and uses her strong theoretical background in order to show how scientific theory should be used to develop strategy and effective B2B marketing campaigns.