Gamification Marketing For Dummies. Zarrar Chishti

Introduction

      What is gamification marketing? After we had run a successful campaign, one of my clients put it simply: “I cannot believe we just gave our customers the experience of a game in a campaign that had nothing to do with games.”

      Gamification is when you apply techniques and concepts from games to any marketing campaign. Today, gamification is everywhere — for instance, companies rewarding their employees, teachers encouraging their pupils to compete for higher marks, and even parents rewarding their kids for washing the dishes.

      It’s no wonder gamification has worked well for marketing campaigns, too. When any company, large or small, implements gamification properly, the campaign will meet the company’s marketing objectives. Why? Because humans have an innate desire to play and compete.

      Gamification marketing can have the following end goals:

About This Book

      This book is for marketers, not developers.

      Most books, blogs, and articles on gamification are written for developers. So, I wanted to write this book for people like my clients — people like you! Reading this book should feel like I’m sitting with you in our conference room discussing how you can implement gamification marketing in your next campaign.

This book covers all aspects of developing, launching, and analyzing a gamification marketing campaign. You don’t have to read the book from beginning to end. You can use the table of contents and index to find the subject you want more information on. You don’t have to remember what you’re reading — there won’t be a test on Friday, and you can always return to the book to find what you need.

      If you’re short on time, you can skip anything marked with the Technical Stuff icon, as well as text in gray boxes (called sidebars). This information is interesting (some might say fascinating!), but it’s not essential to your understanding of the subject at hand.

      Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

      Finally, within this book, you’ll find many examples of gamification marketing campaigns from companies around the world. Some of these campaigns will have ended by the time you read this book; others will still be running. For the ones that are still running, I encourage you to sign up and start engaging with them. Experience what they have to offer and try to relate how each gamification element will work with your own campaign.

Foolish Assumptions

      This book is for people who work in marketing or are responsible for their company’s marketing. Therefore, I do not assume that you are knowledgeable in game design or game development. However, I do assume the following: