As far as industry buzzwords go, gamification is the most misconstrued buzzword ever!!
GAMIFICATION: noun gam·i·fi·ca·tion \ˌgā-mə-fə-ˈkā-shən\
Gamification is a long, awkward word, and some pundits mock it as somewhat deceiving and inaccurate. Some people even suggest gamification has now evolved into the metaverse. However, despite the popularity and misuse of the term by anyone who wants to sound cool (hint: it doesn’t mean “fun”), there is a specific meaning and powerful industry around gamification.
Most people think of gamification as games created for a business purpose, but the reality is that gamification is about maximizing the effect of an existing experience, by applying the recognition and motivation techniques that make digital games so engaging.
Gamification is attractive to B2B marketers for many reasons:
- It appeals to millennials who understand digital games
- It can be applied as an user experience layer on top of an existing enablement or incentive program
- It's less costly than building out a full game-like App or simulation
However, while video games are fun and have tapped into what motivates people: Clear objectives, immediate rewards, and easily identifiable progression; gamification is not about games in the B2B environment.
In B2B gamification is all about driving and rewarding activity and or behavior completion. Gamified UX in B2B is visually actionable, interactive and interesting – empowering participants to see their progress within a program in real time, which empowers participants to translate their efforts into real value, and to understand their impact on the business.
For the most part a gamified enablement or incentive program should be:
- Actionable and interactive
- Simple, and show recognizable signs for next actions
- Clear, and provide instant feedback for actions taken
- Easy, and communicate identifiable markers for ranking and performance
- Efficient, and provide accessible paths to further achievement
These days, you can gamify pretty much every boring aspect of your B2B enablement or incentive program, with the ultimate goal of driving simplicity, motivating participation, engagement, and driving loyalty.
B2B marketers have long understood the value of competition as a motivator. Performance leaderboards hold a prominent place in sales offices, call centers, and other business environments. And gamification relies heavily on tools like leaderboards and badges to motivate participants by challenging them to keep up with peers. Think about it, your predominant goal is to generate as much revenue as you possibly can.
Chasing that goal, you recognize that a successful sale is the result of a string of productive activities, that when combined, lead to the sale: You provide training videos, you generate demand and send MQL’s to partners to convert to SQL, you provide for opportunity registration, you reward specific “sales stages”, and so on. In a gamified model, you’d get points for all those things.
Just SQL’ed a lead? Regardless of the outcome, ding! You win points. Was that your third Deal Reg of the week? DING! You just earned yourself a badge, you social maniac – and everyone on your team knows it. Even your boss knows it. Just closed your biggest deal ever? DING! DING! DING! You’re a closer, and rewards are for closers. You can share that reward or badge on Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn so that all your peers know what a stupendous butt-kicker you are.
The key to gamification is turning extrinsic rewards to intrinsic rewards.
By adding interactive game mechanics to your incentive program, you are letting participants track how they are doing compared to peers, and you are building interest and providing that extra motivational push needed by participants to stay on top of tasks. Progress bars for example, give a sense of accomplishment and put participant goals front and center instead of having to be continuously reminded by communications.
Top vendors are delivering a simpler user experience by showing users their progress towards different types of training and certification programs, sales incentive goals, and/or for driving and rewarding completion of courses and/or reaching or exceeding objectives.
Yet, whichever type of dashboard, gauge, or progress bar is used, it must by visually actionable, and it must show participants where they are on their journey. Additionally, if your focus is training – progressive learning quizzes keep the user from feeling overwhelmed while ensuring the program stays fresh with new quizzes.
This gives your partner participants a reason to keep logging into the site, while increasing their engagement with the program.
You should also reward the individual, as recognition increases the value of training, and adds credibility and increased competition. In fact, according to one Aberdeen report, competition with other team members motivated more than 1/3 of those surveyed.
Gamification is currently being applied to customer/partner engagement, employee performance, enablement and education, innovation management, and health and wellness. If you would like to learn more about a framework for implementing a Gamification Strategy into your enterprise enablement and/or incentive environment let us know.
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