How Important is Marketing Gamification to a Robust Online Marketing Plan?

The following is an interview with Gabe Zichermann, author of the new book Gamification by Design. Every marketer needs to stay on top of trends. Gamification is a trend in web and mobile design that is big and getting bigger. My sincere thanks to Gabe for the opportunity to conduct this interview.

Mark McLaren: When I first read the title of your book, Gamification by Design, my reaction was, “Won’t be reading that!” I associated it with online games, “gamers”, massively multiplayer online games. I don’t know. Video games are not my thing. So I thought I wouldn’t be able to relate. But I clearly didn’t know what the word “gamification” meant! Do you have a short and sweet statement for people who think you are talking about gaming or video games or something only kids know about? The importance of gamification for marketers and business decision-makers is hard to overstate.

Gabe Zichermann: The definition I use to help folks better understand the term is this – Gamification is the process of using game thinking and game mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems. We’re not talking about solving the next puzzle or level in a video game, but solving real world problems like how to keep employees engaged and motivated, how to keep customers coming back to your website, and more.

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Mark McLaren: Most of my clients are just starting to realize the need to take smartphones into account when they think about marketing. Usually this means that they want to be sure visitors who find them online have a good experience when they view their website on a smartphone. Gamifying their website adds additional overhead to their web projects, and it will almost certainly add even more overhead if they want to give a similar experience across web browsers, tablets and smartphones. Do you have suggestions about how to approach this? Do you think businesses should design for smartphones first, for example, and then design for web browsers? Can you give any examples of how businesses that don’t have massive marketing budgets are dealing with the incorporation of gamification into their sites? Did you encounter problems like this when you built GamificationU.com (the companion website for the Gamification by Design book)?

Gabe Zichermann: It’s funny how quickly the mobilization of the web has advanced, isn’t it? It’s essential today that your site at least function on mobile devices and tablets. Better yet if it can be optimized for those devices and made to be beautiful and functional even in small real estate. Gamification has the benefit of a number of amazing technology vendors who have developed highly scalable (and often free or low-cost) solutions for implementing Gamification. In this way, the technical effort can be minimized – and it’s worth checking out folks like Bunchball, Badgeville, BigDoor and others. The design work is still incumbent on the site owner, but after all, you probably know your customers best anyway.

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Mark McLaren: Gamifying a business website by adding a system of points, badges, levels, challenges and leaderboards has the potential to introduce a level of fun and engagement that’s lacking on most sites. You give examples in the book where this works, and the positive results can be measured (at least in terms of some kinds of activity on the site) with analytics. It’s clear that businesses are going to have to figure it out if they want to remain competitive in the long run. But I have many clients who cringe at the mention of this kind of “fun”. In fact, some of them have the same reaction to social media. They know everyone’s doing it, but they are still not sure why. When you speak at a conference like the Gamification Summit, you don’t need to convince people of the importance. But do you have a different talk you give to the gamifcationally challenged? the future averse? Kidding aside, I’d like your insights as to how to reach these folks.

Gabe Zichermann: One of the things I like to point out to folks who have doubts about why they should use Gamification is the impending exodus of the Baby Boomer generation from the workforce. The Millenial generation will take it’s place (and really this has already started) – a generation of consumers and employees who have either grown up with video game controllers in their hands or grown up exposed to a society and pop culture thats full of this type of interactive entertainment.

In the case of social media and Gamification for business, everyone is doing it because it works. I find that the most convincing way to approach “the gamificationally challenged” is with real examples of gamified campaigns that produced real results. This can be more than website analytics. It can be Ananth Pai, an elementary school teacher, raising the math and reading levels of his classroom by one whole grade level in a matter of months by gamifying his classroom. It can be Kevin Richardson and his Speed Camera Lottery project which showed how gamifying speed tickets by rewarding good drivers with a lottery of the proceeds from the fines speeders pay can enact real and positive behavioral change. Or it can simply be (and often is the case for older demographics) to explain the power of loyalty programs through a behavior lens.

One thing everyone can agree on is that games are a powerful force for behavior change. Knowing that Gamification doesn’t always (often) mean turning things into a “game” can go a long way toward easing this stress. And the success stories don’t hurt either.

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Mark McLaren: One of the things that really resonates about gamification is that its success depends on constant feedback and testing. As you say in the book, “No gamified system should be built with a set-it-and-forget-it mentality.” Really, the same is true of today’s website. The tools are available to allow us to monitor users and make significant improvements based on their behavior. Businesses that fail to do so are increasingly out of touch with their customers. Gamification promises to increase basic metrics like time-on-site, return visits, social sharing and so on. Hence the appeal for marketers. Like social media integration, from a practical standpoint, unless we can integrate traditional web analytics like Google Analytics together with gamification analytics, marketers are not really going to be able to show a direct connection between gamification and business goals. If I have the budget for dedicated programmers who can incorporate different APIs into my web analytics software, then I’m in good shape. With enough time and money, I can show the connection. But what about smaller businesses? Are their ways to integrate gamification analytics on the cheap?

Gabe Zichermann: The aforementioned technology vendors can definitely help with analytics, and most of them come with an integrated analytics and tracking package that is one of their value adds. But one of the most interesting things I’ve found in working with major brands on Gamification strategy and design in my consulting practice (called Dopamine – or http://dopa.mn) is that in following our Gamification process, we often start with a discussion of metrics, success factors and analytics. This helps make Gamification very results-driven and effective, but also has trickle down benefits for the business as a whole (it’s often the first time the organization has tried to figure out the meaning of a “win”).

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Mark McLaren: It seems like the obvious appeal for traditional marketers in all this gamification is still to do permission-based marketing: to get site visitors to tell you who they are so they can be added to a mailing list and contacted. Do you see problems with “players” – site visitors – wanting to play but still remain anonymous? Does gamification give us new, more effective ways to encourage visitors to give up their information? Or, alternatively, can we achieve business goals through gamification without asking for information like real name, company name or email address? Can visitors remain anonymous and still help us spread the word about our products and services? How far along the sales funnel should we permit anonymity?

Gabe Zichermann: I think that the key here is providing visitors with a web experience that is so fun and engaging that they don’t feel a need to stay anonymous. Specific tactics that can help a website turn it’s anonymous visitors into known community members include offering real-world rewards and perks.

But I do also think that websites, companies, and services can benefit from a community of users that stays anonymous. A big part of Gamification is the social nature of people and the web – so it’s important that social media be tied closely to gamified platforms, services, or websites. In this sense, if consumers are engaged and entertained by your offering, they may be more apt to share it with their Facebook or Twitter networks than they would be to share their personal contact info with a corporation.

As always, the key is to make things authentic and rewarding – if you can do those two things you can create powerful and lasting engagement with consumers. Gamification happens to have the best toolkit for making that happen, and that has had no small part in its phenomenal success.

Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps
By Gabe Zichermann, Christopher Cunningham
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Released: July 2011
Pages: 208

Polls are great for getting quick feedback from your visitors. And they are so easy to create with PollDaddy, you can start using them immediately.

Let me know if you need help installing the WordPress plugin. On WordPress.com-hosted sites, the plugin is already installed. PollDaddy will work on almost any blog, including Blogger.com, and on any website that allows you to edit the HTML. There are many great features, including the fact that you can export the data from your survey or poll as a spreadsheet or xml file.

Here’s an example:

[polldaddy|1425871]

This may seem obvious to some readers, but I’m always surprised to find major players in the online marketing space – real estate websites, in particular – that fail to apply basic search marketing techniques – like using custom landing pages with keywords placed in obvious locations.

Here’s an example. The following is a real AdWords ad:

Find a Loft in Seattle WA
Search for Condos & Lofts
Using Seattle’s Top Real Estate Search
www.TheMLSonline.com

This is a well-written ad: compelling, to the point. “Top Real Estate Search” sounds great. If I’m thinking of looking for a loft or condo in Seattle, this ad will catch my eye and might make me click.

But there’s a serious problem: no custom landing page.

Instead of taking me to a page that is set up so that I can easily find a loft or condo in Seattle, I’m taken to the generic home page of The MLS Online Seattle (http://sea.themlsonline.com/home ). The words “loft” or “condo” are nowhere to be found. The word “home” is all over the place. Are “home” and “loft” or “condo” synonymous? No way. Even if they were synonymous, “loft” and “condo” are keywords in the ad, so they should be displayed prominently on the landing page.

The AdWords ad above takes you to a generic MLS Online home page, not a custom landing page. The appropriate keywords do not appear, and it’s hard to find a loft or condo, which is why you clicked on the ad in the first place.

What’s even worse than the absence of the right keywords is that if I want to search for a loft or condo on this page, I have to scroll down to find and select the right menu options in order to do so. I don’t even see “loft” or “condo” in the menu options. Confusing! I don’t have time for this.

I guarantee that MLS Online is losing visitors immediately from this page because the page is not tailored to the people who are clicking on the ad.

But who has time to make custom landing pages? Well, I found a 4-bed, 5-bath, six-thousand-square-foot condo on this site that’s listed at $13,495,000.00. You would think MLS Online would be willing to spend 30-40 minutes customizing a landing page if it enabled them to sell that puppy!

Of course, one of the real strengths of pay-per-click and related forms of search marketing is that you can measure your results. Is it worth the time it takes to create a custom landing page? Go ahead and create one and send half of those who click on your ad to that page while sending the other half to the generic home page. Now you can use basic analytics software like Google Analytics to find out if people who go to the custom landing page are more likely to “convert” – fill out a contact form to request more information, download a brochure, pick up the phone and call (using a custom 800 number), etc. – or not. Simple as that.

Any good search marketing consultant will tell you that there are about five basic things you need to do to get the most out of your AdWords or Pay-Per-Click advertising dollars. Custom landing pages are near the top of the list.

Twitter is one of today’s hottest Web 2.0 social media technologies.

Our two-hour seminar will show you:

• How to get started with Twitter
• How it works, who is using it and the different ways it’s being used
• Twitter’s advantages over other types of communication
• Current trends and what it means for business
• Using Twitter to make an impact

For more information, see our Introducing Twitter seminar page on Biznik.com.

As a founding member of Web 2.0 Media Group, I’m committed to spreading the word about the Web 2.0 social media / social networking movement through education and collaboration with like-minded folk in the Seattle area and around the globe. Learn more about Web 2.0 Media Group here.

Twitter is a “micro-blogging” tool that allows users to send out short messages that can be read on the Twitter website, or on a desktop program (or “client”) like twhirl, or via text messaging. It also integrates with things like Status Updates on Facebook (in case you were wondering).

It’s similar to instant messaging in that you can keep in touch with your friends, but it has a significant advantage over instant messaging because you can follow messages from people you don’t know or haven’t (yet) met – provided they let you do so, which most Twitterers do.

So, for instance, I can follow the “tweets” or short messages of renowned marketing authorities like Guy Kawasaki, or of entrepreneur search marketers like Andy Beal and Danny Sullivan.

Some Twitterers are better sources of useful information than others. Sometimes people just make idle chit chat. Sometimes they share a link to a blog post or story they think is important. But, in general, it’s great to get these folks’ take on what’s going on in the world.

Online marketer Jennifer Laycock calls Twitter “acceptable evesdropping”. And – let’s be honest – who doesn’t like evesdropping?

You can “follow” (connect with) Mark McLaren and McBuzz. Just create a profile on the Twitter website and login to the site, then go to the mcbuzz profile (click here), click on Follow (to connect with McBuzz), and send me a “tweet” (a message) that starts with @mcbuzz, which directs the message to me.

You’ll get the hang of it quickly.

But wait! Twitter does more: just like blogging or LinkedIn or Facebook, it establishes your brand. It can help to establish or strengthen your reputation as an authority in your field. It gives you greater visibility online. (Do a Google search for “mcbuzz” and you find the McBuzz Twitter profile on page one.) And it can create or foster connections between you and other professionals you might not have met.

In short, Twitter has got some serious mojo. It has characteristics that the early World Wide Web and blogging had way, way back… Not long ago, there was a time when it wasn’t clear that those two things had much to do with marketing and communications. And Twitter is more immediate, more concise. In a day and age when twenty-somethings use text messages and Facebook instead of email, and fewer and fewer people take time to read a newspaper, immediate and concise is where you want to be.

Of course, Twitter itself may not necessarily be the tool people are using in a year or two, but the tool (or some part of the tool) we are using then will be a lot like Twitter. Better to get aquainted with the technology now than two years from now.

If you like Twitter, try the desktop client I mentioned, called twhirl. It’s got more features than the Twitter website – just like your desktop email client (Outlook, Thunderbird) has more features than web mail – and it’s easy install and use.

Here’s one success story’s take on why Twitter: Penelope Trunk on Twitter

As webpronews.com puts it, “Anyone with a desire to connect with others in a quick way, while reinforcing one’s name and personal brand, will find [Twitter] useful.”

Here’s an update: According to one report, Google grabbed 69.17 percent of all U.S. searches for the four weeks ending June 28, 2008. Nielsen Online still shows Google at 59% (PDF document).

That’s why, when web marketing professionals talk about optimizing a website for search engines, they mean optimizing for Google. In general, ranking well in Google search results will bring more visitors to your website than ranking well in Yahoo! search results will. And a paid advertisement on a Google search page will typically be seen by more people than a paid advertisement on a Yahoo! search page.

However, more people clicking on your ads and more visitors to your website does not always mean better results. One way to measure results is by the number of “conversions” on your website, that is, the number of visitors doing what you want them to do, like picking up the phone and calling your business. It’s always good to remember that people searching on Yahoo! or MSN.com might be of different demographics than those searching on Google. For every 100 visitors that come to your site from a Google search, you might get one phone call. (Just a hypothetical example.) But for every 100 visitors that come from a Yahoo! search, you might get 5 phone calls. With that information, you may want to advertise more on Yahoo!

Then again, even conversions, like the number of phone calls you get for 100 visitors to your site, are not the final measure of results. What if almost every phone call you got from a Google search resulted in a sale, whereas only a small fraction of the calls you got from a Yahoo! search resulted in a sale? In that case, even though more calls are coming from ads on Yahoo!, it would still be smarter to do most or all of your advertising Google. (Again, these are just hypothetical examples.)

Ultimately, more traffic is good, but more qualified traffic is really what you want, whether it’s from Google or Yahoo! or whatever. And you need to use website traffic tracking software like Google Analytics (which is free and easy to install) to collect this information. Combined with other techniques, such as putting a special 800 number on your website so that you know which inquiries and sales are coming from your site as opposed to through other marketing channels, you can get a good idea of which online marketing channels are working well and which are not.

Here’s one sample, called How to Edit a WordPress Page. You can watch it here on the McBuzz website by clicking on the arrow below, or click on this How to Edit a WordPress Page link to watch it on the McBuzz YouTube Channel, where you can see all of the McBuzz WordPress tutorials available.

How To Edit A WordPress Page
Time: 6 minutes

Many web pages have default values like “Untitled Document” or “New Page 1″ as their title. The title displays along the top of your web browser. Few people even notice it. But search engines definitely notice page titles. The title is one of the first places a search engine like Google looks to determine what a web page is about.

The page title is one of the first things search engines look at to determine what a web page is about. Many web designers forget or don’t know about the importance of page titles, hence the prevelance of (totally useless) default page titles like “Untitled Document” and “New Page 1″.

If a business’s website does not show up on the first page of results when you type the business name (and the city the business is in if it’s a common name) into a search engine, the business name is probably not in the title of the website’s home page.

If you don’t know how to change your website’s page titles, see Web Marketing Tip #5 (coming soon) or comment on this post and I will get to it right away!

If you are using a website building tool on a service like Register.com or Yahoo! Geocities that makes it difficult to change page titles, then it’s time to get a new hosting setup! Your new customers will thank you.

Web Marketing Tip #4 is “Use Keywords in Web Page Titles” because the name of your business is obviously not the only thing people search for when looking for businesses like yours. If yours is a local brick and mortar business, put your address in the page title of your home page, or at least the city, state and Zip code. If you are the business owner and you want people to find your business’s website when they search for your name — put that in the title as well.

For example, note that “Mark McLaren” is in the title of my McBuzz Communications website home page and my McBuzz Communications blogspot blog. If you Google “mark mclaren”, you will find both sites on page one. (Search results vary from week to week. Right now I’m on page one.)

Don’t use the same title for every page in your site. Tailor page titles to the content of each page. One of the great features of WordPress is that it creates page titles for you automatically. Put keywords in the titles of your posts and they appear in your page titles as well.

If you have a local business in a particular neighborhood, use that neighborhood name in your page titles. In many cases, this will do wonders for your position in search results.

Of course, you want to use keywords in lots of other places besides page titles, but — first things first — page titles are a great place to start.

Local Web designers face competition from MySpace.com
Pacific Business News (Honolulu) – May 25, 2007

On the face of it, this is a good counter-argument to my post about Free Web Hosting and Blog Services vs. Buying Web Hosting and a Domain Name. It seems that some small business owners are using MySpace as a way to create a website for their business — for free — and they are getting good results in the form of new customers and purchases. One business featured in the article is a clothing boutique.

It makes sense that people who might be looking on MySpace for things to buy would be interested in fashion and shopping for new clothes. And there are lots of other businesses that would appeal to the same MySpace demographic: coffee shops, skateboarding shops, surf shops, music stores…

Part of the appeal of MySpace is that people don’t necessarily go there looking for things to buy. They go there to talk to friends, share stuff they find interesting or funny, etc. But the fact that someone may find a store on MySpace that sells cool clothes, and then go to the brick-and-mortar store and have a great shopping experience, well, that’s huge, of course, because they are likely to talk about it on — duh — MySpace.

Obviously, if you are selling something like legal services or rare books, then MySpace may not be for you. However, if you have a business that appeals to 16-24 year olds, then setting up a free MySpace page might just be a no-brainer.

The Business News article sets up a false dichotomy — a choice you don’t really have to make — between creating a small business website on MySpace and buying a full-blown, professionally designed website for, as they say, anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000.

My point is, you may want to spend $5K to $20K, on a business website. You may need some serious eCommerce capabilities, or cutting-edge graphic design, or pages and pages of product samples or whatever. Most very small businesses should not pay anything like $5,000 for a site these days. There are just too many good low-cost options available — using WordPress, for example. But, regardless, there’s no reason you can’t have a site on MySpace in addition to a dedicated business website with your own hosting and domain name, and then link the two together.

The same is true for a listing sites like MerchantCircle.com. Check out the McBuzz Communications listing on MerchantCircle. These are free, easy to set up websites, and they are just one more way to increase the visibility of your business on the Web.

1. Go here to create a Google account.
2. Login to your account.
3. Click on the Webmaster Tools link under Services.
4. You will see the Webmaster Tools Dashboard. It looks like this (below – click for full size image), without all the sites listed, of course. You will add your first one.

5. Put the address of your site in the Add Site box and click OK.
6. Now click Add a Sitemap for that site.
7. You will see the following (click for full size image).

8. Choose Add General Web Sitemap.
9. Now you need to upload your XML Sitemap file to the “root directory” of your website. (“Root directory” just means the location of your homepage file.) Most website hosting services allow you to do this using the “Control Panel” for your account. If you need any help with this, just add a comment at the end of this post. Be sure to tell me who your hosting service is (for example: GoDaddy or Network Solutions or whatever the case may be).
10. Once the file is uploaded to your website’s root directory, enter that location into the “My Sitemap URL is” box. As noted, this will be http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml where “example.com” is the name of your domain.
11. Click the Add Web Sitemap button.
12. Done!

Let me know if you have any questions.