What Your Business Needs to Know About Learning & Gamification
Education or learning doesn’t have to be left to the realm of schools, or even training your staff. Schools and trainers have long recognized the power of learning as a process to increase clarity, application, or awareness. Education is the process of “strategically structuring the learning events to maximize the learner’s comprehension”. But what does this mean for businesses? Businesses and the industries they operate in are full of potential learning events. Learning events are any information or content that can increase knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, or evaluation (see Bloom’s 6 Levels of Cognitive Domains). Strategically structuring means it is packaged, such as classes with lesson plans, online courses, a webinar, a blog, a video, or in any format that gets to an intended instructional goal. Businesses are now realizing the importance of educating their staff by providing frequent and relevant training, but many businesses are failing to see the potential in educating their clients as well.
In recent years there has been a trend among businesses to carry out educational marketing. Educational marketing is a “powerful marketing strategy that establishes trust and credibility using educational messages. It is the direct opposite of traditional marketing, which uses selling-based messages” (Frey, 2016). Businesses are trying to provide information and insight to be helpful throughout the research process and establish their brand as a trusted resource. Often they write blogs, written as helpful advice, which will hopefully, not only lead the costumer to the business’ website, but also hopefully lead to a transaction. This method has proven quite successful for many businesses. However, trends quickly fade as costumers become more aware of this marketing technique, with fewer and fewer people seeking ads disguised as content. The next trend will be gamified marketing.
Gamified marketing is the process of using game-like principles to market information or content. In this format the customer is very aware of your marketing efforts, with your logo and message proudly displayed. However the customer is more willing to play because of the they are engaged with the material and it is, well, fun. See what McDonald did with McPlay. According to Entertainment Software Association (2015) 155 million Americans regularly play video games (Read more).
Schools and trainers have been using the process for years now, known as gamification. Gamification is “the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals. Gamification taps into the basic desires and needs of the users impulses which may revolve around the idea of status and/or achievement” (Badgeville, 2016). Many scholars are now realizing the power of games as a learning tool. According to Meaningful Play, at MSU, “whether designed to entertain or to achieve more "serious" purposes, games, including virtual reality experiences, have the potential to impact players' beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, emotions, cognitive abilities, physical and mental health, and behavior.”
At Purple Pencil we have taken the best of both worlds: education and games, to design “gamified marketing”. Click here to read more about gamification and marketing. With gamified marketing we create rich, meaningful experiences for players (your customers) to provide opportunities for the players to learn or engage with topics related to your business. This approach has proven to increase engagement by 70% and lead to more business transactions.
People expect answers at their fingertips. No longer is it just about throwing blogs up or videos to hopefully get your customers attention. Managers who focus on the ultimate outcome of education enjoy greater returns on their marketing spend.
