Ever get that sneaking feeling that all the creative ideas you have just planned into your marketing calendar have been used a million times before? Well, maybe getting a bit more playful is the answer.
The huge churn rate of digital content means it’s harder than ever to create that ‘thumb-stop’ moment, and garner even a few seconds of a person’s attention as they scan their social feeds. Games can help cut through this noise, by offering people more of a reason to interact with you.
So, if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration, here are seven game concepts to try out:
- A luck-based game. Chance games such as ‘Wheel of Fortune’ are irresistible, especially when combined with prizes and incentives. Give your customers the opportunity to try a few times per day, you’ll get them coming back for more.
- A real-world or virtual challenge. Dare your audience to do something fun (think the ice bucket or the no make-up selfie challenge), reward them for completing it, and invite them to share their results. Make it time-limited to add extra difficulty.
- A puzzle. Puzzles appeal to our competitive and problem-solving instincts. Visual puzzle games such as Spot the Difference work especially well on social media.
- A personality test. Quizzes like ‘find out your perfect honeymoon destination’ or ‘what type of sandwich are you’ are still crowd-pleasers on Buzzfeed, and can be easily adapted to suit different subject areas. They are the perfect fit for that ‘one minute of distraction’ that we all seek (whether it’s at the bus stop, or in your lunch break).
- A test your knowledge quiz. A subtle way to communicate your own expertise – building trust with your customers. This tactic can be used to educate people about a product, or subject (good for charities). Incentivise with a prize draw for those who get all the questions right. You can take it one step further by creating a leaderboard, and running the quiz as a series. Questions could even be hyper-relevant, tapping into trending topics and the news agenda.
- A virtual treasure hunt. A great way to encourage people to explore and engage with your online properties. Challenge participants to find clues that lead to the discovery of the buried ‘treasure’ or ‘Easter egg’. Honda’s #CivicLiveChallenge, used this concept with great results, offering the winner their new Honda Civic to drive for a year.
- A game of skill, such as ‘guess the image’. With a little more skill required than the other types of games listed here, you are appealing again to your audience’s desire to test their abilities, knowledge and skills in a fun way. Show a very small section of a picture and see if they can guess what the whole picture shows.
If you’d like to find out more about how you could make more use of games in your digital campaigns, get in touch with us.
For those who didn’t attend our event ‘Harnessing the Power of Play’ at Social Media Week Bristol in June, you can find out more about the science behind the power of play in our recent blog post.
