5 Simple Ways to Use Gamification in Your Content Marketing

I have no doubts that your parents put gamification in content marketing to good use when you were a child. Want to bet? 

Don’t you recall those extra 30 minutes of TV time you had when you finished your homework? See? 

The homework is the content your parents were “marketing” to you. And the extra TV time is your reward. The good old days when the TV was black and white, remember? Who am I kidding, I’m a Gen Z writing a blog post – I only knew TV with colors.  

Gamification is an effective tool in steering our behavior, as illustrated in the example above. It is also increasingly used in marketing due to its efficiency in retaining people’s attention. 

In this blog post, I will walk you through 5 ideas to implement gamification in content marketing. Are you ready to take your content to the next level? 

1. Use quizzes at the end of your blog post

I like this one because it’s a simple way to add a pinch of gamification in your content marketing strategy. 

Quizzes are a fun way to engage your audience. They put your audience to the test after reading your blog. 

Don’t you feel like a champion when you answer all the questions of a quiz correctly? It just feels like your little victory of the day. By doing so, you are appealing to your audience’s intrinsic motivation. 

People will want to prove to themselves that they have learned something and that they did not waste their time reading your post. Moreover, by recalling the answers to the questions, you are helping your audience memorize the information more effectively.

In their marketing gamification blog post, Bazaarvoice included a quiz for the readers to test their retention. Then, you can scroll a bit down to have the answers. I was low-key proud of myself when I got all the answers right. 

2. How about spinning wheels

Welcome to the world of casinos and gambling. 

If casinos use this kind of mechanics, it’s because it works. Randomizing the outcomes (or giving you the feeling that it’s randomized in casinos) is an efficient method to keep your audience excited.

Spinning wheels on websites are like slot machines in the casinos. And they work for multiple reasons: 

• Simplicity: spinning wheels are simple to implement and to use.
• Effortlessness: you don’t need to put a lot of efforts in understanding how they work. You… just click a button. Tada! 
• Uncertainty: winning or losing is not exciting. It’s the uncertainty that makes you hooked on such games. 

Your audience will be hooked on your content and will probably keep on coming back to have the chance to win that juicy discount you are offering.   

Spinning wheels can also trigger the gambler’s fallacy – where your audience thinks that because they lost the ten last times, then they’re going to win on the eleventh. Hence, you keep your audience coming back for more.

3. The progress bar

Other than adding a small nice detail to your blog post, the progress bar has a functional aspect. 

When reading a long blog post, you can just take a look at the progress bar and you have an idea of how far along you are, and how long there is left. 

Moreover, it communicates transparency and openness to your audience. 

We find progress intrinsically rewarding. I personally have a small rush of dopamine when I see that the bar is full and that I have finished a task. You do too, don’t you? 

Hubspot makes use of this in their blog posts, for which we are thankful. It’s also quite nice to have that indication of progress, especially in their long blog posts. 

4. Add quizzes to your Instagram stories

Instagram is rich in features that you can leverage to create appealing content. Don’t refrain from trying out what works best for you. 

It happens quite a lot to me when I’m scrolling through stories that I get bored because it’s just a picture, and nothing more. How DARE you not even think of something funny to say? Huh? 

Instagram proposes a quiz feature you can include on your stories to give your audience a moment of interaction with you. And like mentioned above, it’s nice to have the correct answer.

Two examples come up to my mind. 

First, if you’re an avid F1 enthusiast like me, you probably follow multiple F1 teams on instagram. Ferrari leverages gamification in their Instagram content by quizzing their followers about circuits and their history before a race weekend. 

Second example, Nintendo does this brilliantly. You can find their stories highlights called “activities”. Although they use quizzes a lot, they also benefit from gamification in their content marketing in a variety of ways. 

5. Discounts to increase newsletter’s subscriptions

You don’t want to build an email marketing strategy to end up not having anyone reading them.

You can exploit the appeal of rewards to get people to sign up to your email list. 

And let’s make it even more seductive, how about a financial reward? We all like to save some money in the process. 

Don’t think of offering discount vouchers to your customers as a cost, but rather look at it as an investment – an investment that will pay off in the long run. 

Horace, a French skincare brand for men, uses this technique to their advantage by rewarding the customers who subscribe to their newsletter with a 10% discount voucher for their next purchase. 

Gamification makes your content marketing awesome! 

Gamification solutions are endless. You can think of a thousand ideas to implement in your content marketing strategy. By doing so, you would do your audience a huge favor by offering them the experience they are looking for. Your audience also includes your current and potential employees, learn how employee gamification can boost your organization.

Written by:
Majdi Hentati

About the author:
When he’s not writing, Majdi is either thinking about copywriting, reading or sleeping. He helps you to write compelling copies to reinforce your e-reputation. If you want to connect with him, he’ll be delighted to chat with you on his Linkedin.