Promo games for your company

According to statistics, a person receives between 6,000 and 10,000 marketing messages per day, making it increasingly difficult for businesses to capture the attention of potential customers. However, according to a report by the Digital Marketing World Forum, 60% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand if they enjoy playing a game with it.

This is because people love video games . According to the results of 2021, this market reached $ 180 billion, and the most profitable game projects bring publishers millions of dollars per month.

But that doesn't mean you need to change your field of activity. Instead, you can use gamification to attract customers and increase sales in your company.

Many large corporations, including Microsoft , Nike , Starbucks , and Samsung , use promotional games in their marketing strategies. In this article, we'll talk about how they can impact your business.

What is gamification?

Gamification is the technology of adapting game mechanics to non-game processes to increase engagement. It can be used in companies for various purposes:

attracting a new audience;
customer retention;
increase in the average check;
staff training and motivation;
conducting interactive installations.

Promo games have proven their effectiveness not only in B2C, but also in the B2B segment. They are especially useful in cases where you need to sell a complex product and convey the value of the offer to a potential audience. Instead of a long presentation or another commercial offer sent by mail, you can offer a potential client to play a game that will fully reveal the benefits of the product and is guaranteed to leave a mark in his memory.

Benefits of gamification of marketing

Gamification marketing is a valuable tool in the world of e-commerce. It will help a company:

It's better to learn about your customers. As practice has shown, in exchange for participating in the game, the audience willingly shares their personal data with the business - email, mobile phone, etc., which can then be used for other marketing purposes.
Increase awareness. A person sees thousands of advertising offers a day, but their own gaming experience will be remembered much better.
Convey the value of the product. An interactive game can be an interesting way to tell your audience about your offer.
Use viral marketing. A person is more likely to share an interesting game with their friends than a regular advertising offer.
Make repeat sales. Integrating points or discount coupons when achieving certain gaming successes will motivate customers to contact the company again and make additional purchases.

Development of promotional games

The process of creating promotional games differs from traditional game development , as their main task is not only to provide exciting gameplay, but also to fulfill specific business tasks. Let's consider the main stages of production.

Audience research and strategy selection

For a game to be in demand, it must meet the needs of a potential audience. Therefore, to form a strategy, you should not base yourself on your personal preferences, but on real analytical data. At this stage, you should answer several questions:

What is the average age of the audience?
What game genre is interesting to customers?
Which platform will be best: web browser, Android, iOS or PC?
What rewards motivate the audience?
How much time is a person potentially willing to spend to achieve a goal?
How and what business challenges will the game solve?

It is also worth considering that simplicity is important for promotional games. People need to be provided with clear rules and quick access to the gameplay.

Preparation for production

Once the strategy is defined, experts create prototypes of the future game: characters , environment , game mechanics. This allows you to understand how the project will look before its actual implementation. If necessary, any adjustments are made at the pre-production stage that do not have a significant impact on the budget and production time of the game.

Production

This is the most time-consuming stage of production, during which designers create character models , level designers bring to life the immersive game environment, audio designers work on the soundtrack, and programmers write thousands of lines of code, bringing in-game content to life.

Also, during the production stage, APIs are connected and a connection is established with the company's CRM system. Thanks to this, in-game achievements of customers will be automatically recorded and transferred to the sales department for further processing.

Testing

Playtesters identify any potential bugs that may have been introduced during the production stage, and also determine the “enjoyment factor” to ensure that the project will actually be interesting for the potential audience. This helps to identify and eliminate any shortcomings to provide players with a great user experience.

Launch and update

This is the most exciting part of developing a promotional game, when it gets into the hands of the end user and shows the first marketing results. However, to maintain people's interest in the project in the long term, it must constantly evolve. New game mechanics, levels, events - all this will help to establish constant interaction with the customer, so after the release the technical work does not end.

Creating promotional games at Arionis Games

Promo games form the client's first impression of the company and its product, so their development requires not only skills, but also real experience from technical specialists. If you want to pump up your marketing and take it to a new level - contact Arionis . We will help you design and implement an effective tool for interacting with the audience.