Contest creation: increase eCommerce traffic with games

Did you know that a well thought out combination of online contests, prize giveaways, and marketing games is a near foolproof recipe to generate more traffic on your online shop and by extension, your blog, social media accounts, and all the strategic pages of your website?

Ultimately, if you want to help drive online traffic to your eCommerce website, you need to incentivise users to visit it. By creating games and online contests, and integrating them into your marketing campaigns, you’re creating marketing content that’s interactive, and as such, more intriguing to potential customers. This brings out increased concentration levels and engagement in users to better absorb your targeted messaging.

Taking this more sophisticated and nuanced approach to marketing content is your vehicle with which to drive users – if you load that vehicle with an appropriate prize, or even use contests and games as a means to distribute promotional codes, you’re creating that incentive for people to engage with your interactive experiences, getting more entries, and maximising the amount of visitors you can drive to your eCommerce site.

Additionally, when you create online contests and marketing games on the Drimify games creation platform, you can use contact forms to capture user information, and include calls to action (CTAs) to encourage participants to opt-in to your email marketing. You can also use pop-up content at various points through an experience to educate and influence participants, or potential customers, about products you’re promoting and your brand in general.

In this blog article, we will share a few ideas on how to increase your eCommerce traffic with the help of gamification, particularly in the form of online competitions and marketing contests.

We will explain the process step by step to help you create and run successful online contests.

The main aspects of online contests and marketing games to consider

Competitions, be they paid contests or free to enter, are a classic marketing tool that was used in TV advertising and in newspapers for years, but modern gamification means that contests have become far more sophisticated and far more versatile, and far better suited to use on websites and on web applications. Their efficacy and strike rates for conversions and audience growth makes them a vital tool for boosting eCommerce performance, and for supporting broader marketing campaigns.

There are three main aspects that form essential pillars of all online competitions. The way in which these elements are combined determines the type of competition that you’re delivering to potential customers.

The prize:

Based on the complexity and forecasted participation rate of your game, it may be useful to include several prizes, or even include multiple prize draws or giveaways when organising your strategy, as this will allow you to please as many participants as possible, and maximise the eventual number of customers you can convert.

You could even consider an instant reward system, distributing numerous prizes per day over the course of your entire marketing operation. This abundance helps to multiply the number of participants who will feel they have a better chance of winning, and therefore not hesitate to enter and engage. You can typically get the best results using physical prizes or promotion codes on key products.

An attractive prize that users will actually want is undoubtedly the most important element of contests and competitions. The prize is the bait on the hook, it’s the shiny new toy that can catch the eye of a user you’re targeting, and can make for highly effective social media content when promoting your game or contest on social media.

The chance:

This generally refers to a randomly selected winner where both the players and the competition organisers have no control over the outcome. Along the same lines, we also have instant winner games and scratch card games which are well-known, popular games of chance. To ensure that your game of chance starts off on the best foot possible, it is strongly advisable to explain the rules to your online community in a video, as well as in full in text form.

You could create a contest based on skills, such as along the lines of a Quiz with points attached, or even a casual game such as a branded Pacman, Memory Game, or sports game, where the winner (or winners) will have to demonstrate some skill and mastery to claim the prize. The potential issue here lies in ties, or the possibility of colluding users gaming the system so more than one person can win.

While that event is unlikely, it’s worth having the rules account for every possible encounter, such as what happens in the case of a tie, or multiple ties. For this reason, we recommend having prizes allocated by chance rather than on merit, unless it’s in the case of a Photo or Video Contest where you can approve a shortlist for your audience to choose a winner from in a Voting Gallery.

The trade-off:

To take part in an online contest or marketing game and be in with a chance to win a prize, the participant must always make an effort. Whether this is to sign up with their contact details and personal information, share the game online and on social networks such as Instagram (pending the various community rules regarding contests on different social media platforms). In this way, they add to your data collecting, contribute to growing your company’s reputation and social media following, and help you to broaden your reach. It also facilitates communication between your business and the public, and can add a social dynamic.

But how do you stand out from the crowd? How do you put your brand into the forefront of customers’ minds? How do you set up an attractive and original experience to draw in as many people as possible, maximise your upside, and ultimately convert more customers and boost online sales?

How to effectively integrate competitions on your e-commerce site

Define your objectives

Before you dive into the design phase of creating your competition or prize giveaway, first it is essential to determine your eCommerce objectives. You need to know what you are trying to achieve with your online sales channel, and think big picture about your broader marketing campaign and how a contest can work in harmony with that.

The questions you need to ask yourself to determine your contest and marketing game objectives are:

• What messages do you want to send to the public through this competition?
• What is the commercial goal?
• What internal and external resources do you have available to set up the game?
• What figures would you consider a success? (Conversion rate, engagement rate, qualified leads obtained, promotional codes redeemed, etc.)

Quantifying the results of your gamification strategy is essential when calculating the return on investment of your contest (RoI). You need to make sure that it is worthwhile, and identify where improvements can be made.

Having a detailed breakdown of your goals will also help you better identify the right approaches to take and tools to use, and adapt your competitions to suit your company’s needs and resources.

Stay on brand and make logical choices

It is important to stay consistent with the products and services that you sell on your eCommerce website and maintain your brand identity. Offer a game or prize giveaway that suits your business, and matches the tone of your brand. Your eCommerce performance will be better for it and your customers, who are your audience and possibly even your fans, will be more interested. This use of this approach will help you solicit more entries.

It is also very important to have a good idea of what makes your customers tick, or in other words, have an idea of the types of buyer personas that engage with your eCommerce site. You want to be able to adapt your game to their profiles and areas of interest.

You should try and be original when choosing your prize, and ask yourself the following question: “If I was a customer, what would I like to win?” Or maybe, when you have a top prize in mind, ask yourself, “If I was a customer, would I personally want to win this particular prize?”

Make the most of big occasions and annual events

The best way to introduce an online marketing competition is to base it on a calendar highlight. There’s a reason brands time promotions alongside big events, such as local mass participation events like marathons and festivals, and more globally Easter, Christmas, or Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These are times of year where people will be motivated and conditioned to spend, so launching a contest or marketing game to coincide allows your campaign to piggyback off a larger movement. This type of approach often helps to reach a larger audience, since everyone feels involved and will want to take part.

Equally, you could celebrate your brand’s 10th birthday, or a 10th iteration of a popular product with a cult following. Take any excuse to launch a marketing game or contest and use it to attract new eCommerce activity.

Post, post, post: effectively promote your game

The more well-known your game is, the more likely it will get shared and reach more people, so this step is fundamental to ensuring your game is successful and helps you drive online sales. You can use your accounts on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to launch promotional campaigns and spread the word about your competition to your followers and subscribers through well designed posts. Social media platforms have become the essential battlefield for marketing campaigns as promoting across different platforms allows you to theoretically reach every user within your demographic.

You should also promote any game or contest campaigns to your existing audience of email subscribers and opt-ins. Your email lists are hard earned and valuable from a promotional point of view – it’s well known but always worth repeating: it’s far easier to retain a customer than to attract a new one, and giving your audience regular games and contests, little jolts of excitement and intrigue, and opportunities to win prizes, is a great way to retain your audience, strengthen those relationships, and encourage more online sales. .

Google’s competition example

Google competitions are specifically constructed around special events. Some are annual, others are organised by the team, and some are even saved for students. The most popular is Doodle4Google.

It is an annual competition aimed at American students from kindergarten to the last year of high school, with a new theme every year. All students need is a little creativity and some drawing skills to create a Google Home banner, which transforms into unique Doodles for special occasions.

There is a winner in each State and territory of the United States, then 5 national finalists and an overall winner who wins a grant for their education. The 54 winners will see their Doodles presented in the Doodle4Google gallery, and will receive Google gifts and merchandise as well as a personalised congratulations message from the famous search engine. During the event, all Americans can vote for their favourite Doodle out of the finalists to ultimately decide the victor.

Gamify with Drimify for all your contest and competition needs

Even if online contests and marketing games can seem similar in terms of functionality in a general sense, the key to success is to be creative and innovative to stand out from your competition. Think about the right prize for your audience, tailoring the experience to appeal to your buyer personas, and distributing promotional codes and other incentives to drive traffic to your eCommerce channel.

The Drimify gamification platform makes game and contest creation easy and fast, allowing you to customise a range of battle-tested game engines to all your eCommerce needs.

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