Gamification to inspire your non-profit marketing

For many years, the voluntary sector has been evolving, digitalising and diversifying. This evolution has created a growing need among organisations for visibility and reputation to promote their causes and projects. Whether you are a business, an NGO or an organisation, certain goals remain the same – specifically the need for visibility to create demand in your market and expand their recognition.

To achieve this, organisations can rely on a number of non-profit marketing and gamification advantages to notably make them stand out from competition by boosting their communication, creating engagement on their networks and continuing to grow.

What is non-profit marketing?

Also known as “charity marketing”, non-profit marketing is the use of marketing, communication and web marketing techniques in the charitable sector, just like a business or marketing agency would do it. No matter what name we give it, the concept of non-profit marketing serves the 1901 Law of Associations, NGOs or even non-profit organisations.

By helping to promote your cause and your values, non-profit marketing noticeably helps to support your credibility and highlight your goals for your audience and target audience. Many organisations, therefore, adopt the use of gamification as a marketing strategy for the purpose of raising awareness, communication or even to drive participation in events. Gaming mechanisms, with their capacity to convey messages in an attractive and entertaining manner, are powerful communication tools in the context of charities and non-profit organisations.

Why are marketing and gamification important for an organisation?

In short, marketing represents all strategies that your organisation can put in place to extend your network of members, attract volunteers or donors and grow your market or influence/capability. Non-profit marketing with gamification allows you to not only put your organisation, its role and cause in the limelight, but it is also key to the success of your mission.

Gamification will help you gain more visibility and engagement. Often, visibility is heavily intertwined with reputation, especially thanks to a more fun and modern character that will be associated with your structure. This association will also help you understand and analyse where you currently are in terms of development, your goals and how you can reach them:

• Non-profit marketing to grow your organisation

Building your number of supporters is an important step in your growth. Thanks to the brand image and reputation you will develop through the game and non-profit marketing, there are great opportunities to draw in more volunteers.

• Create a fun experience to make recruitment easier

Through the gamified promotion of your cause and projects, you will highlight your organisation to a new target audience who are interested in the voluntary sector. That means you can more easily play your cards right as a talent recruiter and your volunteer base will be more easily mobilised. Therefore, you will have more people ready to help out with events or activities.

• Competitions to bring in more donations throughout the year

Long-term, regular use of competitions or instant-winner marketing games drives new donations and raises potential funds for your organisation. Solutions that will allow you to achieve your goals of raising funds online with companies and even implementing donation appeal campaigns.

How can you bring your organisation to life thanks to gamification?

Organisations can operate in diverse and varied voluntary sectors such as humanitarian, health and even social aid. Most often, organisations act in the public interest, and so the communications they share are likely to arouse curiosity and emotional engagement with their audiences about their actions and missions very easily.

After analysing the market and competition, your marketing strategy should be based on your global development strategy. A successful and effective marketing strategy will be the one that focuses on your audience just as much as your members, donors and volunteers with the goal of meeting their needs.

Fuel your website and social networks

Regardless of the size of your organisation, the first fundamental step is to have a website with up-to-date, informative content about your activity, services and actions. A regularly updated website allows you to boost visibility thanks to page referencing or articles on search engines.

Promote your organisation on social media is also an important stage in non-profit marketing to build an audience that is engaged and involved in your issues. Social media is now an accessible, instant and effective way to reach a large audience and heighten your activity.

Having a well-referenced website, active social media profiles and relevant content to galvanise your awareness campaign and marketing games for your supporters are all factors that can help your organisation boost its online presence.

Organising original and memorable non-profit events

Gamification is also effective for boosting engagement in events, meetings and activities to allow participants to learn from fun experiences whilst understanding the value of their membership. Each event presents an opportunity to strengthen the organisation’s value proposition to reinforce the loyalty of current members and develop a supporter base to ensure long-term viability.

Expert advice!

• Another way to use gaming mechanisms is to reward members who participate in the organisation’s different events, such as a Dynamic Path™ on the organisation’s history and its ambitions for the future. For example, you could offer badges to supporters and volunteers who take part in the gamified experience and reach a new level, demonstrating their involvement in the organisation.

The goal during your event is to capture the interest of the public and your target audience regarding your project and inspire them to take part: then it is a question of convincing volunteers, charitable organisations or government authorities through educational and promotional games to raise awareness. Non-profit events are therefore an excellent way to make contact with possible future supporters of your organisation, exhibitors and sponsors to animate and fuel your network.

With over 10 years experience in creating games and entertaining experiences, the Drimify team will support you in the planning, creation and implementation of gamification for your non-profit marketing strategy. Get in touch to take advantage of our expertise and discuss your project.

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