Increase traffic on the strategic pages of your website thanks to marketing games

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Marketing games are fun activities designed to promote brands or products to a target audience. They can take many forms, from online competitions, to instant win games, to point-based games with leaderboards. Because marketing games are fun for the audience, they make for a very effective inbound marketing strategy to increase website traffic and convert new leads, complementing other efforts to attract visitors like SEO and blog posts which aim to improve visibility in Google search results.

Over the course of this article we will explore the benefits of marketing games as a form of media to drive visitors to your strategic website pages, give you tips on how to create a successful game, and talk through some marketing game formats that can offer repeatable success to drive more traffic to a particular page.

The 4 benefits of marketing games to increase your traffic

In addition to SEO efforts focusing on keywords on blog posts and other websites to rank on Google search results, or natural referencing, games are a good way to optimise content for maximum visibility. The main advantages of using marketing games to drive visitors to your website or web page are:

1. They can easily be shared as posts on social networks and blogs to reach new or larger audiences, and therefore increase the potential number of visitors to your website
2. People wanting to play your marketing games can encourage users to visit your website’s strategic pages, both in a B2C setting, and B2B, bringing traffic directly to your website
3. They can be used to collect valuable data about the preferences of your audience, making you more accurate with future marketing campaigns
4. They can be used to retain existing customers by offering them exclusive rewards or benefits

Marketing games can be a very effective element of any marketing strategy for generating leads, as they greatly aid you in building your online community and improving brand visibility, all while attracting new site visitors, and ultimately more business, to your website. The combination of these effects can have a significant impact on your website traffic, your strategic pages, and ultimately, and most importantly, on your sales figures.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t still be putting effort into targeting keywords through SEO, posting on blogs, and link building, as well as other social media campaigns on Facebook and Instagram and alike, but marketing games are a very powerful catalyst and ally in complementing these more established and commonplace techniques.

How to create a successful marketing game

When developing your digital strategy around marketing games, there are some best practices to consider:

1. Select a clear objective

Before you start creating your marketing game, it is important to clearly define the objective you want to achieve. Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Generate leads? Improve the visibility of your brand? By defining a clear objective for your interactive content, you will be able to target your marketing game more effectively and better measure its success.

2. Create engaging content

For your marketing game to be successful, it is also important to create content that is engaging and fun for participants. Think of interactive activities and rewards that will encourage users to not only play, but also to share that they played on social networks like Facebook and Instagram. It’s through sharing and interaction that your game can take off and spread your message, as such, increase traffic to your strategic page (or strategic pages)..

3. Use your potential customers’ favoured social channels

In order for your content to reach your target customers, it is important to promote your marketing games on the platforms they use most often. There is no point in being active on all platforms if they are not relevant to your business.

For example, if your market is mostly kids, LinkedIn would be inappropriate; if you were targeting over 55s, TikTok might not warrant as much focus as other platforms.

The 3 types of marketing games that can offer repeatable success

There are many game engines that can be tailored to deliver effective marketing experiences, but the following represent good jumping off points for any marketing game ideas you may have.

1. The Quiz

Quizzes can be used to promote a brand or product by asking users to answer relevant questions. For example, a drinks company can create a quiz, either about trivia related to their brand, or even regarding a sporting event they might be sponsoring, with users who answer enough questions correctly being entered into a prize draw.

This allows the brand to promote its products while engaging users, and either informing them about their products, or adding value for their event partner.

2. The Wheel of Fortune

A customised Wheel of Fortune is a popular marketing game that, as the name suggests, involves spinning a wheel with sections denoting various prizes. When the wheel stops, if one of the prizes has landed on the cursor, or arrow, the player wins that prize. This is a simple concept, but the visual of the spinning wheel, and visual of what could be won so tangibly close to stopping on the cursor, can make for a highly engaging instant win-style experience.

3. A Memory Game

The concept is easy – players flip over cards to reveal images or facts about your products, memorise where they are, and match them up. The faster they match them up, the more points they can score. Those who flip the fastest can win prizes or rewards, be they promo codes to encourage more purchases, or even outright prizes to get people engaged with your brand.

This could be as simple as matching cards image to image, or you can add an extra level of challenge by encouraging them to match an image with a piece of trivia or, a short, sharp fact. This way, you can have your audience interacting with your product and thinking about it in more detail in the midst of gameplay.

Choosing the right game for your business

Marketing games are a great way to grow your audience and increase the reach of your online content, complementing other efforts like targeting SEO keywords on blog posts to increase your website’s performance in Google search results. Through interactivity, your customised marketing games can give you the edge over more traditional, more saturated forms of marketing, because they’re inviting your audience to play, and take part.

With a well-designed marketing game, you’re not trying to tell people about your product (which most consumers have become numb to), you’re baiting them to find out more. You’re giving them a playable, fun experience and in return, you’ve got a stage and a captive audience. Marketing games are the innovative, modern media format that gets results when it comes to desired web traffic.

By incorporating engaging content within your marketing game experiences, you can keep your audience’s attention and encourage them to learn more about your business, your brand, and your products and services. This can lead to increased traffic to your strategic website pages and other online channels, ultimately driving more sales and revenue for your business. With the right approach, marketing games can be a powerful tool to enhance your content marketing strategy.

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