Website publishers: using marketing games in your advertising campaigns

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As media and website publishers, it is always important to look for new channels to expand and engage your audience. So, investing in marketing games can do wonders for your advertising campaigns by contributing towards maintaining and improving the frequency of your users’ visits over time and keeping them coming back to read your articles!

What are marketing games for publishers?

Have you ever played a free game on your smartphone and noticed that it contains an advertisement for a specific brand? Brands are not placed in mobile games by chance, and some major brands have even developed a brand-new game altogether based on their products or services. That’s where gamification comes into play…

Marketing games are actually gamification content which creates a memorable experience for users. In other words, they are mini-games used by the media to create engagement, improve retention, attract new clients, get their audience to take part in competitions, promote their products and services or those of their advertisers in order to fatten up their address books and social media followings.

In terms of goals and budget, a marketing game can be incredibly fun and immersive for players who make up their media audience. If it is well-thought-out, the marketing game can even develop an attachment on your website, radio channel, television channel, online shop or mobile app for players and make them part of the advertising campaign via an exclusive experience.

Marketing games can be as simple as placing a logo very prominently on the game’s interface, product placement, or a company may decide to create a whole new game based on their products or services. We have found that the majority of brands have been successful when they create a game designed around their brand which offers rewards or special offers when players reach a certain level or collect a certain number of points. Once integrated into various media sources, these games provide a spotlight to an extremely large audience.

Gamification is beneficial for your website 

Marketing games add real value to your advertising campaigns. In fact, the player will find more value in advertising campaigns that use play mechanisms than traditional advertising campaigns because there is the possibility to get entertainment value from the game. It’s a win-win situation for the media and the user!

Gamification can be fun, educational, promote customer loyalty and retention, engage and stimulate your users and do much more for a website. However, marketing games must be memorable for the value that they add, and not just because you have created a diversion that someone can use for a few minutes!

That’s why we have made a list below of a few effective uses of gamification to add to your own website:

• Advertising and product placement at the heart of games

By personalising the concept of games both graphically and through the text content, the idea is to offer the media or advertiser the chance to customise the experience to their audience. The goal is to highlight a product or service in a way that is integrated into the game mechanics to create engagement whilst spreading an advertising message.

• Questionnaire games to enrich content

With questionnaires and surveys integrated into your articles, you offer visitors additional entertainment and/or an educational value. Create interactive quizzes, surveys, personality tests and polls linked to the themes of your articles to keep their interest and give yourself a chance to gather extra information on what they would like to see from you. 

Thanks to this information, you will know how to position yourself and make a real impact on your audience. You will also know what you need to do and what you should avoid in order to guarantee the success of your game and your advertising campaign, from its conception to its launch. The good news is that all of that is possible with Drimify and you can check out our demos right now to get an idea of the games and determine which ones are most suitable for achieving your goals.

• Communities

One of the advantages of playing video games is the chance to connect with people who share the same interests and explore the same universe as you. Some games even let you join forces and make your own virtual team. So if your website has a large community which revolves around teamwork and communication, you can encourage other members to become part of your team spirit. By using games to generate results that can be added to your users’ profiles, you broaden the data and can therefore create links between people or suggest groups based on a common interest.

• Points-based challenges

Integrating points-based challenges into your website is highly effective if you want to go even further with the creation of a community and reward members with points. Drimify suggests mini-games to earn points and bespoke points systems such as leaderboards which incorporate real and virtual rewards, badges, trophies, levels and other related functionalities.

You can also use points systems to manage communication with your community and promote visitors who engage with you on social media, for example.

Lets not forget that you will be competing with other media sources for the same audience, which means you need to establish effective communication surrounding your game that will make you stand out from the others. Your communication strategy must bring to light what is unique and interesting about your gamified website to inspire users to choose it over other options on the market.

However, carrying all of this out on your own without making any mistakes can prove to be quite overwhelming and nerve-wracking. Advertising is such an intense activity that you risk having less time to spend on other important things. That’s why working with a games marketing agency can help you to make your game an instant hit among players, hassle-free!
In fact, marketing game solutions such as Drimify know the best techniques to use to get in touch with gamers and your audience. They will also measure the success of the methods put in place in order to maximise the potential of your advertising campaigns.

It’s about having an advertising strategy that has never been easier with the right team behind the project, and the game doesn’t need to be built completely from scratch to be effective! Additionally, a marketing game is not the only string to your bow. Creating competitions is another very useful technique that allows you to liven-up the relationship with your client or prospective client and to work on your website’s image!

An advertising campaign that integrates one of our fun solutions creates a more significant rate of engagement and generates more client retention! The team of gamification experts at Drimify guide and advise you through the implementation of your ideas to the creation of your competitions and marketing games for your website and other communication media.

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