Who are your prospective users or players in your gamification campaign? This topic is crucial before even thinking of game mechanics, which involves knowing your target audience to devise effective gamification campaigns. Because most B2B clients seek gamification marketing to increase their lead generation rate, prioritizing USERS in your gameplan is a must.

In this series, I will explain more about USERS in two parts. I will tackle the ‘Four Player Types’ in Part I and the ‘Gamification Mechanics Drive Users’ in Part II.

Part I: Four Player Types

The USERS are usually broadly defined by gender, interest, or profession. I recommend a deeper specification by using the Four Player Types by Richard Bartle.

Socializers

About 80 percent of people who play games belong to this category of users. Socializers love the fun experience of playing games and interacting with other players. Hence, they are interested in collaborating to win the games.

I advise B2B marketers to devise fun, interesting, and unique game mechanics. Because we deal with B2B people, we want to develop games, like crossword puzzles, that can help CEOs, managers, and other upper-level positions to unwind and relax while staying productive at the same time.

A well-thought gamification campaign can help B2B decision-makers gain valuable insights into how they can resolve problems in their organizations while having fun. Having fun can be an unprofessional stigma displayed at work, yet it is important to realize how they feel about your brand at the end of the activity that matters.

Many of my clients feel surprised at how their leads perceive their brands through gamification. The leads were much more alert to the brand, and the follow-up conversations were more educational into the insights shared in the campaign. I’ve talked with many CEOs, IT directors, and senior managers, and they have shared that it is refreshing to engage with a new tactic such as gamification to understand holistically how it is affecting their roles and peers industry-wide.

Explorers

These players aren’t driven by the points or prizes but by the experiences and lessons they learn in the game. They gain ultimate satisfaction by answering the quizzes, overcoming obstacles, and completing the game.

Based on our data points collected over 1.5 years of gamification campaigns executed, around 38.7% of participants belong to this category. For this reason, it’s not enough to think about the prizes to attract participants but, most importantly, the GREAT VALUE the game can provide to its target audience.

Achievers

Achievers play games because they’re driven by all points, badges, and status, and they find satisfaction in telling their friends and other players about their game progress and achievements. They are the type of people who are responsive to incentive schemes.

One of our key findings with Achievers is that these groups of players tend to have a replayability rate compared to the participant persona. We noticed as well that this type of player takes longer to complete the campaign and often tries again until he or she reaches a certain degree of achievement in the game.

If the game datapoint clearly shows an identifiable behavior such as this persona in your gamification, I would highly suggest putting a SHARE or REFER button for high scorers and winners to share their game results on social media or via email. This strategy effectively gains more referrals and returned users who see their peers play B2B games.

Killers

Like Achievers, Killers love the winning status in games. Most importantly, they find satisfaction in seeing other players lose. Killers are highly competitive, wanting to beat everyone. Bartle estimates that about one percent of players belong to this category.

In all of my gamification campaigns executed with my clients, I have not had the opportunity to engage with any leads that behave in the same way as described above. I will share more findings on this if I do come across in the future.

Watch out for my next post on the second part of this series, where I will explain Gamification Mechanics Drive Users.

Disclaimer note:

The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ThinkLogic Media Group or any company and their associates.

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