3 Ways to Gamify Your Business
How marketers use gamification to drive sales and how you can too
Our brain reward system is designed to compete. It keeps us alive.
When our ancestors caught a wild animal for dinner, their brains sent a shot of the pleasure chemical dopamine coursing through their system.
Dopamine is one of the feel-good chemicals that our brain rewards itself with for doing something useful to keep us alive.
Our brain functions the same way in the modern world as it did 10 000 years ago and can’t differentiate between the real and virtual world.
Video games are popular for the same reason. Every time we beat the bad guy or score a goal, we get a shot of dopamine to reward ourselves with.
Marketers have realised this and tried to bring gaming to selling in a process called gamification.
Gamification is a way to include gaming mechanisms into everyday businesses. Pretty much every large company will use a combination of points, rewards, badges and even virtual currencies.
Companies use them to drive specific behaviours. Most often to spend more but also to get you healthier, safer, and more educated.