How To Combine Gamification with Content and Experiential Marketing

Pardon the sports metaphor, but our interactive trade show games are a marketing buzz word triple play!

If your marketing department has plans to implement Gamification, Content Marketing, or Experiential Marketing, 3 of the hottest trends in B2B marketing today, you can get the benefits of all three at once with our interactive games.

Let’s look at how our digital games are at the convergence of all 3 trends:

1. Gamification

According to Wikipedia, “Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts …. to improve user engagement …”

Improve user engagement? What trade show and event marketer wouldn’t want that!

And according to trade show industry research from CEIR, gamification is a powerful, yet underused tactic for exhibitors to drive traffic and increase engagement.

Games are best when, like ours, they allow attendees to walk up and start playing intuitively.  And play they do! They get pulled into friendly competition, with their friends, colleagues, and surprisingly often, against their expectations of themselves.

Our games motivate them to enter your booth and stay rooted to the spot, providing lead and contact info about themselves and their company needs, in exchange for the opportunity to win a prize or demonstrate their level of expertise.

That’s awesome gamification: attendees are so motivated to play, they enter in their own lead data!

Plus, our games provide feedback while attendees are playing about how well they are doing, so when they are in jeopardy of losing, they reach out to your booth staffers to get help – and start a conversation that gets you closer to another trade show lead. This happens much more than you would think.

You can even make a competitive game out of attendees’ social media engagement at the trade show, and give your company a more modern image at the same time.

So, our games allow you to win at the Gamification of your trade show program!

2. Content Marketing

Content Marketing is arguably the fastest-growing B2B marketing method today, with 35 times more marketers planning to produce more content than less, according to a 2017 survey by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

A key part of Content Marketing is that you teach prospects with content that is valuable and relevant to them.

Most trade show visitors don’t realize before they enter your booth how relevant and valuable your company can be to their success.  But that all changes when they try to win prizes and beat their friends while playing our Challenge Bar Trivia Game, and in the process answer dozens of questions about the advantages of your company and products.

Your booth visitors get immersed in learning about your company, and it’s your content that makes the magic happen.  Your attendees are motivated to learn what makes you better, and in the process, advance further in the buying cycle.

It’s Content Marketing at its best.

3. Experiential Marketing

According to legend, in the good old days, trade show exhibitors only had to pop up a display, stand by the aisle, and a parade of buyers would march into their booth.

It was never really that easy.  But it is true that, thanks to their ability to find product info easier on the Internet, today’s trade show attendees are more in control of the buying process.  And they know it.

So, to get attendees out of the aisle and into your booth, then get them to stay there longer, and then to remember what they learned there, you now need to create an experience.  Something that engages more of their senses and emotions. Something with an element of interactivity that requires them to participate, not watch passively.

This is exactly what happens when exhibitors use our interactive trade show games.

Attendees get pulled into your booth because they see our innovative game visuals and the prizes they could win. Once in your booth, they are fully engaged while playing, sometimes enjoying it so much they return multiple times. They become emotionally involved with their performance, feeling joy, envy, frustration, greed, and more.

Some attendees get so motivated to succeed, we’ve heard of some going back to their hotel rooms to study!

So, our games create an experience that attendees will remember when your sales people follow up on their leads after the show.

Gamification, Content Marketing, and Experiential Marketing are all growing marketing strategies for getting more engagement with your target audience.  You don’t have to choose just one to pursue at your next trade show – with SocialPoint’s interactive trade show games, you get the benefits of all three!

If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic and get more qualified leads with our interactive trade show games, feel free to contact us with questions or to discuss your event with one of SocialPoint’s Digital Strategists. We’ll help you generate excitement, crowds, and leads.