Get ready for a little game. The game can make you money, because you play it with your customers.
If this gets a skeptical smile on your face, have a look at the portrait of a typical gamer:
- Gamers are 55% male, 45% female.
- The average guy who plays games is 35; the average woman is 44.
- Gamers are more likely to have been
college-educated thannon-gamers. - Gamers are more likely to use technology like smartphones and tablets.
Do you recognize your target audience?
People of all ages and jobs love to play games. This post explains how to add some Las Vegas spirit to your social media marketing to generate clicks and sales.
Active social media audiences can be divided into four psychological types:
You can define the psychological type of your audience by looking closer at your customer persona. Below, we review every type and the activities that engage them the most.
The Curious
These are previous “A” students and diligent learners. They love to get new knowledge, solve complex problems, and show off the progress on their timeline.
People of this type are unlikely to engage with giveaways. The best lure for them is intellectual games. The curious would check their answers 100 times before sharing them. That gives us the clue to attracting them to your store.
Publish a piece of content on your website (company’s history, a set of lifehacks, an interview with the founders and staff, a trends overview, a customer story, product test drives, and reviews). On your social media, hint that the correct answer for your contest activity can be found in the content. Clicks guaranteed!
If your website is really engaging, people of this psycho type won’t stop on one page only but will proceed to your product catalog. Hence the name, the curious.
Here are some of the games and contests the curious can’t resist to take part in.
Speaking Numbers
It’s likely that, since the launch of your business, you have stored a lot of milestone trophies that you would like to share with your customers.
That might be the launch date, the number of cups of coffee you’ve had working on your new collection, the number of visitors in your online store since opening, etc. The more lively those facts are, the more interesting it’ll be for your customers to guess them.
Put your numbers on a picture. The task is to match the numbers and what stands for them. Be sure to have the answers on your website.
Blog Preview
Don’t share the whole piece of content on social media. Show your main point, and let the curious discover the rest by their own.
Where to Buy/How to Order
It’s possible to play with less exciting, but important content as well. Ask your followers to count your points of sale, to create a route from any place in the city to your store, or to count all the possible options for placing an order. This way, you not only attract an audience to your online store, but you also bring them a step closer to the purchase.
Puzzles/Riddles
If your store has a wide product range or sells seasonal products, you can safely create different puzzles using product images. Such addictive tasks always provoke a lot of discussions among “A” students and those who guessed to find the correct answer on your website (for example, you could share the link to your “special offers” page and encrypt real prices in your puzzle).
Quiz
Don’t be afraid to ask questions, but don’t ask questions only on your product or company history. Pay attention to related upcoming holidays, events, fields of knowledge, memes — this will awaken your activity and increase engagement.
The Experts
These guys clearly know what they want and do not need extra proof that they are right. They are defiantly and reasonably defending their point of view. They are open to new activities only on the condition that they enter the pool of their interests and provide an extra reason to… well, show off.
How to involve the experts in the game? Just give them the opportunity to demonstrate their flawless taste or leave an expert review for your goods. The experts are easily involved in the process, but there is a danger behind it: they can become aggressive if you doubt their expertise.
Let’s see what games and contests can please them.
Choose Your Favorite
This is one of the simplest mechanics. Your customers go to your online store to pick a product they’d like to win. You can ask your participants to post the link to the comments and share this post on their page. It will get you free clicks from their friends.
Important: don’t forget to set a threshold for this contest (or use products from one category), otherwise you can bump into unexpected expenses when the winner is defined.
Choose a Gift for Your Friend
The experts are always careful about choosing something for their friends. It is them who can notably increase your time spent on page metrics. Ask them to add the link to the comments and to mention a friend. Define the winner randomly.
Their friends will notice your contest, as social media send notifications when someone is mentioned. It’s likely that they will go to your store to choose a gift in return.
Find the Best Match
Clothing and jewelry stores can showcase their assortment with this tactic. Publish a product image on social media and ask your followers to find the best match in your online store to finish the look.
The winner can be the person who scored the most likes or who suggested the most options.
Create a Look
A participant creates a look from the items they already bought in your store. Within this option, ask subscribers to attach links to products and post all this on their profile.
Alternatively, you could ask them to create a look from the products they would like to have. In this case, you can promise the whole look as a prize to the winner.
Leave a Review
If you are sure of your product quality and can openly ask your customers for their feedback, then this plan is for you. Don’t hesitate to ask your followers — suggest leaving a review on your website, drop surveys, and give away products for a test drive to the most active subscribers. This attracts returning customers, and sooner or later, new customers.
Adventurers and Seekers
Adventurers appreciate challenges, not results. You can capture them with
How to motivate them? It’s enough to offer some more points in the loyalty program or more chances to win. They don’t depend a lot on your prize fund.
Find Differences
Not only children love this game. Publish a standard image to your social media and the larger version — to your website. Your followers get interested and click to finish the game.
A Price War
Motivate your audience to compare and search the best price for a particular product in your online store. If you are selling clothes and there are several types of white blouses in your assortment, ask the participants to send a link to the most profitable purchase (at the lowest price). An excellent occasion for this idea can be
Double Chances for the Target Action
In addition to the main contest terms, offer points or discounts for subscribing to your newsletter.
Extra in a Row
Replace one of the product pics on your storefront with a trending meme/sticker. The players need to find this product and send the link to it.
Macro Look
Post a fragment of your product on social media and suggest your followers to find this product in your online store.
The Progressive
This group consists of the most active users that are hungry for new technologies. They can react equally to an unusual ad, new visuals, or an unknown prize. These people collect everything unusual and show their trendiness to their audience.
They won’t take part in complicated games, but they can support your craziest ideas. They just want to try everything first. If you want to target these people, your company needs to be one step forward.
Playful Instagram Stories
It’s possible to insert a clickable link into your Stories images. The users are required to click “More” or swipe up to complete your target action. To motivate your users to do that, use the following games:
No matter how creative your game is, it’s important to provide quality content on the pages you’ll lead your audience to. Abstract or boring content will cause disappointment and a high bounce rate.
Emoji Contests
Ask followers to explain something using emojis only.
Collecting Contacts
If you want not only subscribers’ activity, but also their contact information (postal addresses, telephones), then one of the methods can be conducting tests or polls. It’s simple:
- Write a questionnaire from the questions (you can ask anything, but remember that people like to talk about themselves most of all).
- Promise a bonus for filling out the questionnaire (any small prizes and discounts).
- Play out more valuable prizes among those who left the most complete contact information.
Video Creatives
Video is the trend of the past and current seasons. Even if you do not have a designer or videographer, you can create it with a smartphone and a free application.
One of the easiest ideas to implement is sliders (automatically changing images of one or more of your products):
Whatever psychotype the active nucleus of your community belongs to, remember: it is impossible to give subscribers too much attention, but it is easy to lose a significant part of the audience because of absence. Play more and have fun!
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