Marketing as a field has been involved in drumming up brand awareness, engagement and loyalty for years. It is then also no surprise that some of the tools from this industry work well in gamification. In fact this week, I have been working on two projects, were in reality some of the marketing tools on the marketing will deliver part of the gamification strategy.
Messaging, enticing and attracting people with a first call to action, is what marketing engines are known for. More and more they are powered by algorithms to make the messages relevant and tailored to your preferences or your behaviour. In learning, the aspect of attracting people into a course is a big challenge, which in my view marketing tools can help with. Most learning and HR tools, are just assumed to be useful for the employee, because they are provided to you, without ever explaining why or making a point for its value to you. Most of my corporate clients will know that I ask them to work with their own marketing team to create enticing messaging for their course offering, change campaigns, etc.
The other area where marketing tools excel at is linking many outside sources into one seemingly seamless journey. They allow to track more than one input source. Most learning and HR systems are massively closed. Finding approval to let employees self-create courses from web based resources is an almighty corporate can of worms to open. In marketing it is just assumed that you will need to use multiple routes to market to entice people into your system.
In gamification design, the narrative and messaging is just as important as the other game mechanics. To truly play to the intrinsic motivation of an employee, you first of all need to understand what they like and prefer, then you follow up by giving your version of those preferences to them. In marketing this is the norm, in internal focused work the asking about their preferences is often unheard of and rarely given any weight after it has been asked.
