How to find the right game ideas for your brand? 🎮

Coming up with the right game ideas is not something that requires a special skill set in game design or gamification. In order for gamification to be effective, you shouldn’t invent the wheel but stick to the common game mechanics that have been proven to work.

I will explain the main scenarios to fire up your inspiration engine and will walk you through the process of how you can come up with the right game idea on your own and hopefully, by the end of this article you already have some winning game ideas on your mind.

Open your notes/grab a pen and let’s start this exciting journey to Neverland! 

What is the goal of your game ❓❗️

Like in any type of marketing, this is the starting point. The first domino piece that we need to get right and then other pieces start rolling out seamlessly. 

By goals, I mean:

• Raise brand awareness
• Engage customers
• Generate leads
• Convert new customers 
• Educate audience

Or go more specific:

• Reduce the bounce rate of your sales landing page
• Increase the average engagement rate of your website for higher SEO rankings
• Increase traffic to your website
• Increase retention rate by activating passive users with a fun game
• Promote the unique feature of your new product/service
• Educate employees on a certain topic

You can use games for business-as-usual activities and for a certain campaign period (like Christmas or Valentine’s Day). Short remark: as games stand out, they’re a good choice in competitive periods if you prefer not to compete only with media spendings.

Examples of goals Adact users have had: 

• “Engage the target audience for minutes, ensuring they would recognize the new product in store”
• “Get new subscribers for National Geographic magazine”
• “Drive customers to online store for purchasing”
• “Get new loan applications”
• “Gather leads (phone numbers) for telemarketing team”
• “Generate leads for further promotional emails”
• “Educate managers of Lidl about our leadership principles”

Once you figure out the goal, you can think about objectives and result metrics as well but I understand if they’re hard to project without having previous experience with such campaigns.

Although the result of campaigns depends on different factors, there are some metrics to expect or to compare. We’ve calculated averages out of hundreds of our campaigns and when calculating your potential success, you can take these numbers into account.

Putting it into the context of a marketing funnel…

When you’ve identified your goal, it’s easier to pick a game as any game has its advantages. But be aware that most of the games are suitable for various goals. 

What content do you already have?

Before we go into details with specific goals, take a look at if you already have some piece of content you can use in-game creation or as a source of inspiration:

• Do you have a mascot? Good, then you can make them act and use them as a character in your game. Game types where you can effectively use characters: Drop, Vertical Scroller, Tower Stacking.
  
• Do you have videos? Then you can use them in video-based games and make your videos interactive. Game type: Video Trivia.
  
• Articles? If you’ve written articles for example about different asset classes in investing, then you can create Trivia on “Find out how much you know about investing?” or create a Personality Test “Find out which type of investment opportunity suits your personality”.
   
• Captivating visuals? Maybe you have some cool visuals where you can get inspiration from or use it in your game.
• Campaign Messages? Metaphors are your friend. We had one user who was running a pre-summer campaign with the slogan “Get financially fit for the Summer”. With this kind of clear message, it’s pretty plain to see that Endless Runner (based on Super Mario) would work well. Game logic where a person has to run and jump over obstacles.

So take a look at your campaign slogans and maybe there are some metaphors you can take inspiration from.

When your goal is “Raise Brand Awareness”

The most common goal among consumer brands where people can’t purchase online and they have to be memorable, so that when a consumer is shopping and in a buying situation, they recognize the product.

Game types to choose from when you’re thinking brand awareness: 

• Goal: Engage Customers
• Goal: Generate Leads
• Goal: Convert new customers
• Educate audience

Now that we’ve determined which goals gamification can help to achieve, it’s time to discover how to come up with the right idea.

Brainstorming Process and How to Come Up with a Game Idea 

Here in this section, you will learn about some of the scenarios that provide you inspiration on how to approach while brainstorming a game idea. 

📌 Find your purpose

It is important to keep the purpose in mind while planning a game for your business or brand. In case you want to promote your product, list down all the points, i.e., is it new or existing, its qualities or uniqueness, etc. Similarly, keep a clear goal in mind too. Do you want to raise awareness in people about your product or services, do you want to educate them, are you looking to generate leads, etc. 

📌 Mascot

Let’s say you have a mascot. Now you need to understand what you can achieve with it? You can create a Drop Game where the mascot can grab something. You can also design some running games where the mascot can run and collect things.

The solution to advergames lies in being imaginative about how to incorporate your brand into the game. This approach is simpler and easier to perform but not all companies are considered to create an advergame.

📌 Promoting a product: product quality

In case you want to promote a product’s quality. If the quality of your product is strength, energy, or power, then create something that puts the strength of the product to the test. Keep your purpose connected with your game to connect the audience with it.

📌 Promoting a product: components

Suppose that you are planning to launch a new drink. Each component of the drink can be separated as a game component. You can develop a game that tells people about the flavors that are present in the drink. You can develop a game that focuses on the components of your product.

📌 Promoting a product: packaging

In case you have a new package coming out, and you want people to recognize it then you can do this with an advergame. You can show images of the packaging in the game. A good game idea for such a case is Tower Stacking. In such a game, the user needs to create a tower by stacking the objects. It is a great idea to tell people about your packaging, and it will store in their memory for a long period. 

📌 Promoting a product: quality

Suppose you have a delivery company and you want to tell people about your service quality, then design something accordingly. For such a case, you can develop a game that focuses on speed e.g., reaction games.

📌 Promoting a product: price

In case your focus is on the pricing element, then design a game in which the user collects coins to get a discount or something like this.

📌 Promoting a product: uniqueness

If you want to promote service uniqueness, then design something according to it. You can develop quiz games for such cases. However, if your services are highly personalized, or you have a wide variety of products for different customers, then a good idea is to develop a personality test game. In such a game, the user needs to answer a set of questions. They will get a personalized product recommendation based on their result.

📌 How to create a game for marketing: Design

There are a lot of factors that one must observe while designing a game. The game which you plan to develop for your business or brand must deliver the desired message to the audience. Some of the essential things that one must observe while creating a marketing game are as follows:

1)Show prizes

While designing a landing page, make use of prizes. This approach will help in increasing the motivation among users. It will engage the user with the game, and they love playing it.

2)Show product and brand

Do not forget to show your brand and product through the game to people. As the main focus of the advergames is marketing so keep it in mind. Use your company’s logo or pictures to get it stuck in the user’s memory, and they will easily recognize it later.

3)Try to make the product part of your game

Keep in mind that around 85 – 90% of players are on mobile and love playing games on their smartphones instead of computers and laptops.  A large number of creators forget about this point and create desktop versions of their games. One can easily present things related to their business and brand on a mobile version.

Also, there are four rules to follow when creating a gamification campaign in order to make it successful: “rewarding feedback”, “easy interactivity”, “use 2-3 actions”, “make the user lose in the first 45 seconds”. You can have a detailed description of each rule in our article about a complete guide to gamification marketing. Our blog on the complete guide to gamification marketing includes a detailed description of each rule.

📌 Wrapping Up

Gamification and advergames have gained a lot of popularity in the past few years. It is an interesting way of increasing traffic towards a brand. Creating advergames will cost around 15k+ euros and around 2 – 4 months of work. Adact is something that can help people in this regard. It allows people to quickly set up their gamification marketing campaigns. One can select from 15+ different proven game templates according to their choice and requirement.

Book a demo with us and get a complete guide about implementing gamification to reach new clients and boost results.