I hear it often in B2B, “we have the hardest time explaining what we do, but as soon as our prospects SEE it, they’re blown away.” The immediate instinct is to push prospects straight to a demo or an in-person meeting. But when 73% of B2B leads are not sales-ready, that’s like going “all-in” before the flop in Texas Hold’em. Your prospects will fold immediately.
Ahhh, tax season. It used to be that time of year that you handed a giant folder over to your accountant – not merely for convenience but because he actually knows how to navigate the complexity of tax forms. Until, that is, TurboTax reimagined the tax experience, empowering millions of consumers to complete their taxes all on their own.
That's correct. Just like like the shock some of our younger staff members experience when we show them that many common Direct Marketing techniques preceded the internet era, "Gamification" itself is something that preceded the digital era as well. While some might put the start of it all with the Boy Scouts awarding their badges from 1911, we think a more deserving start point would be the introduction of "A Prize in Every Box" of Cracker Jack's in 1912. And as we will show in our next article, pyschology demonstrates how we are wired to respond to these techniques. For today, we will talk a bit about how those techniques have been deployed and mastered over time.
When you hear the term gamification you probably think of Xbox or Angry Birds or Grand Theft Auto. I think of "addiction" - or the impulse to keep doing something because you subconsciously like it. Research has shown that we are all born with a desire to play games. It’s wired into us. Brands can take advantage of that desire, not by creating games, but by using “game mechanics” to drive certain desired behaviors.
