Gamification Marketing For Dummies. Zarrar Chishti

reasons for the followers you have, you can use the same tactics in your marketing campaign’s launch strategy.

      

Vanity metrics are ultimately useless because they’re too easy to measure and contain no context. This can mean they’re often misleading and, more important, don’t really help your gamification marketing campaign in any meaningful way. They look impressive, but sadly, they’re devoid of substance.

      Sure, go ahead and take pride in your earned metrics. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sharing this data to demonstrate how well your company is doing online. But just know that the data can’t be used as evidence for your campaign. Best to leave it for website headlines and press releases.

      Arguably any of your social media data can be a vanity metric. The good news is: You can identify which metrics are meaningless. The central question to ask yourself when considering a metric is whether it will help your business achieve its goals. Here are three questions you can ask yourself to identify vanity metrics:

       Can you make meaningful decisions for your gamification marketing campaign using this metric? Dismiss the metric if your answer is “no.”Actionable metrics can help you make decisions for your campaign. This is because the data provides meaningful feedback and context for what your campaign should be doing and whether it has a chance of working.Smart data can also help you adjust your campaign strategies so that the campaign attracts a bigger audience. Any social media data you collect should help make your campaign’s launch better.

       Can you reproduce the results? Any social media data that was produced as a random occurrence will not be helpful to your campaign. When it comes to viral posts in social media, lightning rarely strikes twice unless you can identify a cause and effect within the data.Make sure the metrics have been reproduced more than once. If you can’t reproduce a statistically similar metric, then you can’t use it to improve your campaign. This means that although the metric looks great, the data and knowledge behind it won’t do anything to help your campaign.

       What caused the metrics to look so good? Did someone with a large following notice one of your company’s posts and repost it to his followers? If so, try reaching out to him over a private message and ask how he noticed your campaign — and be sure to express your gratitude, too.Was a third-party algorithm (that your company has no control over) responsible for the spike? Engage with the owners/developers of this algorithm to see if you can utilize it for future campaigns.Was seasonality a factor (where a particular month was responsible for the majority of the metric)? This will be an invaluable source of information when you come to analyze your campaign further using big data (see Chapter 11).Did someone in your company pay to increase the numbers of likes or even followers? If so, determine whether this spending was a good return on investment (ROI) for your campaign.

      DON’T IGNORE THE SILVER SURFERS

      If executed properly, your gamification marketing campaign can appeal to all ages. Recent reports have shown that the number of silver surfers (generally, people over 50, although that age can vary by country) on social media is on the rise. This is excellent news for your campaign because you have a new channel to target, an all-too-often ignored audience.

      Instead of trying to target this demographic directly, use Facebook. Facebook is the silver surfer’s preferred mode of social networking (35 percent of people over 65 are on Facebook, compared to the 2 percent of them on Twitter and 1 percent on Pinterest). So, quite clearly, the bulk of your marketing will rely on Facebook.

      Also, bear in mind that older people will take their time to research campaigns. For this reason, it’s important to invest in your campaign’s content. Although silver surfers search for campaigns the same way anyone else does, they also tend to use Bing over Google. Bing users tend to be 55 to 64, so include Bing in your marketing strategy.

      In terms of your actual gamification content, because this demographic is more likely than the average Internet user to read articles and web pages in full, you should employ more CTAs, such as “learn more.” Your user experience (UX) is a very important element in ensuring that your campaign is effective. If a silver surfer comes to your campaign only to be faced with a complex and confusing landing page, he most likely won’t engage with it. Plan your landing pages to make them easy for anyone to access — use large fonts, clear buttons, and clear navigation.