SIMULCATION BLOG

Content marketing and gamification are both in the limelight. But do their similarities run further – could marketers harness the power of gamification as part of an innovative, effective content strategy? What is gamification? Gartner predicted that gamified strategies would become the mainstay for cultivating brand engagement and customer loyalty by 2016. Now estimated to be worth over $10 billion by 2020 (ten times its market value in 2015), gamification shows no signs of slowing down. Gamification is defined as ‘the application of typical elements of game playing (such as point scoring, competition, rules of play) to other areas of activity – typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.’ What’s really in it for marketers? By appealing to our inherently competitive and playful nature through things like leader boards, missions, points and badges, marketers can foster deeper, longer relationships with custo...

Content marketing involves connecting with buyers through unique, consistent and genuinely useful content. It taps into the idea that buyers no longer follow a linear journey to purchase and instead value an engaging, relationship-based approach. Marketers regularly debate the value of content marketing but there’s no doubting its popularity. Found in 88% of B2B marketing strategies worldwide, it’s lauded for being efficient, effective and highly adaptable to almost any business and industry. Some common mistakes A 2014 survey by Forrester found that more than half of B2B marketers rated their content marketing strategy as ‘very mature’, yet 87% also admitted that creating engaging content that connects with buyers is a significant challenge. This reveals a disconnect between the perceived potential of content marketing – and the reality. The same survey revealed three main mistakes marketers make – which may be why they value the techniques but undervalue the results of con...

Nearly a decade on from gamification’s rise to prominence in commercial strategies the world over and there’s still some confusion over how to implement it well. Applied everywhere from healthcare and education to marketing and technology design, it refers to techniques translated from the world of gaming to leverage human behavior commercially or socially. Gamification builds on the science that says we are motivated by things like completing challenges or clocking up points as markers of progress through a task. With Simulcation Datacenter , we’re using game-based learning and simulation to create an immersive, engaging environment where technology providers, students and customers can connect. Gamification technology may be short in the tooth but there are some notable examples of best practice – let’s look at three. 1.      Nike+ Amidst growing competition from other sports shoe brands, Nike developed a range of activity tracking apps where users c...

Coined first in 2002 and then popularized in 2010, ‘gamification’ has been steadily on the rise ever since. Used to define the way developers were incorporating social and reward techniques from gaming into other types of software, it caught the eye of venture capitalists the world over and was reportedly mentioned in half of presentations by software application companies seeking funding. So, nearly a decade on, where are we now? Where has gamification taken us, and where will it go next? A short past One of the organizers of the first conference on gamification, Gabe Zichermann , predicted: ‘in a gamified future, I don’t think many companies, including the government, will be able to avoid becoming part of this trend. I think consumers will increasingly expect and demand that experiences become more fun and engaging. We can never ever go backward. People’s expectations have been reset. This will be the new normal.’ Gamification as a conscious technique has b...