The value of communications across the employee lifecycle

The competition for talent is intense – especially in thriving industries such as life sciences and biopharma – yet there are many smart and skilled people available for those who know how to attract them. Once these awesome people are onboard, you need to retain them to maintain morale and performance – as well as to avoid turnover costs. The good news is that communication is a critical lever for finding and keeping employees.

Skilled employees who fit a company’s culture are the foundation for strong organizational performance. Employees who support and reflect your core values, attitudes and behaviors have greater job satisfaction and better job performance – and are more likely to remain with you.³ The first step for supporting cultural fit is an employment brand that clearly communicates who your company is and what it’s like to work there.

Success doesn’t just rest on finding great employees – it’s about taking steps to keep them. The impact of employee turnover is significant and includes both hard and soft costs such as:⁴

• Recruiting
• Search firm fees
• Onboarding and training
• Lost knowledge
• Overworking remaining staff
• Lowered morale and productivity

In this feature, we’ll walk you through what we’ve found out about smart communications and savvy employment branding strategies to attract, hire and retain the best employees for your organization.

Finding Great Employees

Your employment brand

Today’s job candidates expect a high level of transparency into potential employers. They want you to tell them what it’s like to work with your company. And they’ll follow up on social media to confirm, gathering feedback from past and current employees. Your employment brand is hugely important to conveying the value of working for your company. Great employment brands often have these characteristics:⁶

• Creates excitement about working for your company
• Emotionally engages candidates
• Outlines what your company does – and why
• Provides a clear, compelling reason to work for your company

3 steps to an employment brand

1. Gather insights. First, understand how your organization is currently perceived and what its unique employment brand attributes are. Research may include surveys, interviews with key stakeholders in the organization, or even a review of existing employee survey data.
2. Define how you’d like to be seen. Based on what you learn, assess your strengths and differentiators and translate them into an employee value proposition (or EVP) and core talent messaging framework.
3. Bring your brand to life. Step off your key messages into communications across multiple channels – both internally and externally.

What’s your employment value proposition?

Let’s spend a little more time on the employment value proposition, or your statement about the “give and get” of your employment deal – what employees will contribute and what your company offers in return.

An awesome EVP can be articulate and detailed:	Or incredibly hip and concise:
Bristol-Myers Squibb EVP At Bristol-Myers Squibb, we’re committed to helping physicians and patients fight serious diseases. The success of our endeavor depends on people who are bold, focused, innovative and passionate – people who can work as a team, yet bring unique and individual talents to bear in a variety of areas. We want people who want to change lives.7	Google EVP Do cool things that matter.8

…But it must showcase your organization’s distinct selling points and personality.

What about a tagline?

Once you’ve developed your employment value proposition, use it as inspiration to create a succinct statement about your employment brand essence.

Executing on the employment brand

After creating your employment brand, EVP and messaging platform, you’ll want to develop communications to share and build your employment brand, including:

• Executive presentations
• Job posting templates
• Career portals
• Manager talking points
• Company fact sheets
• Interview guides
• Banner ads
• Social assets
• Videos

Your strategy should be geared externally towards target candidate pools and internally, towards existing employees. Why the internal focus? Consistently communicating the EVP to current employees helps retain and engage them. It affirms the brand to foster advocacy – and when that happens, employees become authentic champions for your company both at work and on social media (helping you attract great external candidates!).

Make it real with videos

Cisco projects that by 2018, video will account for 84% of all online traffic!⁹ Keep up and create a short video to showcase what’s special about working for your company and create a positive reputation among candidates and employees.

Keeping Great Employees

Engaging employees in who you are and where you’re going

Companies employ many familiar HR programs for retaining employees – including compensation, training and development, or flexible work. These are outside the scope of this paper.

However, Entrepreneur magazine says that to keep your employees, you need a communication strategy “that’s structured to inform, emphasize and reaffirm to employees that their workplace contributions are having an impact.”¹⁰ At Signal, we’d have to agree because we’ve learned that communication is essential to retention.

5 steps to keeping employees looped in

1. Gather input from executive stakeholders on possible communication topics.
2. Review employee engagement survey and other data for clues to what employees value hearing about (and from whom).
3. Create core messages / message framework.
4. Develop a phased communications calendar.
5. Distribute messages from executives, with follow-up messages from line managers.

It may seem like a no-brainer but you’d be surprised how many companies don’t give communications the time it needs – especially given the ROI. The more employees feel they’re in the know, the more likely they are to stay with an organization. Especially if leaders are the ones doing the communicating. People want to feel valued, be recognized for good work and they want to know where the organization is going.

Cater to your audiences

Internal communications are just marketing for employees. Just like in traditional marketing, the more you shape your message to a niche audience (site, department, geography…), the more effective it will be.¹¹

Distinct challenges in life sciences and biopharma

The landscape for these sectors continues to evolve at a breathtaking pace. Companies in every geography are retooling and increasing development pipelines in response to major drugs coming off patent and to meet robust demand for new therapies. At the same time, global healthcare is becoming more complex – both from a regulatory standpoint and trying to meet the demands of diverse stakeholders such as patients, physicians and healthcare systems. There is a high demand for those with the capabilities to succeed in the new environment, so it’s tough to find and keep talented people.

Tying it all Together

It’s time to up your talent game!

Food for thought: there will always be some turnover

• There are a certain number of people who have a “nomadic” personality. We’re not talking about someone who works remotely, but someone who job hops – for mental stimulation or to gain new skills and experiences.
• This is more pronounced in Millennials, who tend to leave if they feel they’re no longer growing, being paid attention to or when feel that your strategy no longer aligns with their values and ideals.
• Some strategies for addressing the nomads / job hoppers are to have active mentoring programs for knowledge transfer; engaging nomads as freelancers or consultants to keep the talent working for you; and negotiating with them to see what it would take to have them stay.

We’ll leave you with the thought that communication is an invaluable component of your attraction and retention programs – design these programs well and they will make a difference in your bottom line. Then stay agile, rolling with the changes in your company and industry to keep your communication fresh and stay ahead of the curve in finding and keeping great people.

References:

1. http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-agenda/ceosurvey/2015.html
2. https://www.zanebenefits.com/blog/bid/312123/Employee-Retention-The-Real-Cost-of-Losing-an-Employee
3. https://hbr.org/2015/07/recruiting-for-cultural-fit
4. http://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/why-employee-turnover-is-so-costly.html
5. http://www.fastcompany.com/1657030/happiness-culture-zappos-isnt-company-its-mission
6. http://www.recruiting.com/blog/the-case-for-employment-branding
7. http://www.bms.com/careers/Pages/home.aspx
8. https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/careers/lifeatgoogle/do-cool-things-that-matter.html
9. http://tubularinsights.com/2018-internet-traffic-video/
10. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/76456
11. http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2016/08/12/best-practices-for-effective-internal-communications/#2eadc1db7d1d

Your Blueprint for Marketing Success

If you have spent some time in Google Analytics, Piwik or Adobe Analytics, you’ll find the power of website analytics can be jaw-dropping. You will quickly realize how your company uses analytics to report on and inform your strategies and marketing efforts can be arrived at from an infinite number of paths. In short, your implementation and incorporation of website analytics is very unique to your business and your goals.

There is one aspect of analytics, however, that remains an absolute necessity for effectively using analytics, regardless of which of those infinite paths you end up taking: creating a Measurement Plan.

What is a Measurement Plan?

From our experience in marketing and analytics across a wide variety of industries, we’ve seen how a surprisingly large number of businesses operate in the dark when it comes to website analytics. That’s not to say that these businesses had necessarily lost sight of their company vision, value proposition or profitability requirements. But the resources invested to accomplish these initiatives and measure their effectiveness were largely unaccountable and included mere estimations at best.

Not too long ago, such a lack of accountability was to some degree unavoidable. Whereas the ROI of traditional television and print ads could be estimated by the impact on overall revenue, customer size, etc., a definite correlation between a given initiative and its results was impossible. In the rapidly evolving world of website analytics, businesses no longer have an excuse to operate under such impairment. Analytics not only has the power to correct your eyesight, it can give you x-ray vision. The tremendous value of a platform like Google Analytics and its relatively recent addition to what we would include as a business requirement make it both one of the most pivotal components of profitability and a source of unrealized potential.

Making sure you’re equipped to reap the benefits from your website analytics is simple – all it takes is a well-thought-out Measurement Plan – a document that clearly identifies the core objectives of your business and supports them with the metrics necessary to communicate how aligned those objectives are with reality.

Step 1: Defining Your Objectives

Whether your website is an ecommerce store, a blog, or a marketing website, it was created for a specific purpose. When creating your Measurement Plan, you will want to take a step back and adopt the frame of mind you were in during the business planning phase. When pitching the business model, investors or partners needed to know what your concept offered to the relevant market(s). Successful businesses create customer value by solving problems. Defining the objectives of your Measurement Plan should mimic this process.

During the Objective definition phase of this process, start by asking yourself what is the primary purpose of your website. This may seem straightforward, but it’s critical to establish clear purposes which dictate all marketing, branding and content creation efforts. This step will usually require more thinking than you may initially suspect. If not, stop and make sure you’re touching on all aspects of the business, not just the obvious.

A basic (and incomplete) approach for the three different types of websites just mentioned might look like:

• Ecommerce: sell golf equipment
• Blog: acquire emails from readers
• Marketing Website: drive traffic and convert into leads

While not incorrect, this fails to adequately represent the key components of success. Yes, the website should sell equipment, gain a following and generate ad revenue, but what other aspects are inherently critical for success? A more accurate approach might look like:

• Ecommerce: 1) sell golf equipment; 2) become a nationally recognized brand; 3) generate preowned trade-ins
• Blog: 1) acquire emails from readers; 2) establish voice of authority across social media; 3) generate affiliate revenue; 4) serve as a resource for a specific audience
• Marketing Website: 1) drive traffic; 2) engage prospects; 3) generate leads

For simplicity’s sake, let’s stick with the first example as a model for the remainder of this post: an ecommerce site that sells new and used golf equipment.

Sales, certainly, is going to be one of our main goals. For the purpose of creating a Measurement Plan, we also want to consider secondary objectives that go hand in hand with revenue, and should be equally as important to measure.

The basis of a good Measurement Plan might include the following objectives:

Step 2: Goals and KPIs

Now that the business objectives have been defined, they need to be represented by the specific strategies and tactics employed to achieve each objective. In other words, how are you going to accomplish A, B and C?

To illustrate, our golf etail site might associate the following KPIs for each objective.

After these KPIs have been established they should be approved by the key stakeholders to confirm relevancy, and by the board to ensure they are in alignment with vision and expectation.

Step 3: Measurement

When consulting with businesses, the area we often see most neglected is an accurate system of measurement. Often times, objectives and goals are believed to be generally understood or obvious, and therefore a Measurement Plan is never created. Without one, not only is it unclear what strategies will be used and how they are connected to the key objectives, but nothing is ever put in place to track the performance of the efforts surrounding those strategies.

With analytics, there’s little that can’t be measured for the purpose of tracking performance. At this point in the process of your Measurement Plan, you already have a clear understanding of your business’ primary objectives and the key performance indicators that will inform how aligned they are. Now it’s time to define what the specific metrics are and how they will be measured. This is also the point to incorporate any targets you may have.

For ecommerce, the overarching goals are going to be tied to sales. Setting up Google Analytics’ ecommerce capabilities with your shopping cart has become quick and easy from a technical point of view, and typically involves just a few lines of code. Once integrated, the ecommerce section of Google Analytics arms you with a robust suite of reports out of the gate. This is where we’ll go for top line revenue as well as key performance indicators like average order value, category performance, conversion rates, funnel exits and more.

Going back to our golf equipment website, our Measurement Plan would develop into something similar to the following.

For the goals we’ve identified that are not necessarily tied to a purchase, we can measure through any number of data sources.

On a final note with respect to the measurement aspect of your plan, this is the phase where you’ll want to include any targets you have defined for your KPIs. You may find that for some KPIs you don’t have specific targets for that year, month or week. But for those areas where you do, there’s no better place to consider them than in your Measurement Plan. Yes, your targets could and should be dynamic (in that they will fluctuate based on time of year, promotional activity, etc.), which is all the more reason to report on them within a stable construct. Your plan will be updated to account for changes to historical data and current targets, but the structural pieces will remain static.

Step 4: Segments

For most of your objectives, you’re going to want to associate a particular audience, or segment. As with any type of business or website analysis, segmenting your data is a critical component of gaining insights and turning that knowledge into actionable comprehension. In most cases, we recommend reporting at the aggregate and segmented level. This establishes a baseline, or average at the aggregate level, which provides context for the segmented perspective.

When defining your segments, think of each as an additional component that empowers the data you’ve collected thus far. For example, it’s extremely valuable to understand that Q1 sales are up 20% following reduction in cart abandonment, thanks to a shopping cart redesign – but when we’re able to apply segmentation by device and see that 80% of that lift came traffic on smart phones, we’ve moved beyond reporting on key data points and can now attribute, predict and plan on a much more accurate and sophisticated level.

Segments are most effective when developed as part the KPI identification phase of your Measurement Plan. For the KPIs related to our Customer Loyalty Objective, we might choose the following segments:

With this level of detail, our KPIs for Reducing Customer Dissatisfaction, Increasing Repeat Customers and Improving Reputation, we’ll be able to take our data one step further when we slice into that information from the Acquisition Source and Geographic Location: being able to tie brand ambassadors to the source from which we initially gained that customer might reveal untapped opportunities for partnerships; positive reviews from customers within a 25-mile radius of our brick-and-mortar locations might justify bid adjustments based on location for an AdWords campaign.

Step 5: Implementation

You’ve just finished defining your segments and are ready to put your plan into action. Awesome! The last level of detail you’ll want to include as part of your plan will include any details related to the tracking implementation. There are of course an endless number of analytics and reporting solutions out there, and each has its proper time and place. But in our experience, a solid Measurement Plan can be built for 99% of websites using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. The former gives you an enormous amount of highly intelligent data and data insight with a simple script include. The latter fills in any gaps to allow for customized tracking solutions for just about any action or event one could possibly take when visiting a website. The combination is a zero-cost, comprehensive analytics package.

Depending on how your business handles the implementation of similar projects, it will likely be useful to include a breakdown of the implementation into the specific details for the IT team or whomever is involved in setting up the required tracking framework. This will be especially helpful for measurements where implementation is more complex.

For example, implementation details for our “Increase Sales from Affiliate Marketing” KPI might include the following:

The Final Product

With the addition of implementation details, you’re officially done with your Measurement Plan. This diagram shows how the plan ended up looking for our golf equipment website. Yours may look different, where the Objectives are the columns and the details the rows, or each Objective is a tier in a Smart Art diagram. As long as there are KPIs, Measurements and Segments for each Objective, you’re ready to fully benefit from your website analytics.

Maintaining Your Plan

While the bulk of the work is done at this point, you’re not all finished just yet. In fact, maintaining your Measurement Plan is – to a degree – a never-ending task, due to the following two reasons.

The frequency and method of collecting that data will vary between businesses. Neither matters as long as the method of collecting the data is accurate and the frequency is adequate to alert your team of trends, patterns and anomalies that have the potential to impact the success or failure of achieving your goals and the specific targets for each.

A simple yet completely adequate way of doing this is to add two additional columns to your Measurement Plan – one for reporting the actual metrics for a given time period, and one that shows the percentage of the target achieved. Remember, deviation from baseline or forecasted metrics is not always represented literally by the data. This could also indicate that there is something wrong with your tracking/measurement. Typically, these situations are much easier to resolve but just as important as reacting to actual fluctuation in performance metrics.

While the basic structure will remain, this is not a set-it-and-forget-it deal. Perhaps there’s a change to the API you’re collecting your data from, or there’s an update to the Analytics platform. As a perfect example, Google Analytics’ decision to stop providing keyword data for organic traffic created a situation where your Measurement Plan would need revisiting. On the other hand, it’s possible that after a few months of reporting you’ve found that the KPIs being used haven’t proven to be the best way to measure performance, or you are consistently exceeding your targets.

In any of these cases, actions would be required to update the API call, find another way to measure keyword traffic, replace a KPI, and redefine your targets. As long as data is being reported to the stakeholders and your Measure Plan is adaptive to change, it will maintain and exceed its initial value to your business.

Mobile Sales Enablement 101: Adopting mobile tools to improve sales performance and redefine the selling experience

Printed fact sheets and brochures are no longer the mainstays of sales presentations. Today, mobile sales enablement tools are creating new and better ways for salespeople to engage and sell to their customers, while increasing efficiencies, reducing costs and streamlining the process. The bottom line is, mobile technology offers unmeasured potential for increasing sales success.

Benefits of mobile for sales teams

Following are some of the key reasons why enterprise business organizations are looking to mobile for their sales teams:

• enabling field sales and service teams to sell anytime and anywhere
• reducing hardware cost by replacing more expensive laptops with tablets
• reducing traditional printing and distribution costs for sales materials
• streamlining content updates and enabling sales teams to remain in sync with up-to-date content
• offering multimedia, interactive features, data capture and tracking

Setting the stage – the proliferation of the tablet

In July 2015, technology research firm Gartner, Inc. reported 2014 worldwide media tablet sales at 226 million units. Compare that to 2010 sales of only 17 million units.

According to Gartner VP David Willis, “Leaders are finding legitimate business use [for tablets] and redefining processes for ‘ready at hand’ moments where other computer types are not as well adapted. CEOs often prefer tablets for distributing material for board of directors meetings. Salespeople are using them in client-facing situations; sales configuration tools help close more business and reduce error rates; sales and marketing leaders are using them as dashboards to their business; and marketers are designing campaigns around them. Doctors and nurses are carrying them; they are even being used on the manufacturing floor. Anywhere you once saw people carrying a clipboard or lugging printed reference material, you’ll find an application for a tablet.”

In fact, Gartner names the #1 commercial business application category for tablet devices as sales automation systems for customer collateral, sales presentations and ordering systems.

Per Aberdeen’s Mobile Sales Enablement: Fulfilling the Promise of Untethered Selling, “Best-in-Class organizations place significantly more emphasis than under-performers on arming their remote and field-based sellers with an ‘anywhere, any time, any device’ toward filling their pipeline and closing deals.”

At Signal, we’ve witnessed this trend as well. We’ve recently created tablet apps for organizations that allow:

• equipment dealers to show customers product features that are difficult or impossible to demonstrate in on a showroom floor.
• medical device representatives to house all brochures, images and videos in one convenient and updatable device.
• sales representatives in the field to receive timely updates to their interactive presentations in a centralized and coordinated manner.

So how do you begin?

Rather, take a look at your sales process now and ask your sales team questions:

• What does the current sales interaction look like?
• At what point in the sales funnel do they get involved?
• Are your salespeople just serving to close the deal, or are they tasked with generating awareness and interest, detailing the benefits and features of your offering, and answering questions with relevant proof points?
• How can mobile support this interaction?

Remember that you don’t want to replace sales, but ask reps how mobile might help them streamline their process and be more effective.

Perform a communications audit of all marketing materials the sales team is currently using. Compare those assets to the story sales is telling when they’re in front of a customer, and see if there are any gaps that a new mobile solution can help fill.

Next, ask your marketing team how mobile might help them.

• Does technology resonate with your target audience?
• Is their primary messaging making it to the end customer during a sales call?
• How often do the marketing materials need to be updated?
• Are salespeople running around with outdated print materials, or creating their own?
• Would centralized content management and rapid push updates help better connect marketing and sales?

Bring in your IT team.

• Do you need offline access for sales presentations in remote locations?
• Are there hardware cost savings you could realize by replacing traditional laptops with tablets?

Answers to these questions will help dictate the path you take and the technology you use.

Supporting the face-to-face interaction

There are many mobile solutions that you can put in place for a sales team. For the purpose of this discussion, we will focus on how an iPad app can be used as a tool to help your field sales team when they are meeting face-to-face with a potential customer.

Here are two scenarios that Signal was involved with, as an illustration of how different client needs and circumstances led us to unique development strategies.

CLIENT NEED #1:

Fully Customized Sales App

GE Hitachi wanted to create an engaging iPad app showcasing their service offerings in nuclear plant safety and maintenance. In lieu of bringing their customers to see actual on-site equipment, our client wanted compelling informational material to support the sales team, beyond their conventional printed collateral. Signal audited their existing assets and drew up a plan to create rich, interactive visuals demonstrating the benefits of their service offerings across several categories. The delivered iPad app takes advantage of dynamic multimedia content like splash screens, demo animations, scrolling technical diagrams with interactive hot spots, video clips, 3-D renderings, photo galleries, fact sheets and ad slicks.

Because many of the sales meetings take place in remote locations, all content is embedded within the app. This means the salesperson is not dependent on an Internet connection during the sales call and there are no buffering delays for multimedia content.

CLIENT NEED #2:

Sales Briefcase App

One of our clients sells irrigation products through a nationwide dealer network. Although a comprehensive arsenal of traditional collateral materials is available to support their sales effort, keeping the large volume of product fact sheets and videos current and organized has presented a continual challenge. With organization as the central objective, Signal created an iPad app that serves as an interactive library of marketing materials. Users can read brochures or watch a variety of videos, all categorized by product – no more fiddling around to find the right video or printed sales sheet.

Updates and time-sensitive campaigns are typically a concern in sales materials across the board, and this app allows revisions to be pushed to the entire sales team by means of a version update, similar to version updates we are familiar with installing for personal apps.

CLIENT NEED #3:

Combination Presentation and Organization Sales App Utilizing Web-Based Platform

Medical Mutual desired an iPad app to help its salespeople to better engage and sell to prospective physicians. Unlike the app described in Client #1 above, this one did not require fully immersive, rich media. However, they did need a professional animated presentation and the ability to organize a full library of marketing materials using a web-based content management system.

Signal created an interactive presentation in PowerPoint format and utilized a third-party platform called Showpad to publish the content to a native iOS app format. We chose the Showpad sales enablement platform because of its ease of use and professional presentation. These platforms offer a variety of functionality using a monthly subscription model, including the following:

• Content management and delivery
• Some branding and customization
• Publishes to any device (iPad, Android, etc.)
• Sales team communication via announcements
• Web apps

Enterprise or App Store?

In the above three cases, the apps were internally deployed as an enterprise app only, but you may find that it does no harm and can actually be a benefit to publish your app for general downloads on the iOS and Android app stores.

In a further example, we developed an app helping dealers of a prominent lawn equipment manufacturer to showcase certain product features that are hard to demonstrate on the showroom floor. The app uses video, 3-D imagery and animations to engage potential customers and help them decide whether a lawn tractor or zero turn mower is the best fit for them. Originally planned for dealer usage only, the app was later released on Apple’s App Store as a means to help create awareness and boost sales beyond the scope of a limited dealer release.

Final Thoughts

Simply distributing tablet devices to your sales force is not enough. Once everyone has these wonderful devices, the really important step is to change your organization’s thinking about sales presentations and the very nature of one-on-one customer interactions. Custom mobile sales enablement applications represent a critical strategy for turning your mobile investment into tangible results.

We hope you’ve found this paper helpful as you think about the best way to incorporate mobile tools to improve sales performance. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us!

Are you ready? Let’s PLAY!

Human beings are hard-wired to enjoy the competition and status that games provide. And the prospect of entertainment – and winning! – is an attraction that’s hard to resist. You probably felt a subconscious jolt of anticipation when you saw the above invitation to play. Adding game mechanics or techniques immediately increases interest and participation in any given activity. Gamification applies game design principles in non-game settings as a way to create engagement – which can increase brand loyalty and profits.

Whether you “gamify” your communications with points, rankings, badges, contests or interactive communities, gamification can help brands and messages stand out from the crowd. It’s perfect for B2C applications that resonate with consumers and help them move through the sales funnel. But gamification isn’t just for consumers. Game techniques can motivate employees to participate in – and spread the word about – corporate programs. B2B marketers should note that Autodesk successfully used game techniques to help convert in-trial prospects.¹

What are the basics of gamification? How can game techniques be used? What are some examples of successful gamification in marketing campaigns? This paper provides the answers to these questions – and more.

Gamification on the rise

Gamification isn’t a new concept. Companies have long used points programs and interactive features to reward loyalty or create interest. However, more companies are considering gamification now based on high-profile success stories. In fact, in 2014 more than 70% of the world’s largest 2,000 companies reported that they expect to deploy at least one gamified application.²

Why do games engage us?

Game techniques build a connection to your audience that is based on visceral needs. Let’s take a look. The immensely popular Game Theory series on YouTube examines individual video games in great detail, explaining the appeal of each game in a historical, cultural and even philosophical context. The Game Theorists’ special “Why You Play Video Games” opines that the reason video games charm us is that they fulfill our basic needs for:

• Competence – achieving mastery
• Autonomy – being in control
• Relatedness – connecting to others (in a sometimes isolated world)³

The factors that make video games appealing apply to other game formats as well, because games seduce us by meeting these core needs in an easy, low-risk way. As Steve Keil reminds us in his TED Talk on the benefits of play,⁴ evolution has selected for play. Animals who play have healthier brain growth and are more social. The more we play, the better our cognitive development and emotional maturity. Play is so powerful because it’s universal to the human experience.

Tapping into generational preferences

Games are incredibly appealing to Generation Y, those people born between 1980 and 2000 who now make up 25% of the workforce and will continue to increase in numbers.⁵ This demographic grew up online, is used to being hyper-connected and happens to love both online games and social media. So with this age group, gamified applications and communications are – if you’ll excuse the pun – an instant win. However, games also resonate with those over age 35 who enjoy connecting and competing. It’s that impulse to have fun at any age.

What people are saying

“Gamification is as important as social and mobile.”

– Bing Gordon⁶

“The biggest mistake I see made is when marketers forget that the relationship needs to be mutually beneficial – meaning that they need to be acknowledging these messages and fueling them with rewards. One way to make relationships mutually beneficial is through rewarding consumers for sharing socially and making it fun and worthwhile to help share your brand’s message.”

– Kristin Matthews²

“The coming business cycle is sure to include many demographically driven changes and gamification presents a rare opportunity for companies to address the needs of next-gen employees, while also improving productivity, increasing collaboration, minimizing turnover, improving employee morale, more effectively leveraging social media and driving business opportunities.”

– Katherine Heisler⁵

How we like to play

Different players, different motivations

Game content should be geared to how people are motivated, because different groups have fun in different ways. Richard Bartle, a game creator and academic, developed a player typology during the 1980s.⁷ His well-known player classification system helps define design patterns in gamification. You may recognize these player types, for they describe both how we like to play games – and how we like to interact with the world.

What kind of player are you?

Calling all players

To meet the needs of the various player types who make up the audience for your gamified communication, make sure you consider their personalities and the tactics that may work for them.^7,8

Using game techniques

Remember, games are all about rewarding people. These are the basic techniques:

Companies across industries have used the techniques above to their advantage. We’ve collected information about some real-world ways to incorporate gamification:

• Recyclebank uses points to educate. Points have long been used to track and motivate. The familiar hotel and airline loyalty programs use points (or miles) as virtual currency to reward customers for business volume. Recyclebank has taken this classic game technique to the next level, offering points to users for completing interactive lessons about the importance of recycling.⁹ Users can redeem their points for discounts, gift cards, magazine subscriptions and more.

• Badges showcase status. If you were ever in the Girl or Boy Scouts, you’ll remember the thrill of earning badges for skills like first aid or camping. Merit badges feed our adult need for achievement as well, denoting a certain level of accomplishment. Many websites including Amazon, Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes rate users’ activity with badges such as “Rookie,” “Top User” or “Super Reviewer.” Other users recognize and value top users’ inputs. And those users get the satisfaction of being recognized as go-to experts.
• Milestones tap the power of incremental progress. Working through steps or levels towards a larger, meaningful goal is an incentive. The ubiquitous rewards cards that offer a free sandwich or cup of coffee after 10 purchases are a perfect everyday example. Pump up these basic loyalty programs with a quiz or task – like watching a short video – which users must complete to earn the prize.
• LinkedIn incorporates rankings. Some companies use leaderboards or other rankings to add competition to the mix. Manufacturers have used leaderboards for some time to track and reward employees’ performance. But business networking site LinkedIn recently began ranking its users’ profiles by popularity – pushing people to engage with the site more to increase their standing in the eyes of valued business contacts.¹⁰
• Nike creates an interactive community sensation. Nike+ is a gamified app so popular, it inspired an entire product line of accessories. This app lets users record pace, distance and run routes to train and challenge themselves. Nike+ also offers tasty social features, such as allowing users to instantly share their stats with Facebook and Twitter networks.¹¹ The solution lets people challenge themselves – and family and friends.

• Rypple’s performance review app offers real-time feedback – Wondering how to improve the standard employee performance review process? Digital music service Spotify uses mobile app Rypple to allow managers and coworkers to give feedback and recognition in real-time.¹² This social approach meets its employees’ preference for instant communication – and helps everyone feel they’re contributing to the big picture.
• The Samsung Nation social rewards program takes interactive websites to the next level – Samsung Nation is designed to help users discover the Samsung.com website. Visitors can earn badges and “level up” by reviewing products, watching videos and participating in user-generated Q&As.¹³ The combination of activities and rewards engages existing Samsung enthusiasts and creates brand new ones.

Crowdsourcing

The power of group motivation

Crowdsourcing is harnessing the collective wisdom of a community to answer questions or solve complex challenges. Think of it as brainstorming on a large scale. Wikipedia is a well-known example of crowdsourcing, one where people volunteer their time and knowledge for the cause. To further motivate people to contribute to crowdsourcing initiatives, just add some competition and rewards. Here are a few notable examples where crowdsourcing intersects with the principles of gamification.

• Volkswagen – To gather ideas for its new product line in China, Volkswagen used a crowdsourcing competition. Users submitted ideas into a virtual suggestion box and the top three concepts were presented at leading Chinese auto shows. Payoff to VW? 33 million website hits, a ton of inventive ideas and countless insights into the preferences of customers. Volkswagen continues the practice today.¹⁴
• Lego – Ever had an idea for a new Lego set? On Lego IDEAS, your vision may become reality. Users share a project description on the site and gather online support. 10,000 supporters qualifies your project for Lego review, where marketing and design representatives choose new products to be manufactured and sold around the world.¹⁵

• Syngenta – The global crop sciences company has developed various programs to encourage collaboration and new ideas from third parties. Syngenta Thoughtseeders reaches out to R&D scientists for partnership opportunities.¹⁶ The Good Growth Plan, an initiative addressing the challenge of sustainably feeding the growing global population, held a contest offering grants for the best idea submissions.¹⁷
• Foldit – Games are not only providing a platform for innovation in R&D – they’re helping to cure diseases! Foldit is an online game that challenges players to fold proteins. The way proteins are folded – that is, their shape – determines their biological function and can give us clues about how to prevent or cure diseases. In 2011, gamers solved the riddle of an HIV enzyme’s structure (a challenge which had stumped scientists for a decade) in just three weeks – allowing researchers to target drug treatment.¹⁸

Gamification for B2B

Gamification is a natural for B2C applications where marketers are looking to build brand engagement. But what about B2B applications? MarketingSherpa outlines gamification tactics that can offer greater reach.¹⁹

• Online communities allow participants – including employees, consumers and business partners – to share and interact about products and services. Drive online community engagement by giving users who help others badges or rankings.
• Your company website is the first and best avenue for hooking a potential customer. Help them learn about your product with a series small tasks or “missions,” such as downloading papers, watching videos or answering quizzes for a chance at a prize.

Transform work into play for employees

Companies have traditionally used game techniques – such as levels, points or scoring – to motivate and help reward their sales teams. Organizations have now extended the use of gamification to the greater employee population. Imagine awarding points to employees for desired behaviors such as attending training, working out in the company fitness center, collaborating across functions or even carpooling. Giving virtual badges to those who complete the basic level in an executive education course. Or offering prizes for keeping calls brief and closing sales in a call center environment.²⁰

Engaging students with games

Gamification and online learning are standard in today’s classrooms. These strategies increase student engagement by encouraging selfmotivation and building critical thinking, organization, time management and technology skills. The Chatham Charter School, in North Carolina, uses game mechanics in English classes.²¹ Students are put into groups and earn “gold” for their group’s average assignment scores. With their earnings, students can purchase perks such as bonus points on homework, collaborative test-taking or the ability to change a project topic.

To promote its “Brain Games” series, which reveals the inner workings of the human brain, National Geographic launched a fully gamified website.²² Each episode of the series has its own dedicated page, where visitors can watch video clips, take challenges and test themselves with quizzes on that episode’s topic. The pages are colorful, interactive, engaging – and feature parallax scrolling and great large imagery.

Summary

B2B, B2C or internal communications. No matter your focus, there is a great game technique to help you reach your goal. Although game mechanics have been around for a while, companies are now finding that gamification is an effective – and expected! – part of their overall marketing and communications strategy. Games tap into our love of competition and connection and they create engagement through fun and reward. If you haven’t tried game techniques before, it’s time to play on!

Thank you for reading. Our team hopes this paper is a great resource on how you can effectively incorporate game techniques into your marketing and communications. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us!

Play again

References:

1. Marketing Experiments
2. Convince and Convert
3. The Game Theorists
4. ‘The Benefits of Play’ Ted Talk
5. Forbes
6. Pinterest gamifcation quotes
7. For the Win
8. Growth Engineering
9. Recyclebank
10. LinkedIn
11. Nike+
12. Techworld
13. Samsung Nation
14. The New York Times
15. Lego IDEAS
16. Syngenta Thoughtseeders
17. Good Growth Plan
18. Scientific American
19. Marketing Sherpa
20. Wall Street Journal
21. Open Class
22. BrainGames