If you’re trying to entice new customers, gamification is effective because you are rewarding consumers for sampling your products and services. So for example, if you have a rewards offer for new customers that offers them a free product or service of equal price for every two products or services they buy, you are offering a valuable incentive for them to engage.

Gamification can also work well as a way to educate your existing customers about a new product you have launched. You can create a game that allows your customers to test out the product or service that you are launching, which creates a sense of fun and excitement, but also makes your customers feel as if they are on the inside of your launch. That sense of empowerment and connection to the product or service makes it more likely that they will buy that new product or service.

Gamification also works when it’s tied to an event or contest. For example, a sporting goods company could use gamification by creating a puzzle contest tied to the Super Bowl on a social media platform such as Twitter of Facebook. That contest could offer puzzle pieces for every sports trivia question that consumers answer, and then having consumers complete then puzzle and then type in the answer to what image the puzzle depicts. Users could win free products, but the benefit for the sporting goods company is tons of participants, social media chatter and brand awareness.