Do You Think This is a Game?

There is a way to truly engage customers and foster lasting relationships with them in a way that doesn’t feel forced or ingenuine, and it’s called gamification. According to Loyalty 3.0, “Gamification takes the motivational techniques that video game designers have used for years to motivate players and uses them in nongame contexts” (Paharia, 2013, p. 65). 

There aren’t many things that can capture people’s attention and efforts for hours the way a game can. Games are successful and engaging because they implement the core motivators of autonomy, mastery, purpose, progress, and social interaction. 

If businesses gamify their approach to marketing and loyalty, they could successfully create customers who are engaged long-term. Giving users goals or missions to accomplish, giving them badges, using competition, allowing for opportunities to level up, and establishing points systems are all ways businesses can choose to implement gamification. 

In order for gamification to be successful, however, it must be driven by data. A really good and recent example of this is the Oura ring. Because wearing the Oura ring gives it the ability to collect your body’s health data, the collection of data is the backbone of the company. 

A quote from Oura’s website states, “Oura tracks your daily movement to help you achieve your goals. You're not in it alone — share your daily scores and achievements with your community in Oura Circles”. Oura ring uses the data collected by the user to motivate people through the core motivators of purpose, progress, and social interaction.

Gamification allows businesses to “[Leverage] the fun elements of games to generate interest and excitement” (Forbes, 2025, para. 1). An integral part of gamification is the concept of rewards, which ties back to motivation. Many businesses make the mistake of assuming that the best rewards must have cash value, but that could not be further from the truth. Paharia explains in chapter four that people also value status, recognition, early or exclusive access, power, and prosocial initiatives. 

As a result, in order for gamification to be effective, a business must first understand what motivates their specific audience. For instance, if they do research and find out that their audience is largely motivated by recognition, it might do more harm than good to offer them something else that they didn’t ask for.

Lastly, there are specific mechanics that allow for gamification to work. One of those mechanics is leveling up. This particular mechanic is very effective because it taps into four different intrinsic motivators; mastery, progress, purpose, and social interaction. Levels are a way for users to track their progress and sustained achievement over time, as well as a way for users to create goals for themselves along the way.

Another effective gamification mechanic is community. Many, if not all, of the mechanics discussed in Loyalty 3.0 lose their purpose in the absence of community. When community is involved, users have the ability to connect with others over shared goals, and compete with one another in their respective progress. 

Without gamification, true loyalty would be nearly impossible to achieve. If you want to level up your marketing skills, implementing gamification techniques could be your key to unlocking new possibilities in your business.