You may be thinking about investing in a serious game, or you may have a serious game already. We’re excited for you either way! Designing Digitally, Inc wants to help you along the way. We have a few questions for you once you have your serious game complete.
So now that your serious game is built, what are you going to do? Go live with it and wait? Tell your coworkers? Make a blog post about it? Create a case study? Also, how are you measuring success and failure? What analytics are you tracking? More importantly, how are you marketing this to become a success? These are some of the many questions left to answer after the project is complete.
Often times, when we are approached about a serious game, the focus is on the development of the game, and not so much how it is going to be utilized by client’s employees. The industry has the mindsets that once you build a serious game, people are just going to play it and reach your learning objective. This is called the Field of Dreams mentality; and it has failed our industry many times over. To ensure your serious game is a true success, you must have an integrated marketing plan in place.
Our team at Designing Digitally, Inc. creates award winning serious games that have been proven to provide a positive return on investment. Companies that realize a high ROI from serious games do so because of a three reasons. First, creating an interactive and effective learning experience. Second, the serious game is engaging and entertaining; keeping the learner coming back to play. Finally, companies that realize a high ROI implement internal marketing strategies to encourage learners to play. To help with your internal marketing efforts, we have provided a list of five suggestions we hope you find useful.
1. High Score Board - Provide people with free lunches or bragging rights if they are a top performer at your game that week. Put the scoreboard on a TV or digital board so it is visible every day. Also, give employees reminders in emails of their scores, and use the board as much as you can in your existing marketing efforts.
2. Badge Awards - Provide individual awards for completing particular achievements. Such as, improving their rank on the leaderboard by 10 places in a month, or having the most cross sells per quarter within the game.
3. Make it a part of your Integrated Marketing Offerings - Encourage a culture where employees want to become top performers. Send people home as new hires with your game and inform them all top performers get to choose where they sit after their ninety day trial period.
4. Use more than money - Money goes a long way, but status is more important to people. For instance; why are we hesitant to tell people how much money we have in the bank, yet we splurge on luxury vehicles? It shows status. Use the leaderboards to show status to low performers and present them with just a few people above them that they can surpass with little effort.
5. Be a key player - Nothing encourages employee involvement like executive involvement. Imagine how much fun your employees would have trying to top your executive team’s scores. What better way to show the benefits of the skills the game reinforces than by having your executive staff also participating? Leading by example is one of the fastest ways to encourage greater morale and more active participation.
Even though your serious game was built, there is much work to be done once it’s complete. Work that is often times overlooked by the industry. The team at Designing Digitally, Inc. hopes this educates our audience on what happens after the serious game is built, and how you can get the most from your game. For more information on how Designing Digitally, Inc. can help you develop and implement your serious game, contact us today!