208 – Use game techniques to increase engagement: Tom talks Gamification

Episode 208 - Gamification
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody it's Tom here with Episode 208 of screw the commute podcast to talk about gamification today I'm not talking about frittering away your time playing Candy Crush. I'm talking about using game techniques to get people to engage with your content. And I'm gonna give you some secret psychological techniques that you know what I'm going to have to do if you tell anybody I'm going to have to. Well you know what I would have to do so so don't reveal them to anybody. I lied. I want you to tell everybody tell the world. All right. Hope you didn't miss Episode Two hundred and seven that was Barbara Khozam. She's a super fun international customer service speaker and former pro beach volleyball player. Check that out. Now if you're listening to this in November 2019 you should go to the show notes as soon as humanly possible and join my super sweepstakes and giveaway over thirty two thousand dollars in prizes and everyone wins just for joining. It's also a good example of a viral technique. Now I covered viral marketing in episode 46 of screw the commute podcast. And when you join you immediately get a copy of my twenty seven dollar e-book. The Kickstart guide to viral marketing. Now if you've been listening to the show a long time this is not the one I give away all the time on automation. This is a special one that hasn't been given away on viral marketing. Plus if you tell your friends about this sweepstakes through the unique link I give you you get 20 more chances to win if they join the sweepstakes. Plus you get five more chances to win just for sharing it on social media whether anyone joins or not. It costs nothing to join and you could win the grand prize or one of the 48 other prizes. So get over to screwthecommute.com/208. That's the show notes for this episode and join. All right. Our sponsor is the internet marketing training center of Virginia it's a distance learning school which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living either working for someone else or starting your own online business. I'll tell you more about that later. But we got big scholarships for military, first responders and law enforcement and a special one for military spouses. But at any rate we finance zero interest no credit check. I want you in my school where I know you're not going to get ripped off. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. And if your military puts slash military and of course it'll be in the show notes.

[00:03:19] All right let's get to the main event. Gamification. Now it's not always about playing games. It has to do with ways you can get people to engage with your content.

[00:03:30] The term was coined by computer programmer and inventor a guy named Nick Helling way back in 2003 but didn't really catch on until much later than that. So let me give you some definitions of gamification Google says it's the application of typical elements of game playing to other areas of activity typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with the product or service. Wikipedia says it's the use of game elements and game design techniques in non game context. Now there's lots of ways that gamification to your content. But before we get into that I don't know seven or eight of them that I'm going to give you. I'm going to tell you about I want to tell you about the psychology of getting people to do things. This is somewhat the basis of gamification and anytime you want to get a certain behavior out of someone else. Now this is the part that's you know you know what I gotta do to you if you're telling me no I'm kidding you get yeah. This is really powerful stuff right here. So really pay attention to this.

[00:04:43] So the science of influence or changing someone's behavior that they're going to talk about and I'm going to go by the fog behavioral model that's f o g g there's tons written about this online about Mr. Fogg who came up with it and the deep psychology and use of this mode of behavioral change. I'm gonna give you the Cliff's Notes which will be planning enough to help you sell more of your stuff and get more engagement with your content. Now Mr. Fogg says there are three things required to get someone to perform a certain action first as motivation. The person wants to perform the behavior. In other words he's motivated or she next is the ability. And so the person can easily do the behavior or he can or he or she considers it to be simple to do. And then the trigger that is the behavior is cued or you remind them or you give him a call to action or something like that. So Mr. Fogg says all three elements have to be present and occur at exactly the same moment to successfully engage people and there's even a formula for it. Here it is. Behavior equals motivation plus ability plus the trigger. I'll repeat that behavior equals motivation plus ability plus a trigger so our topic of Gamification is not just adding game elements to your content. It's about providing people with psychological motivators in a way that makes your content more fun and interactive.

[00:06:31] Now apparently motivation is the hardest part of the formula to manipulate. This is why making things extremely easy for someone that's the ability part. In other words they don't have to have much skill to do what you want them to do. This raises motivation to the point when you give them the appropriate trigger which can be a reminder or a call to action. You're more likely to be successful in getting the person to do what you want them to do. Now I gotta admit I'm somewhat reluctant to put this information out because it has been abused like crazy and it's the cause of billions of dollars of losses to people because they're what are called done for you programs. I think 99 percent of those programs should be called done to you programs. This is where unscrupulous vendors make things sound so easy and then all you have to do is give them money and everything you wanted will be done for you. So this what this does is it takes the ability part of the equation pretty much to zero. You don't have to have any skill or do any work to get all these benefits that these shysters promise you so when the ability part of the equation goes to zero the motivation part skyrockets and they get your money just by giving you the trigger part of the equation which could be something like this is only good during this seminar which isn't like an urgency based call to action. Now let me recap that formula in case you're getting lost here. The behavior you want them to do give you money or buy your stuff or whatever equals motivation. They have to want to do it. Plus the ability it has to be easy for them to do. Plus a trigger or reminder or call to action. So behavior equals Motivation Plus ability plus TRIGGER NOW HERE'S THE FALLACY and most done for you like I call them done to you programs to actually do a good job and do everything necessary to give you the benefits you are looking for when in most cases take 10 times the money and person power that the vendor is asking. I mean giving you a cheap price. Good for just today is the trigger part of the equation. So when both the zero ability and cheap price combine your motivation to act goes through the roof and it's only later you realize you got ripped off because there's no way everything that was needed could be done for such a cheap price and you're left holding an unfinished website or whatever it is you're buying. Now I'm not saying every vendor is like this. I'm just saying they are everywhere and I'm warning you to watch out for them. Also I'm warning you that if you use what I'm teaching you here to rip people off I just might come after you in my scam brigade TV show. Check out the trailer at scambrigade.com. So now you have the idea and I'll go over the fog for me one more time behavior equals Motivation Plus ability plus trigger.

[00:09:51] So let's start out with the example of the sweepstakes I'm running right now. First my goal is to get people to tell others about my contest and obviously this is to open up new markets for me and expose my stuff to more people and build my list. So the first behavior is to join the contest and the second behavior I want is I'm looking for them to share it. So let's see how that works. Remember I said earlier that motivation is the hardest part of the equation. So to motivate people to join. I've provided high value and unique prizes that make sense for my target market. In this case the grand prize is nineteen thousand one hundred dollar scholarship to my distance learning school and I have several three thousand dollar consulting packages with me personally. Then I have a bunch of two hundred ninety seven dollars copywriting courses and then a whole bunch of ninety seven dollars fundraising courses and then even more of my forty seven dollar e-book. How to advertise your business online. Plus everyone that enters gets a copy of my twenty seven dollar e-book kickstart guide to viral marketing. There's gonna be 49 prize winners and everybody wins something so let's look at a recap of my efforts to motivate people to join. I say things like everyone is a winner I say over thirty two thousand dollars in prizes I say forty nine big prize winners. I say refer your friends and get even more chances to win and things like that. So that's my motivation element of the formula. Now let's look at the ability element. All they have to do is put in their name and email which everybody knows how to do. It's no skill at all and it's really easy then the trigger is hearing about I email him or put it in social media or whatever And the fact that the contest only runs for a limited time so they better get in it now so that's their reminder and call to action.

[00:12:08] Now let's move on to the second behavior that I want. That first behavior was just to get him to join the contest. The second behavior is I want them to share it so as soon as they enter they get one chance to win but they hit the next page which tells them if they refer a friend through their unique link they will get 20 more chances to win Ah Ha. motivation again. Plus they get five extra chances to win for each social media platform I've included for them to share too. And that's even if no one signs up from their social media. All right so let's look at the ability or how easy I make it for them in this second part. Their unique URL is right there in front of them to share with their friends or do an email blast to their list or post to their Web site. Social media all that all they have to do is click on a particular social media platform and I've pre written a posting or tweet for them of course they can add to it if they want. So that's the ability it makes it really easy for them to share. Now the triggers when they participate they get email updates with their point totals. And although I didn't do it on this promotion you can also put leaderboards to create competition see a leaderboard tells them who's winning who's got the most chances to win so these e-mail updates not only trigger the person to remind them to share. It motivates them because they see their chances to win keep increasing so to see this in action get your butt over there do my show notes for this episode enjoy and remember everybody's a winner and you'll immediately get the twenty seven dollar e-book kickstart guide to viral marketing and this is Episode 208.

[00:14:09] All right now let's get into some of the gamification techniques you can use. I think I've included about seven or eight of them here. I did a contest one time which is in itself a little gamification contest and I just mentioned leaderboards so people could see where they stood in the rankings. And this created a little competition so people would try harder to win that's just a simple example of gamification and I could have just simply held the contest. But by adding the leaderboard we got bigger results sometimes you see a form of leaderboard on blogs and Web sites where they list their most popular articles. So there's not real competition there but they're telling you all. This article is really popular.

[00:14:57] All right so before I get into telling you a bunch of gamification elements you could that you could create in your content. Let me tell you about my school. It's the only license dedicated distance learning internet marketing school in the country. It's certified to operate and highly scrutinized by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia and we've been accepted into the Department of Defense program for military spouse scholarships. And the reason we got accepted is because we teach an actual skill Internet marketing. And it's in high demand. I mean virtually every single business on Earth uses the Internet. And they're desperate to get people to help them and the skill is portable you can live and work from anywhere that you can get an internet connection you or your teenage child could be earning a great living very quickly if you had the knowledge I teach in this school. The school itself also gives big scholarships to military law enforcement and first responders. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. And if your military put slash military and of course this will be in the show notes.

[00:16:10] All right let's get to some other gamification I just mentioned contests and leaderboards. How about quizzes. And by the way lots of this stuff is covered in episode 46 in viral marketing. And in the book you will get from joining my current contest that's running till November 30th of 2019 in case you're listening to this later. Yeah quizzes are really can go really big. BuzzFeed has them and there's some of them have 50 million users of the quizzes. So. So they're fully covered in the e-book that you'll get badges people like achievement badges. I mean think boy scouts and girl scout just to get a picture in your mind they're sashes with all their achievement badges. Well you can make this happen on your Web site and in your content when people pass certain milestones levels is another kind of I guess it's a kind of a badge. But that's it's a little different. This is very common in video games where each level gets harder to achieve. So they make the first levels easy. This is part of the behavior to get you playing and then you kind of get sucked in and then things get harder as you go and then your achievement is more. It gives you more prestige the higher levels you get. Challenges you've certainly seen how challenges have hit the scene from the ice bucket challenge. So for a couple of years ago to even exercise challenges on Apple Watches another one is progress bars. I mean these normally go across the top of the screen telling you where you are in a process maybe you're filling out a form and part one of the form is your name and email. So the progress bar would move a little across the top of the screen. Then the second part of the form is your address and phone number and the progress bar goes further and so forth or or maybe you have an online class and the bar shows how far someone has progressed. And another one is an actual game. Now I've never created an actual game but you could create a game based around your content. The last one is points and rewards. I mean you can give out points or in my case for the contest I'm running now or the sweepstakes. The points are called chances to win they're basically points but there's chances to win. And you can reward people for certain actions also kind of like frequent flyer programs or frequent buyer programs or buy nine of whatever you're selling and get the tent free or something like that. That's all gamification.

[00:18:56] There are many ways to add gamification to your content and products and speaking your products I want to briefly bring up the topic of consumption see if people don't consume or actually use your product after they purchased it they're not likely to buy future products from you. So you can add engagement techniques in your products. A simple one is like the progress bar I just talked about or maybe hide Easter eggs in your product and Easter egg is a hidden feature or image or bonus having these would most assuredly have people hunting for more of them while consuming your product.

[00:19:37] Okey doke. Well that's it on gamification. Pay close attention to Mr. fogg's behavior formula and get over and join my contest at screwthecommute.com/208. Now next episode is 209. Lee Mosler is a single dad a veteran and a guy who has a lifestyle business which allows him to homeschool and spend the entire day with his young boy. I love that. Also Hey go over and give us a review over it at iTunes and leave a comment for us it really helps the show out so I will catch everybody on the next episode. See ya later.

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