Pinduoduo’s marketing gamification!

Pinduoduo’s ability to carve out a path in the fiercely competitive e-commerce red ocean is inseparable from its gamification approach. Nowadays, almost every e-commerce platform has incorporated gamification into its gameplay. So what are the benefits of marketing gamification and how to implement marketing gamification? The author of this article has analyzed this and shared it with you.

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Even a strong company like Pinduoduo has taught its peers a lesson with its many bold moves, represented by Kan Yidao: it turns out that event design can be played this way.

In fact, this is a marketing gamification method. Pinduoduo’s predecessor was a game maker. Huang Zheng mentioned it a long time ago: combine Tencent’s product gamification thinking at the front end with Alibaba’s strong operational thinking at the back end.

Nowadays, major manufacturers’ APPs will add gamification features in addition to the main business flow, such as Meituan and JD.com.

Marketing gamification can be simply understood as: Do you want to get rewards? Get rewards while playing! So what are the benefits of marketing gamification and how to implement marketing gamification?

1. What is marketing gamification?

The essence of marketing gamification is gamification. Gamification refers to the integration of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game environments to guide user interaction and usage. Gamification can increase audience engagement, loyalty and fun.

Marketing gamification is the gamification of specific scenarios - marketing activities or product operations, which uses gamification mechanisms to increase user activity time and depth of participation.

Gamification is a "tool", and if used well, Pinduoduo can achieve miracles and attract 800 million users. If used improperly, it will become a gamification that will make users dizzy and leave the platform impatiently.

2. Why should marketing be gamified?

Let’s take a common marketing method, ‘issuing coupons’, as an example to compare conventional marketing and gamification marketing .

Conventional marketing: Distribute coupons directly to users to promote orders.

We will find that conventional marketing has the following problems:

• Users do not value it, and the order rate is not significantly increased
• A large number of coupons are flying around, and the value of the coupons has been significantly reduced
• The distribution targets are not accurate, and some users are not sensitive to prices.
• I don't particularly want the product, so it doesn't matter if it's discounted or not.
• …

Try gamification marketing: participate in the red envelope game to get coupons. The size depends on your ability. You can share it to play again and increase the amount of the coupon.

We can see that the advantages of gamification marketing are:

• Use games to stratify users based on price sensitivity and save costs
• Users will value the coupons they get after paying more and are more likely to place an order
• Increase fun and improve user experience

This is just a marketing gamification method for the coupon distribution scenario. There are many more ways to attract new customers/activate/retain customers. The marketing strategies of large-scale online games are very mature. Modifying and applying these strategies to one's own industry can be regarded as a dimensionality reduction attack.

3. How to realize marketing gamification?

So how do we achieve gamification? In fact, there is a specific methodology.

There are many elements to achieve gamification. Common points, levels, rankings, and medals are gamification elements. What we need to do is to integrate them into the product silently.

There are two steps to implement gamification: business goals -> select gamification elements

The goal of gamification needs to have commercial value, either to generate revenue or to attract active users. After determining your goals, you need to choose gamification elements that fit your business.

There are many gamification elements, which can be divided into two categories: process elements and result elements. The elements are not separated and independent and can be used in combination.

The procedural element refers to the game form of the design. The most common ones on the market are challenges, randomness, feedback, rewards, and cooperation.

Rewards can be combined with any other elements, and challenges can be combined with random elements. The combinations are all very interesting gameplay.

Let’s take a look at the result element. The process element is essential, but the result element can be absorbed selectively. The result element is more of a reflection of atmosphere and achievement, which is in line with the core idea of ​​the game: there is a reward for every effort.

To summarize, gamification = business goals -> process elements & result elements. Here you need to consider whether these elements are necessary and whether they can solve business problems.

If you simply put on a gamification shell without considering that the appeal of games to people lies in the fact that games give users the right and space to interact, then that is bad gamification. Users will not follow the rules you set completely or behave in the way you preset for them.

IV. Applicable Scenarios of Gamification

You may feel like you have found a treasure after reading this, but no tool is omnipotent, including gamification.

What types of products or scenarios are suitable for marketing gamification? Let’s go back to our student days. English classes have the most game elements, while math, physics and chemistry classes are often more serious.

First of all, it should be made clear that products and scenarios with a serious orientation and rigorous processes are not suitable for gamification.

Whether it can be gamified can be judged from these four dimensions (refer to "Gamification Thinking")

• Motivation can stimulate : creative work (gamification brings more creativity), transactional work (gamification makes work interesting), and behavior change (good motivational feedback)
• Gameplay can be interesting : Interesting gameplay means giving users clear and reasonable feedback on their choices.
• Rules can be productized : Rules can be easily put online, allowing users to easily participate in activities
• No conflict with the main business : Do not block the main business process, and it is best to combine with the existing business

Be careful not to blindly attach extrinsic rewards to intrinsic motivation, which can make the activity itself less enjoyable. Intrinsic motivation is more important than extrinsic motivation.

For example, if you use money to motivate children to study, in the long run, the children will instead hate learning. It is more reliable to stimulate interest in learning and form a habit with children.

Improving intrinsic motivation can be done from the perspectives of emotion, narrative, progress, and relationship:

• Emotions: curiosity, competitiveness, frustration, happiness
• Narrative: The telling of a consistent, ongoing storyline
• Progression: Player Growth and Development
• Relationships: feelings of friendship, status, altruism, etc. that arise from social interactions

5. Success Factors of Gamification

To judge whether gamification is successful, just score some key factors. From business goals to process experience and then to user word-of-mouth, it is simplified into the following scoring model:

The difficulty lies in the "seamlessness" of the process design and whether the gameplay is interesting . Pinduoduo's marketing campaign design has a high level of seamlessness, and the gameplay is constantly innovating, which has single-handedly improved the growth level of the entire industry.

6. How to gamify the freight platform?

The above is more about methodology. I am becoming less and less interested in methodology. After all, even if I understand a lot of principles, I still can't live a good life.

Methodology is a set of steps abstracted from different scenarios/industries/groups of people. Following them can at most guarantee satisfactory results.

The reason why experts are experts is that they have conducted in-depth research and practice on a specific problem, scenario, user, or industry, and have summarized wisdom from their experience.

Here, Xiaohe has sorted out some gamification methods from the perspective of transport capacity operation based on the "freight industry" he is engaged in.

6.1 Capacity to attract new customers

Pinduoduo has taken the pure monetary incentive method of attracting new customers to the extreme, and the entire market has become immune to this form. Many users (including me) get annoyed when they see it. It will be better to try new gameplay based on scenarios and needs.

Attract new customers based on demand:

The transportation capacity follows the supply of goods. Sharing the supply of goods you see with friends is more in line with the transportation capacity needs. So you can try to share the supply of goods and then place an order to smash the golden egg to get random rewards.

The transport capacity itself also has the need to find goods, so tools are created to help the transport capacity automatically generate its location, vehicle type, phone number, historical positive reviews, and proficiency. The transport capacity can share this information on WeChat Moments, which can bring certain exposure to the platform.

There is a demand for vehicle-related tools and equipment for transportation capacity, and using them as rewards for new customer acquisition activities is more attractive.

Attract new customers based on scenarios:

The transportation group is often away from home all year round and has their own circle and culture. From a social perspective, they can try team transportation competitions or team lottery competitions. This method of play can not only attract new members, but also improve retention and activity.

Similar to the gameplay of the reading team in WeChat Reading, the active behavior of the team within the period will form points, the points correspond to phased rewards, and the level of the team is defined based on the completion status.

Car stickers similar to Huolala are also great scene-based ways to attract new customers. These cars will gather in professional markets, while also bringing exposure to a large number of shippers and transportation capacity.

6.2 Capacity Retention

Retention itself depends on product strength and business level. When product strength/business level is insufficient and cannot improve in the short and medium term, operational means can be used to assist in improving retention.

Why should the transport capacity be retained? Because the platform has good things that make the transport capacity reluctant to leave. Therefore, increasing the silent cost of user churn is a good direction. (Loss aversion)

Idea 1: When users join the platform, they are guided to pay a deposit and get a big treasure box (pre-reward). Level A users can open it to get xx - Level B users can get xx - Level C users can get xx...

Idea 2: Create a grading system based on the mileage and number of units, with higher levels corresponding to higher permissions, so that high-level units are reluctant to leave the platform because they have obtained permissions.

Idea three: When you notice the loss of transportation capacity, you can use outreach means to notify them that there is a supply of goods within xx meters or that xx friends share xx supply of goods with you, etc. to pull the transportation capacity back, and send a return gift package when the transportation capacity successfully returns to the platform.

Idea four: Similar to the main and side quests in online games, plan out the tasks for growth of transportation capacity. This has not been tried on any platform yet, so it needs to be tested with caution.

6.3 Capacity Education

People are not fond of learning, have no patience and are lazy, and the same goes for the transportation group. Education goes against human nature. Adding educational elements to mini-games and combining education with entertainment can improve educational effectiveness.

There are many successful cases of educational gamification in the education industry that can be used as reference. There are many such articles on the Internet, so I will not list them all here.

Finally, Xiaohe wants to say: Gamification is a way of thinking, not a specific method. Marketing happens to be a very suitable scenario for gamification.

But don’t forget that the highest level of marketing is to forget about marketing, but to interact and communicate with users sincerely. Marketing tricks are everywhere on the street. At a time when users are collectively tired, anti-tricks can get you closer to users. For example, WeChat’s “Play WeChat less”, Xin Shi Xiang’s “Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou”, Xiaomi’s gift of 1999 to the first batch of users, and various public service advertisements.

Author: Xiaohe Operation Notes

Source: Xiaohe Operation Notes