In 2023 the event industry has experienced various trends and has gone through a shift. As we are about to enter 2024 we can see that the event industry has evolved a lot. Event planners and markets are trying different strategies and tactics to keep their audience engaged and hooked to event culture and for that, they are using different engagement tools and activities. Event gamification is one such activity. Today event planners are using games and other such fun activities at the event to keep the audience engaged during the event but that’s not just it there is a lot more to it. If you don’t know what event gamification is, here in this article we will be giving an overview of event gamification, ideas for event gamification, and some of the benefits of event gamification.
Overview Of Event Gamification
If you are feeling your events are becoming boring or you are not able to keep your audience hooked on your event. Event gamification can be the solution for you.
So if you are wondering what event gamification is, here is a little introduction. Event gamification is the feature that can help you include game elements in your event. With gamification, you can create fun games and game-like activities for your event. These activities can be related to your brand or event.
Gamification at the event can involve activities or games like quizzes, leaderboards, photo contests, etc. Event organizers can get an event gamification app for their events.
But gamification is not just about creating a fun experience, it is a powerful marketing strategy for events and that is the reason a lot of event planners are using it.
Event Gamification Ideas You Must Try!
Here are some of the event gamification examples that you must try for your next event:
1. Trivia
If you are hosting an event that provides certain knowledge or information then trivia can be the perfect gamification option for your event. Because people love to test their knowledge, trivia can easily increase engagement and interaction during the event. With Trivia, you can create questions about your event, brand, or niche and it will help you understand the knowledge of your audience around your brand or niche. Event planners can also set the level of difficulty for the participants so that they can keep taking the quiz. Later they can display the score on the leader’s board.
2. Photo Booths
Photo booths can also be part of the event gamification. With photo booths, you can ask your participants to click pictures and post them on different social media platforms with event hashtags. It will increase the reach of the event. Even photo booths can have a large display screen that will show photos clicked and shared by the individuals. Marketers prefer using photo booths for social media reach and shoutouts.
3. Leaders Board
Live leaderboards can encourage your audience to take part in all the different activities that are taking place in those events. An event can have different games and activities so imagine displaying the pictures and scores of the best-performing players on the live leader, and how impactful it can be.
With the leader’s board, the attendees can feel excited or competitive to take part in the gaming activities. You can also reward the best-performing individuals to create more buzz and excitement among the audience.
4. Social Media Wall
Social walls are great to display social media content, you can not just display your social media posts and accounts, ask your event attendees to take part in your social media contest and encourage them to share social media. For the social media wall, you ask your audience to share social media posts regarding the event. They can tweet with the event hashtag or make a post or story with the same. The social media wall will keep displaying fresh feeds of social media. Display the post of your attendees so that others also feel motivated to post on different social media platforms.
5. Ice Breakers
When people are attending events the main motive is to network at the events. So if as an organizer you can add ice breakers and networking games for them, it will be convenient for them to connect and network with other participants in the event. You can create different sheets or small tasks that are related to your event so that you can promote networking at your event. Plus these icebreakers will make networking in the event more convenient for all the participants.
6. Sponsored Content
Event planners can also use gamification for promoting sponsored content. During an event, planners can use sponsors logos, images, and other such things to promote the sponsor’s content. There are different ways organizers can use sponsored content in the event, they can add games like quizzes or other games where individuals can go head to head and the winner gets the sponsored prize.
7. Audience Polls & Q&A
An audience poll is not just a fun gamification activity that you can host during an event it can also help in getting feedback from the audience. With audience polls, you can ask different questions regarding your event and your audience can vote according to their opinions. It is a great idea to keep the audience poll for the last so that the audience can have an opinion to vote for.
Gamification Benefits For Events
There are various benefits of gamification some of which are mentioned below:
1. Improve Engagement At Events
We can’t ignore the fact that gamification can improve engagement during an event. With gamification, it becomes seamless for participants and hosts to engage with others during the event. For a successful event, engagement is vital and with different activities and games, it becomes easy to create that engagement factor in the event. With gamification participants of the events will constantly engage with your brand and they will be able to create memories. Gamification provides individuals with an enhanced experience.
2. Real-Time Feedback
Real-time feedback is among the various benefits that gamification at events can offer. With activities like polls, surveys and Q&A you will be able to collect the feedback of your audience in a fun way. With gamification, organizers will be able to collect enough content from the audience that can help them analyze the performance of the event. By using an event platform for gamification organizers can collect, manage and analyze all the feedback in one place.
3. Brand Awareness
With gamification, brands can take advantage and build a brand image. If brands and event organizers offer a unique experience through gamification they will be successful in creating an impact on the attendees.
Brands can use games to promote their products and services at the event. Do the proper branding with logos and the large screen displaying your brand journey and what you offer to your audience.
4. Increase Footfall
Gamification can also increase the footfall at the event. Gamification can add a fun and personal touch to the event. An event planner can communicate with their audience through gamification and that connection can increase footfall at the event.
By offering rewards for different games and activities event planners can attract a lot of people. Rewards are exciting for the participants and they can also increase the footfall at the event.
6. Attract Sponsors
One of the major advantages of having games and other activities as a part of your event is that it can attract sponsors. Because events that offer gamification usually attract an audience. Participants like to join the event that has something to offer in return and sponsors are always looking for an opportunity to connect with a larger audience so that they can effectively promote their product and service. Such events are usually the first preference of sponsors. They can install their own game at the event through which they can promote their product and service. They can also offer their products as a reward to the best performing individual at the event.
7. Make The Event Memorable
The best part about gamification is that it can make the event memorable for both the host and the audience. With gamification, the audience can create a good network play game, take part in quizzes, and win rewards. Through gamification like social walls and photo booths, they can click pictures and can get featured on the event organizers’ social media or get a shout-out at the event and all these factors will make the event memorable.
The Bottom Line
Gamification can be a new concept for some event planners but it is a powerful element to add to your event. Some platforms also offer event app gamification to make it more convenient for the participants. If you are using an event app you should consider adding games on the app as a part of gamification.
By the end of this article, you know what benefits you can get by including games and activities at your event and we are sure you must have got some amazing gamification ideas for your next event. So if you are planning to host an event don’t forget to add a gamification factor to your event.
