Gamification of life is a tactic many people employ in order to achieve day-to-day tasks. It works in all aspects of life from dating to marketing (are those the same thing?). Make marketing a game by creating checkpoints, optional objectives, and rewards along the way.
Checkpoints
In games, these are places for you to go back to if you get stuck. If your end goal is to attract new customers via social media campaigns (paid campaigns, not boosted posts), set a list of checkpoints that will help guide you as you proceed.
Your first checkpoint can be identifying your current audience (single, white men, aged 21-35). The second might be defining who your ideal audience is (single men and women of all races between ages 30-60) and compare that to your actual customer base. By setting objectives, if you get lost or your path gets muddled down the line, you can return and not have to restart the mission.
Optional Objectives
These are bonuses for you to attempt to achieve. If your team is functional but you don’t see them going above and beyond very often, setting higher goals may not be the answer. Higher goals that seem unattainable are actually demotivators and can lead to a decrease in productivity.
By keeping the same base goal but setting optional objectives with clear rewards, your team will continue to hit their goals while having an extra carrot on the stick dangled a bit further out. Using our customer acquisition via social media campaign goal, a bonus objective would be to achieve a high interaction rate (likes, comments, shares), a high click through rate (how often people click your ad versus how many people saw it), or reaching a high percentage of your ideal customers. The reward doesn’t need to be monetary either; it can be as easy as early release on Friday if they hit three optional objectives this week.
Rewards
These should be given out early and often with increasing value to your team as they hit checkpoints and objectives. Value doesn’t mean money though (see The Value of Valuing). Understand what your team really values. Millennials value their time and experiences over almost everything (see Marketing to Millennials), so reward them with extra time at lunch, early release on Friday, or for hitting a major goal, a team outing to a local event.