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Krista - Summit In A Box37min

Krista - Summit In A Box00:00

Hey, hey, welcome to the Summit Host Hangout Podcast where you'll learn how to host a high converting virtual summit that leads to your biggest signature offer launch yet. I'm your host, Krista from Summit in a Box, and I am super pumped for today's episode. If you have ever taken part in my challenges, summits, live trainings, even been an affiliate for our programs. You know that I love to include games and prizes and different engagement aspects to make things fun and kind of just give people an extra reason to participate. And I really never thought much of it when I started. I tried it once, I think, in a challenge the first time, and I noticed that it increased show up rates and engagement. I was like, Oh, well, that's cool, and it's also fun. So I just kept going, and after a while, I found out it's an actual thing called gamification, and I have the absolute expert on to talk more about it today. She's based in Bristol, England, and she uses gamification in both life and her business to improve results and meet her goals. She's even a sponsored hula hooper and has used gamification to outsell the other sponsors by 10x. And I'm just so obsessed with that, but gamification has enabled her to improve all aspects of her business, leading to more sales and greater results for everyone. Just to give you a couple examples: she was able to increase course completion rates by 29% and increase conversion rates for a challenge from 1 to 3, which is a big deal when it comes to the bottom line, thanks to gamification. And that's really just the tip of the iceberg here. She now helps other businesses apply gamification techniques to boost results for themselves and their customers and members. And this goes so far beyond summits, and I know you're going to want to see what else she has up her sleeve after you hear from her today. So we'll give you all the links to go follow along after. But without further ado, let's dive in and talk with Kimba Cooper-Martin. Welcome, Kimba!

Kimba Cooper-Martin01:43

Hey. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I love talking about all of these things, all of the things you do are so fun, and you do use a lot of gamification, so I'm excited to talk about the ways that you use it as well.

Krista - Summit In A Box01:55

Yeah, this is going to be so good. And yeah, I'm just excited for more of my people to know about you and make their things more fun. So tell us a little bit more about you and your business, so.

Kimba Cooper-Martin02:03

Okay, so, yeah, I'm a gamification consultant, so my job is essentially helping other people to apply gamification in their business, to motivate themselves, motivate their students, their members, their team. It's one of those things. Do you think it would be helpful to explain what gamification is for the people?

Krista - Summit In A Box02:04

Yeah, go ahead!

Kimba Cooper-Martin02:05

...and might not know. So there's not really an easy one-liner that I can give you. Unfortunately, most gamification experts have their own slightly different description of what gamification is. So what I'll do instead is I'll give you a bit of a summary, and hopefully, as we're talking you'll get a good idea of what it is.

Kimba Cooper-Martin02:41

So throughout history, we've all played games. Games have been around forever. Bingo has been around forever. The lottery has been around forever. As long as we've been able to talk and tell stories, we've been playing games. And whether you think you are a gamer or not, you will have played games too. So you know a board game, a video game, hopscotch when you're a kid - if you watch or engage in sport in any way, all of these are a type of game, and they all have psychological tools and techniques built into them to encourage you to keep playing, to compel you to keep going, even when you're bored, even when you're frustrated because you you're enjoying yourself, or you want to get to that next level, or you want to beat your opponent, or you want to beat that end of level boss.

Kimba Cooper-Martin03:22

And so what gamification does is it takes those tools and techniques from games and puts them into non-game settings. Now you can apply this to pretty much anything that you want to improve motivation on, but I specifically work in areas that I have knowledge and experience in. So I come from a marketing background, which is why my company is Kimba Digital, because we were a digital marketing agency. And so the areas that we focus on are marketing using gamification in things like launches - so challenges, summits, affiliate launches - and then online educational programs, so memberships and courses. Those are the kind of areas where I was already doing it without thinking. Before I even knew what gamification was, I was already naturally applying it, so it made sense for me to continue to to do that when we pivoted into gamification.

Krista - Summit In A Box04:13

Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you. Like, how did this become your thing? And it sounds like kind of on accident.

Kimba Cooper-Martin04:17

Yeah, so I've had a bit of a... I think everybody does when they start a busines:, you have a bit of a wishy washy journey. You know, you start out and you'll do anything, anyone will ask you to, because you're like, oh, I desperately need some money! Or, do you know: I don't really know what I'm doing. And so when I started out in business, I was a virtual assistant, and very quickly realized that my expertise from from what I'd done previously, working in in corporate, made sense for me to to focus specifically on marketing, open to digital marketing agency, and then niche down into social media, because that's, you know, that's where we were getting the best results, and that that's where I was managing to get leads for people.

Kimba Cooper-Martin04:59

And then, over time, again, we niched down into Instagram training because, again, that's where we were getting the results. I was doing really well doing the Instagram training and teaching people how to get leads from Instagram online. But Instagram, as you all are probably aware, doesn't stop changing. Just keeps changing. It's like the things keep changing.,Aad despite the fact that what I was teaching still works, despite any feature changes, I'd realized that I was getting super stressed trying to keep on top of it, and I thought, "Why am I running this business?" I'm not... you know, I could go and work for someone else if I wanted to be unnecessarily unhappy or stressed for no reason. So I said, "What am I going to do? What am I going to do?" And out of the blue, my partner said to me, "you know, you never exercise unless you set yourself a challenge." And I was like, "No, I don't, like, that's nonsense what you're talking about." And then I thought about it, and I was like, "You know what is right? Like, you will only catch me doing a press up if I'm doing a 30 day challenge, like you'll only catch me running if I am training for a half marathon and I have a training plan with like things I could tick off every day." And I thought about it, and I was like, "oh, you know, I hate to admit it, but he's right, firstly and secondly, maybe I'm doing this everywhere."

Kimba Cooper-Martin06:10

And I remembered that probably about 10 years before, at a marketing conference, I'd heard this buzzword 'gamification,' and it had gone out on my brain until then. And so I did all of this research, and I started looking into it, and I did a couple of courses, and I thought, "Do you know what this is? I'm already doing this everywhere. I can do this. I'm already doing in my business naturally, I'm already doing it as part of my exercise naturally." The hula hooping thing, I was already doing it as part of part of hula hooping to sell hula hoops online, which meant that I had evidence of it working for a product business as well as my service-based business, and I thought, "You know what? I can... I can run with this, and it's so much more fun than Instagram, and it's so much more interesting," and I have so much more control over it than Instagram, so it just seemed like a bit of a no-brainer. So I wrapped up the Instagram stuff in a way that I could use my gamification to check that... like, check myself, make sure that it was working, so I did. I ran a final round of my Instagram course and gamified it a bunch more, which is where those stats came from, off the back of a final challenge, and was able to kind of test my stuff before I started offering it out to the wider world.

Krista - Summit In A Box07:19

I love that. And I love that you were able to both use it to, like, make sure things were good on that side, but also just get some great stats out of, like, one final hurrah. That's great. I love that. And I feel like we've kind of already heard a little bit of it here and there, like in your bio, and just little things you've mentioned. But I want to make it, like, crystal clear to everyone: Why would you say it is so beneficial for people to gamify things in their business or events specifically?

Kimba Cooper-Martin07:46

So gamification is a motivational tool, and it is just a tool. So you need to understand your people really well, and you need to understand what it is that you're trying to gamify before you do it. So... and the natural thing that people do when they come to me, as they say, "Kimba, can you make my launch fun? Can you make my membership fun? Can you make my summit fun?" Fun is great, but fun is not a business objective. Fun is a nice outcome. It's a nice bonus, but it's not a business objective. It's not so... like, some things that are really good business objectives that can come from using gamification - increased engagement, increased leads, increased course completion, including improved member retention. You can use it to motivate yourself to complete tasks. You can use it for like, getting more traffic to your website, for getting more newsletter signups. Like, what is the problem that you are trying to solve? And it has to be a motivational problem, generally speaking, and you can use it for that. Like, the massive benefit of using gamification is it's a problem solver. But I'm going to add a caveat in here: You need to make sure that the thing that you're doing is working first, okay? Because if you try and gamify something and it's not working, then you'll blame the gamification.

Krista - Summit In A Box09:08

That's what people do in summits, too! I feel ya!

Kimba Cooper-Martin09:12

You know, people like, "Oh, I've never run a challenge before. Can you help me gamify to make it the best ever?" And I'm like, No, you have... I'm sorry, I can't! You have to run it first. I have to make sure that it works and that what you're selling isn't a load of nonsense. I need to make sure that the thing that you're offering works. I need to make sure that the challenge is working. Then we can use gamification for marginal gains, like, we can use gamification to tweak this stat and to make this thing slightly better and to help those people achieve that thing in a slightly better way. I cannot help you from the very beginning, because then there's no way to monitor what's working. No way! And like, metrics is a key part of gamification in the same way it is with with business and marketing in general. You know, you can't tell what's effective if you can't monitor it. You can't monitor it if you're changing everything at once. And I think actually, Krista, I think in one of the sessions, you didn't mention momentum, you actually said something along those lines. And I was like, in the background going, Yes! Like, change one thing at a time and focus on that and see if that works. Like, if you're doing a whole summit from scratch, which they wouldn't be, if they're working with you, obviously - they would know that the will not work, so that's fine, but you know, if you're... if you're trying something the first time, please don't add gamification straight away, because you don't know what's working.

Krista - Summit In A Box10:29

Yes, yeah, that's exactly that. I mean, that's what you heard me say. It's like people want to host a brand new summit, even using my strategies doesn't, doesn't matter, and they want to launch a brand new offer at the same time. Well, then the launch doesn't work, and they blame the summit. I was like, You have no idea what didn't work. All of it is new, you know. So I totally see how that ties right in with gamification. That's funny. We have the same problems.

Kimba Cooper-Martin10:55

Yeah, it's the same thing. And I think it's really, you know, it's really easy to blame the shiny tool, which is the summit, or the gamification, or whatever the very tool is, when actually your people just don't want to buy that thing, or, you know, whatever the actual problem is that you haven't identified beforehand. So generally speaking, the types of people I work with already have successful XYZ. It's already working, but maybe they're bored of it, or there's been a lull, or a natural kind of wearing off of that novelty, and they want to revive things, or they want to add an extra level, or they want to get slightly better results, in a way that, you know... I try, try really hard to not use the word fun, because fun means different things to different people. What I find fun and what you find fun are... might be completely different things. And so, you know, I want to say, you know, they want to implement something in a fun way, but without using the word fun, I don't know how to do that. You know what I mean, in a different way, in a novel way, in a... in a way that they haven't thought of yet.

Krista - Summit In A Box12:00

Okay, well, let's dive into gamification for summits specifically. What are some of the primary areas you've seen it used in primary goals or primary parts of the summit? Take that wherever you want to go with it.

Kimba Cooper-Martin12:12

Oh, all over the place. So you can use gamification in the marketing of the summit to get people in. You can use gamification in the running of the summit. So you can use it in your talks to get, you know, to get people to engage. You can use it to get people to show up live, if you're running your sessions live, you can use it to engage the people in the community. If you have a community element, you can use it to help with the upsell. You can use it to help if you have if your speakers are affiliates, you can use it to motivate them. You can use it to motivate your speakers, to put things in on time, to actually hit deadlines, anything where you're like, 'actually, that's a motivation problem,' you can add gamification in.

Kimba Cooper-Martin12:55

And like, you already use some gamification in your, in your summits. In fact, I made a quick note beforehand because I, you know, I've recently watched you do a summit, and so I could see some of the elements. So, like your bingo for example, you have a bingo card. It's interactive, and it's a really good example of... I mean, I've done this in previous summits as well. I've done a bingo card where you can include some things that you want your audience to achieve. So I watched the video, or I did the quiz, or I signed up for X, Y and Z, and also things you think they want to achieve. So there's kind of some skin in the game for them as well.

Kimba Cooper-Martin13:33

So I learned something new. I met somebody new that was beneficial to my business. I got a lead, or whatever it is, depending on the topic of the of the summit. It helps them to engage. It helps them to win. It helps you to win. It's a really good example of using gamification in a summit setting. And the way that you could add more to it if you wanted to - I think you did prizes, am I right? You had a... so you could do multiple prizes. You could... something that we've done in previous summits, and I don't know how well this is going to translate over audio, but I'm going to try. So what we've done previously is a visual that we call the Snazzy Prezi Picker, and on it are prizes that you can win, but they're all wrapped up like Christmas gifts, and they're all numbered. So when somebody wins a prize, I will go live and talk through whatever I need to talk to about for that day in the summit, and then I'll announce the winner and live they can tell me which present they would like to open. And we... I can hover over the present, and it will wiggle. It's quite interactive. And then I will select it and it will open live to reveal what they've won. And people love this, like, it's, you know, it's, it's quite simple. And people have, some of my clients have replicated this with static images. Like it doesn't need to be interactive the way that we did it, but people love it because it means that they get to see live what they've picked, what they've won, they get to see if they've won that day.

Kimba Cooper-Martin15:03

Yeah, it's it's worked really well for encouraging people to actually show up to live sessions and to engage a bit more in the community, and actually be there in the community, doing the tasks, whatever that might be. And what I've done another... in another summit that I did was we did levels of bingo. So once they've completed one bingo card, if they, if they want to, I will message them privately and not tell anyone else about it. You can have a second bingo card. So there's that like mystery, there's like exclusivity, all of these gamification techniques that make them feel super special and engaged, and all of these things lead them to a feeling of like almost loyalty, because they've been brought into behind the scenes of what's going on. They feel like a member of the club, and all you've done is added an extra bingo card, which took you off half an hour to make it, not a big piece of work. It didn't cost you a lot of money. It didn't require lots of software engineering to do it. You can do this really straightforward. You can create a Canva graphic and get them to print it off. It doesn't have to be a big job, but it can be super effective. Like, and hopefully this one example, it's just one tiny element of a summit, but it can make a big difference to your result.

Krista - Summit In A Box16:17

Oh, absolutely. Like I I would hate to see what my like personally, what my engagement would be like in my summits if I did not do bingo. Like mine is bingo - you know, like, it'd be sad place. And I think a lot of people leave it out. They're like, "Oh, bingo. That's silly," you know, they kind of think it's cheesy or whatever. But then they're the ones asking me, "How do I increase engagement in my summit community," like, I don't know, man, I don't know.

Kimba Cooper-Martin16:45

Don't be afraid to be cheesy, right?

Krista - Summit In A Box16:48

Yeah, don't worry. People love it. People love it. I've seen people love it across industries. One of the other things you listed off that gamification can help with is marketing, which really intrigued me. Are you willing to break down like one way to gamify marketing?

Kimba Cooper-Martin17:03

Oh my gosh. There's so many ways you can gamify marketing. So let's say your summit launch. So okay, let me give you an example of a freebie that I've done recently that is kind of gamified. That, actually, I think I did it for the Membership Momentum Summit. Anyway, doesn't matter. It was seven... I think it was, it was like, seven ways that you can use gamification in your membership or something like that. I can't remember exactly what it's called, but what I did is like, instead of just saying it's a PDF, is I gave people the option of how they access that information, so they could choose to watch it as a mini video series, or a mini audio series, or a PDF, or... I can't remember, but there was, like four or five different ways they could access this content, which kind of ties into that feeling of autonomy and choice. Not everyone wants to read a PDF, not everyone wants to watch a video series. So giving people those opportunities to choose - choose your own adventure, is the, is the trademark phrase, isn't it? - is really, really useful.

Kimba Cooper-Martin18:03

And what you can do off the back of that... Now, in this particular example, I could then upsell them to a video course or an audio course or whatever, because I already know what their preferences are. So you can use your freebie, and it doesn't have to be a quiz, as you're seeing in this example, to segment your audience so that you know where they need to go to. So like, in your summit, I'm pretty sure that you have various levels depending on, like, if they want the free or if they want the VIP all-access pass or whatever. So you could use email segmentation and your lead magnet in a fun, gamified way.

Kimba Cooper-Martin18:35

So like a quiz, or, like, you know, something like that, there's a bit different, bit novel to segment them in a different way, but you're probably thinking that's a lot of work, like, what can I do that's simpler than that? Okay, I understand. I get it. Everyone's busy, right? Gamification can be as simple as a poll. It doesn't have to be huge. You can just start by engaging your audience with some polls, by adding in some silly like, you know, on Instagram, you get those this or that stories where, you know, you have on one side a picture of pumpkin spice latte and on the other side of black coffee, and you just say, which one would you prefer? So, you know, think of the topic of your, of your summit. Think about the kinds of things that are going to interest those people. You know, it's always about audience first. It's marketing at the end of the day.

Kimba Cooper-Martin19:19

And think about how you can increase engagement using silly games and silly activities like that that seem irrelevant, but by increasing increasing engagement on those other posts, those people are going to see more of your content. So when you are selling your summit to places, getting people to join for free to your summit, they are more likely to see that content. They are more likely to be interested. They're more likely to know who you are because they've been engaging in your content. You can play bingo on your stories as well. Like, it's not just a summit thing. I've done that before. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's loads of silly games you can play on social media, absolutely, tons of them. In fact, I mean, just go and go to my Instagram. I've got a highlight that's called Games where there's a bunch of games that I've played, played with my audience in the past, some of them have worked well for my audience. Some of them haven't, but then some of like some of those that haven't worked well for my audience have been pilfered by other people, copied and have worked really well for other audiences. So, you know, there's this, there's definitely a test and learn with these things you don't know until you try sometimes, what your audience is going to respond to, or like you say, what people are going to think is cheesy, or what you they're going to think is childish, or what they're going to think is, I don't know, not right for them. But you'll start to get an idea of what works, what they like, what they don't like. And also, it's quite fun, like playing with these things, you know, trying something new without having to try the latest, whatever trend on reels, you know, these are a bit longer lasting. These things, these games, are a bit more there's a bit more longevity. They're a bit more evergreen. You can use them on repeat if you want to, by just tweaking them slightly. Whereas, you know, these trending reels, not that I'm sick... I don't know why I'm digging into trending reels right now. I'm not anti-reels, just it was just an example that came to mind.

Krista - Summit In A Box21:10

Some of the examples you brought up there made me think of something else I wanted to ask you about, which is gamification myths. Because, you know, I think a lot of people think they have to look a certain way, or they are all cheesy, or there's a right way to do it. And I know you have some myths you'd like to talk about, so I'd love to hear about them.

Kimba Cooper-Martin21:28

Oh, there's so many. There's so many. So probably the two that I get the most are it won't work for my audience because they aren't a certain age, or they aren't a certain gender. I hear that a lot. So, you know, my audience is older women, for example, so it's not going to work for them. But I worked with a one to one client recently, and we were gamifying their membership. And the membership is for crafters, and so most of them are women over a certain age. And some of the stuff this person implemented, they were like, it's not gonna work. Like, to be fair, to be fair to her and completely honest, she never said this to me until afterwards. She never expressed any doubt. She was totally on board, she implemented. And then she said, one of my oldest members has been the most engaged, like, I think, in her 70s or 80s and like, was totally engaged with the whole thing, was really on board, was the most like, interested in all of it.

Kimba Cooper-Martin22:30

And so you never know who's going to engage and and to counter in a more factual way than just an anecdote from my world, games have been around forever. When you think of different ages, they play different types of games. But every every kind of generation has games that they play. So you know, you think Gen Z, and you think millennials, you're probably thinking video games, but you think Gen X, and you think boomers, you might be thinking arcade games like they grew up when Pong came out on the arcades for the first time, and Space Invaders and all these things. So they've played games, too. And if you go up a generation, you think, what are they playing? Well, you might find them playing chess, or you might find them playing card games. Like every generation, every type of human has played or does play some kind of game. And so maybe you don't use the term gamification, because they might not identify as a gamer, but it doesn't mean it won't work for them.

Kimba Cooper-Martin23:24

And the same thing with gender. So like quite often, people, particularly people who present as women, will say, I'm not a gamer because they don't play video games. They don't play Call of Duty, or I don't know some of the shoot 'em up, right? They don't play those kinds of games. They don't play FIFA. They don't play any of the you know these car games. They don't play them, but they do play puzzle games. They do play Farmville. They do play, I don't know, these like mobile games, because that's where generally female gamers can be found. But they don't call themselves a gamer, even though they are like they're spending probably as much time, you know, whilst they're waiting in in the queue, in the line at a shop, playing games as somebody sat down for four hours playing with their buddies online. Just don't consider themselves to be a gamer.

Kimba Cooper-Martin24:17

So I think that's a massive misconception that it'll only work for a certain age or a certain type of person. And, yeah, and I think we already kind of alluded to the tech side of things. I get that so much you need to, you know, I can't, I can't afford to gamify my course, because I don't have a whole development team to spend six figures on redesigning everything and make something scratch. It's like, well, you know, as we've already talked about, you can just put a poll in your stories, and that's gamification. It doesn't need to be a huge, expensive, techie project where it's all 3D and interactive, and it can be a bunch of like, little ideas strung together to help you achieve your goals, whatever they might be.

Kimba Cooper-Martin24:59

I think another one. I think you'll like this one. Gamification, unfortunately, and I'm really sorry to break it to you, is not something you can set and forget. So like summits, like memberships, like challenges, you'll put some things into place, and they might not work, or the people might not respond to them in the way that you anticipated, and you have to suddenly, like, scramble around and make it work. Gamification is an art as well as a science. And like, you know you can you can try and guess what's going to work for your audience, but you don't know until you try. And so you can't set and forget. Unfortunately, you do have to test and learn. You do have to iterate. You do have to keep changing things.

Kimba Cooper-Martin25:38

And also you have to keep changing things, because it doesn't matter how exciting something is, it doesn't matter how fun something is - as humans, we are designed for habituation. We are designed to to... habituation is recognizing patterns that we should be afraid of in nature. So recognizing, you know, we we're alert. We're alert, and if nothing dangerous happens, we know we don't need to be worried in that situation anymore. We know there's nothing to be scared of. We know that there's no danger. And so then we stop noticing those things that aren't dangerous anymore.

Kimba Cooper-Martin26:13

And so that's why novelty is so important in your challenges, in your summits, in your memberships, in your courses. Because once you've got used to how something happens, your brain stops paying attention to it. It just switches off. It's how it's how our brains have evolved. So you need to be adding novelty in. So as much as I would love to say, come work with me, let's put a gamification plan in place, and that'll be you forever, I'm sorry to say, that's not how it works. You're going to have to, in six months or a year, change things slightly, move things around, give different options. Because as well as the fact that people's brains get used to what you've put in place, they also change. So in a summit situation, they're not there for long enough necessarily for any real change to happen. But whatever you're launching off the back of it, whatever course or membership or book group program or mastermind or whatever it is, they will have changed stages. They will have changed levels. They will have learned something new, and so they will have changed. So the things that you need to provide for them will need to change to align with the kinds of person they are now as well. So yeah, unfortunately, you can't set and forget.

Kimba Cooper-Martin27:23

And I think maybe the last one, because I've talked a lot about misconceptions and myths, is, is it just manipulating people? This is something I get a lot. It's something that you know, if somebody knows what gamification is, when they ask me what I do for a living, they'll say something like, are you not worried about manipulating people? Are you not worried about the ethical repercussions of, you know, using these tools, which are, you know, essentially, what games you to make people addicted?

Kimba Cooper-Martin27:52

And my answer is that, of course you can use gamification for manipulation. Of course you can. There are lots of examples of it out there. It is all over the place. There are some very big businesses who have got into quite a bit of trouble for using gamification in ways that are extraordinarily unethical. But what I would say is they probably didn't realize that when they put them into place, they probably weren't doing it on purpose. They were trying to meet their business objectives, and they saw this is a tool that would help them to do so. And they didn't really think about, maybe the effects on the end user. They probably didn't think about consent.

Kimba Cooper-Martin28:33

So consent something that I teach about quite a bit, like really, really understanding who it is that you're working with and what it is they are trying to achieve, and not assuming. Because, I think you know, if you're assuming that they they're on the course to learn what you're teaching, or they're in the summit because they, you know, they want to learn the things that you're teaching, you might be missing a proportion of people who are in there because they want to network, or in there because they want to see how somebody teaches something, or, you know, are in there for another reason. And so gamifying to get people just at the end of the course, might be manipulating people to do things that they don't want to do, if that wasn't their intention. So you need to really understand who the people are, so that you can gamify properly, and so that you're not doing something that could be considered to be, you know, negative or evil. And I think no... most people, I like to think people are good, so most people aren't actively trying to manipulate with gamification, but it can happen accidentally. And so, you know, I've now got it built into my contracts when I work with people one to one that, you know, it is possible to use these tools and techniques that I'm teaching and the ideas that I generate in a way that is not beneficial to the end user, and that is not in their best interest, and that that is not something that I am wanting to get involved with. And if people want to use these techniques for that, then I will not work with them. I'm not interested in that.

Kimba Cooper-Martin29:52

I'm all about ethical gamification. I'm all about the win-win. I'm all about consent and making sure that, you know, as much as... and that's why when I work with with customers one to one, that's why we send out a survey first to their customers, or rather, I give questions to the person who I'm working with to send to their audience so we can find out, why are you actually here? Why did you actually join this summit? Why did you actually join this membership? Are you getting what you want out of it? What kind of personality type Have you got? We talk about player types because gamification. We talk about player types so you know what kind of personalities you've got in your audience, and then we gamify to meet those needs. So you don't necessarily have to say 'we're going to gamify.' You can figure out what they're trying to achieve and gamify to that specifically, rather than assuming what they want. And hopefully, by doing that, you can be more ethical about your approach.

Krista - Summit In A Box30:48

I have never even thought of that side of things before that is really interesting. And I could see how you could accidentally take it a little bit too far, you know, because I've even joked, jokingly said in my calls before I'm gonna bribe you to, you know, engage and have fun with this challenge. I don't, I don't mean it in a bad way or anything, but I'm like, Oh, I shouldn't be looking at it differently and not say that.

Kimba Cooper-Martin31:12

I mean, I think they realize that, you know, it's joke. But I think also, the the other thing is to enable people the opportunity to opt out. I think, you know, you can add gamification in here and there, and like you know you already do it. So with your bingo card, for example, you don't have to take part. It is not a compulsory part of the experience that you have to take part in the bingo card. If it was, then that's not ethical at all. And it's when things don't have an opt out option that they become stressful, and you don't want your audience to be stressed.

Kimba Cooper-Martin31:43

The example that I often give, actually, is with Duolingo, the language learning app. So I've seen a few people recently who've said, I'm not using that app anymore because it was stressing me out. I would get to Sunday night, and I was so desperate to stay in the league that I'm in. So leagues are like levels, and only a certain amount of people can stay in a level each week. So in order to stay in the level, you have to compete against other people to get to the top of the league. And they were saying, I was staying up till midnight on a Sunday night, stressing out, you know, playing like really playing to try and stay at the top of this league. And that wasn't the purpose for me. The purpose for me was to be able to practice my language learning and Duolingo is, in a lot of ways, an example that I would give to anyone who is doing sort of, sort of online educational learning as an example of somebody who uses lots of different gamification techniques and uses it well, and yet still, there is room for improvement there.

Kimba Cooper-Martin32:37

So you know, you're not going to get it right 100% of the time, and that's okay, because, you know, for example, that with that example, I use Duolingo, I'm definitely addicted to it. I am 100% on board. I think I've nearly got a 700 day streak. Very exciting. The leagues don't bother me. I'm not interested in them at all. And because of that, it doesn't stress me out, like the streak is what I care about, and that is an example of understanding your audience and making things opt in and opt out. I think so, yeah, I think, I mean, I think you do that anyway. I think you give people the opportunity to opt in and opt out.

Krista - Summit In A Box33:15

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So interesting. Oh my gosh. My husband is also, he's way into his streak, but he only has like, 400 and something, so I'm gonna have to tell him, You got hundreds to catch up to Kimba, who I talked to today. Okay, one more question. We only have a couple minutes here, but I wanted to ask: does gamification always have to result in prizes?

Kimba Cooper-Martin33:38

No. So I've already talked a little bit about different types of personalities, but, you know, just to look at an example that everybody will understand: some people prefer carrot and some people prefer stick. So, you know, a prize isn't going to work for everybody, and incentivizing badly is one of the kind of banes of my, of my industry, I think, is, you know, I see, I see so many summits and so many challenges, and they're offering like, a spa day as the prize. And I'm like, your audience has got people in it that, like, identify as guys who aren't going to be interested in spa days, or people who are, you know, identify as female who aren't going to be interested in spa days, and so they're not going to try and get that prize. And so what you've done by incentivizing badly is you've put off those people who were achievers who were going to do that stuff anyway, from taking part at all because they don't want to win that prize. So it's really important to think carefully about how you incentivize, if you're going to, and so you can demotivate by using it badly, as I've said.

Kimba Cooper-Martin34:43

So I think when using gamification, don't overuse it. If there are things that people are going to do anyway, they are inherently motivating. They are things like, I don't know if somebody said to me, Kimba, you have to eat chocolate every day for 30 days, I'd be like, Yeah, well, then I'm totally going to do that. I can do that 100% and at the end of 30 days, we'll give you 100 pounds. Okay, great. So at the end of the 100 days, they give me 100 pounds, and then they're like, Right, you're going to keep going? I'm like, Yeah, you're going to give me another 100 pounds at the end of 30 days. No, I'm not going to. Well then I'm not going to eat chocolate every day, which makes no sense, because I like eating chocolate because that pride isn't there that I've been incentivized by. I'm not going to do it anymore. So if something is inherently motivating, if something is something that people want to do anyway, do not give prizes for that thing. It doesn't make any sense to be giving prizes for that thing. For those people, there might be people for whom the incentives are required, but for other people, it might be better to give them some praise, or to, you know, give them a virtual badge. Like it doesn't need to be a real thing or even an incentive at all. Like for some people, simply finishing and achieving for them is sufficient. Like, for me, getting rid of a five day challenge amazing, like, I did all the things I got, everything I wanted out of it. That's perfect. That's perfectly fine.

Krista - Summit In A Box36:10

So good. Oh my gosh. I even, like, took notes on this. This is wonderful. I'm excited. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. And where can people go to learn more about you and what you offer? I know you have a freebie that people need to grab. Tell us about it.

Kimba Cooper-Martin36:24

Okay, so the freebie, I will tell you about that now. So it is five gamification techniques to boost your marketing engagement, and they are all free. And of course, I have gamified it, because why else? Like, of course I would. So it's not just your usual email drip sequence. It is an email drip sequence, but what happens is, you'll get a technique, and then the next day, I will set you a challenge to implement that technique in your marketing that day, there and then, and then the following day you'll get a new technique. So it's a 10 day sequence, I guess, where you get it alternates, so you actually get to take action, because there's nothing worse than these emails going in your inbox and then you never use them. That's just annoying. So please don't go, do go and check that out. I'm sure the link will be in the show notes. And we're Kimbadigital everywhere. So K I M B A digital on pretty much any channel that you like. We are probably there as Kimbadigital, because we used to be a digital marketing agency. So we've got all the places, and then if you just want to hang out, we've got a free Facebook community, The Business Game, which is all about business and gamification.

Krista - Summit In A Box37:32

I love it. Thank you so much for being here, and thank you so much everyone for tuning in, for showing up, and all the links to all Kimba stuff and channels, head to the link in the episode description, wherever you're listening, and for now, go out and take action to plan, strategize and launch your high converting virtual summit.

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