How to Use Challenges to Engage Customers and Grow Revenues

Have you ever considered using challenges in your online store to engage customers?

You might be thinking "Whaaat?!" or "What are these people talking about?"

It's not our invention. Many top and global brands use challenges to excite and engage customers.

Why?

Because challenges get people and customers to take steps to interact with your brand or store.

They find them exciting and become willing to give a few minutes to see how they would fare in your challenge.

Top Brands' Challenges to Engage Customers

You're probably wondering what top brands have used challenges to get customers to engage with them.

One of the top brands that use challenges – although probably not inside a store – is Pepsi.

Yes! The beverage-maker is a big fan of challenges. In fact, they probably do a global challenge every year.

One of their recent challenges, from earlier this year, was the #PepsiCanBalance challenge, where top players like Leo Messi, Mohamed Salah, and others shot videos with unique Pepsi can arrangements they made.

But the football superstars weren't the only ones trying to get Pepsi cans at 45-degree angles on top of each other.

Remember the Coke-and-Mentos challenge that went viral on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram a while back?

It's the same idea. A brand creates a challenge and people start trying it out and taking videos of themselves doing it.

Similarly, personal care brand Dove is known for its various Beauty Challenges. It regularly runs campaigns and challenges to discuss beauty and self-esteem among women.

Further reading: Video Marketing Best Practices: How to Make Your Business Stand Out with Video

How Do Challenges Engage Customers in My Store?

Great question! I was just getting to that. :D

If you have online store or e-commerce business, whether through websites like Shopify and WooCommerce, or directly through your website and/or mobile app, you can create challenges to engage your customers.

They may not go viral like Pepsi's or Coca-Cola's but they will definitely do the trick: get customers to engage with your store and brand.

Benefits of Contests and Challenges

So great, you like the idea of having a challenge on your online store and maybe you're getting eager to engage your customers.

But you're like "Now what?!"

First let's discuss the benefits of having contest or challenge in your store. (We're talking online stores, by the way.)

Challenges can be a win-win for your business and customers. They give you a chance to experiment, engage, market, and grow your business and revenues.

That said, creating customer-engaging challenges shouldn't be considered the solution to every marketing problem. However, they do solve the main problem of customer engagement and driving traffic and sales during slow-days.

Challenges can:

1. Engage your customers to do something fun and relevant
2. Increase your fan base
3. Let your customers do the marketing for You
4. Increase your sales but keep costs low
5. Allow you to engage customers in times of slow-sales
6. Direct customers to pages that don't get a lot of traffic

Challenges should be part of your marketing strategies, though not the only one.

How Do Online Store Challenges Work?

Another great question, thank you for asking!

The basic form of a challenge is: You want your customer to do "something" and in exchange they get a reward.

Usually this reward is in the form of points that they can use later to get a discount on their next purchase or get a voucher.

You can also offer free shipping to certain countries or locations but you'd have to mention that somewhere.

The purpose of the challenge is to get your customer moving around your store and performing tasks or actions that benefit your business.

Let's say you create a challenge for your customer to submit 10 product reviews. Once they do so, you can reward them for the time taken to review by giving them 100 or 1,000 points (depending on the value of points).

The reviews then act as a means to attract other customers.

Also if you have suppliers offering products on your website, the reviews will tell you which suppliers are great and which you should be doing less business with because they may be hurting your brand.

Can Gameball Help Me with These Challenges?

We thought you'd never ask! And the answer is Absolutely Yes!

With Gameball you can create various challenges and contests to engage your customers on your online store.

With every challenge completed, your customers earn extra points that can be redeemed as discounts or vouchers.

Gameball has six types of challenges that you can run on your e-commerce business. Here's how each of them works.

1. Signup: Once a customer signs up or registers on your platform, they complete this challenge. It applies to your website, mobile app, or both if they are integrated.
2. Social Media: You can create a challenge and get your customers to like, follow, and/or share your different pages on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

You can create a series of challenges and badges to get them to share more.

• Event-based Challenge: This type of challenge is based on events or actions taken by your customers on your platform.
  For example: If they write a review or 10, make a $100 or $200 purchase, or even buy from a specific product line.

You decide on the challenge and you can create multiple challenges with multiple badges.

• High Score: In this challenge, your customers break their own buying records by spending more per transaction.

For example, if a customer's last purchase was for $300, they would need to spend more to win this challenge.

You can create several versions of this challenge so customers can complete more challenges and earn more points.

This keeps them active and engaged on your store.

• Birthday: You can create a challenge that pops up when it's a customer's birthday. You can easily configure this in your Gameball dashboard.
• Anniversary: Like the birthday, this challenge appears once it’s the customer's anniversary on your online store or platform.

In addition to these six types of challenges, Gameball gives a game-like flavor to your customers' experience.

Conclusion

There are many customer engagement strategies, challenges are a new tactic that will distinguish your store from others and at the same time engage customers and grow your business.

Here's what Skild.com says about challenges:

"When done properly, a challenge will increase engagement with your customers and thus deepens your connection [with them]." 

Skild.com

And we couldn't agree more!

Challenges are a great way to engage customers. They help increase store traffic and through them customers can snag points that benefit them later.

Start engaging your customers with Gameball's challenges today via Shopify, WooCommerce, or directly through your website.