How Do I Gamify My Course?

Hey everybody, it's Tara Bryan. And you are listening to the course building secrets podcast. Whether you're a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide them on the fastest path to results. This podcast will give you practical real life tips that you can use today to build your online experiences that get results and create raving fans. Why? So you can monetize your expertise and serve more people without adding more time or team to your business? If you're looking to uncover your million dollar framework, package it and use it to scale you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Hey, everybody, in this episode, I want to talk about gamification. And gamification is really just adding game like elements to your online course. So you've probably heard about gamification, it is a huge buzzword, it is something that everybody wants in their course. But why? Why would you add gamification into your course? Why wouldn't you just, you know, create a bunch of videos based on what your expertise is, and throw it out so people can consume it. And there is a lot of really strong evidence for why that doesn't work, right. So when you think about it from a short term strategy, yes, packaging your expertise into an online course, is an awesome approach for you to package what you're doing, leverage your time, get your expertise out of your head and start to help people. And that's awesome. That's a great first step. However, what happens is, as you're really building a business around your expertise, the the most important thing for you is, once you get a customer in the door, once you get somebody who's interested in learning from you, you have to not only get them results, right, do what you've promised in that sale. But what you want to do is elevate their experience. So they stay and buy more. That's the trick, right is that so often, you know, if people come in you, they want to take something, they're super motivated at the beginning to learn and get the results that they're looking for. But when they get into it, they know, oh, I actually have to do something, right, you actually have to learn something. And so many times they start to fall off, or they get distracted, or they go do something else, or whatever else because it's hard, right? They hacked have to actually change their behavior, or learn a new skill and change is hard for people. So then they will go somewhere else. Or they will say, Oh, that program didn't work, or that course was okay. And they were really nice, but I didn't get any results. And unfortunately, that is a direct.

It that is a direct conflict with you trying to successfully grow your business, right? Because you need customers and you need repeat customers. So when you're looking at creating an online course, a lot of times you are looking at how do I add different things within my course in order to make it more sticky? is what we call, call it right? Well, how do you make it sticky? How do you make it that people want to come back, learn, interact, and be a part of your initial course that you put out there. But also, you know, they keep consuming whatever you purchase whatever you buy. So your goal as a course creator isn't just to package your expertise and put it out there. Your goal is to help your customers get results and turn them into raving fans and repeat buyers. And you do that through engagement. You do that through getting people involved in what you're doing. So they come back over and over and over again, they get results. They're happy, and you're developing that long term strategy. And a great way to do that is through gamification. So like I said, gamification is really just taking some game elements that you would find in you know, in any sort of video game or whatever out there or even board games out there. And using that as different triggers or motivation along the learners path to help keep them engaged in what they're doing. So many of you probably have an Apple watch or maybe you're a A peloton user or you go to Starbucks or something else, right? If you've noticed, there are ways that each one of those those tools, keeps you engaged, right, you get rewarded for, for taking action, you get notifications, which is a great way to, you know, have people stay engaged with what you're doing, right? People want to achieve results, not necessarily competition with other people, maybe competition with themselves, maybe they want to, you know, see how well they can do.

So really think about various ways that you can engage your people, then the, the most important thing is to really think about your learner, and the experience that they're going to have as they go through your online course. What is it that you want them to do? Where they can end up having obstacles or different challenges throughout the process that you could maybe add in some additional ways to keep them engaged? And why what ways can you reward them for taking action or doing certain certain activities or, you know, achieving different milestones along the path. Gamification doesn't have to be super, over the top, it doesn't have to be super complicated. It really is just being intentional about thinking about that, that learners journey or that customer's journey, from the time they become a customer, to the time that you ascend them to the next thing, and then beyond. And the most simple way to do that is literally draw on, you know, a notepad or sketchbook or whatever else, draw their experience, all the steps that they're going to go through from where they are today to where they're going to go and draw that out. What is their journey? What does that look like, when you put that learner on a path, there are all sorts of things that are going to happen. Think about a traditional movie, right? When you think about the the main character, the the one that's having, you know, some sort of conflict right there, they need to do something different, they need to learn something, they're trying to achieve a result. And, you know, they're going to go down this windy path, right? That every movie has sort of the same, the same structure to it, right? You have the reluctant hero, or the the main character who you know, wants something, there's something that that is that they haven't achieved yet, or they're looking for, they want something to happen. And then they, you know, they encounter all of, you know, this sort of all these experiences, on their way to getting to that conclusion, or to the result that they're looking for. So just like, like someone in the movie, map out what that looks like for your learner all the way from beginning to end? And then how can you reward them for taking action? How can you look at various challenges and obstacles that they're going to run into and build something into it that that gives them a touch point, maybe it's a card, maybe it's like something physical like that, where you're sending them a milestone marker, maybe they've achieved a certain revenue number, you know, halfway through, maybe you want to recognize that you can do that, physically or digitally, but that the the first thing to do is just really map that out, and where would you give them some type of reward or recognition.

Now, the one thing I will say about this, because I think a lot of times people either go overboard, or they don't really, they don't really, they're not really strategic, I'll say around how to reward and recognize people, right? There's a whole science around this, I can get into that in another episode. But the important thing is, is that you're not just putting gratuitous rewards or notifications out there, right? Like people don't want rewards and recognition for not doing anything. Because then it doesn't have meaning. So you want to make sure that whatever you're doing is going to have meaning is the goal of your course for them to make a certain you know, number of sales or a certain you know, dollar figure or what you know, whatever it is that you've promised, right? Then reward them for doing that. You know, there's a one of the tools that people have to create their own versus when they get to a certain sales number, they'll get, you know, a little package in the mail with a pin, and a T shirt, and different things like that, because they've achieved a significant milestone. If they were to get that milestone for every dollar, or every customer they brought in, at, you know, at a certain time, they would just ignore it, right? Because it wouldn't have any meaning. So really, once you've mapped it out, think about what that meaning is.

There's another course creator that I've, I've seen, and she literally has a badge for every single little tiny thing within the course. And that, to me is gratuitous, it's too much, you don't feel like you are achieving something significant. You just feel like you're just doing one activity, and then you get a badge. So there's less meaning there. So really think through that along the path, and then, you know, how are you going to sort of congratulate them or, you know, recognize them at the end when they've actually achieved what the goal was for what you wanted them to do. And really, you know, gamification is no more complicated than that, you can come up with all sorts of creative ways to recognize and reward people for taking action. But that's really at the at the core of what it is, is to think about just being really intentional about recognizing people recognizing that they're taking action and recognizing that sometimes it's more difficult for them just to take those baby steps. And it is to take the big leaps forward. And and think about that as you are doing it. If you are interested in learning more about gamification, and how to gamify what you have, or really thinking about a cool, maybe physical slash digital solution for rewarding and recognizing your learners as they ascend through your program or programs. Let me know, this is something that we do with our customers all the time, because here's the reality is if you build an intentional way to engage and, and get people through what you're trying to teach using techniques, like automated gamification, or physical gamification, or whatever else, what starts to happen is that you will build raving fans, right, you will build those customers and retain them, and they will stay in your world and stay learning from you as you continue to build more offers, and do different things, which, obviously, when you look at the cost of getting a new customer versus just retaining the ones that you have, it's, it's so beneficial to keep the customers that you've brought in the door versus just constantly going out and getting new customers. Because, you know, eventually, you're either spending a ton of money on marketing and advertising to get new customers in. And then just not keeping them, right, which is very tiring, and exhausting.

And if you're like me, you really want to create an impact with your, the people that you are working with, and churning and burning them in and out of various products that you are creating doesn't really accomplish that end, right? You accomplish that end through building and building a great community of people who are getting awesome results, then they are able to build on their results, and continue to grow and continue to evolve and in you know, enjoy the experience that they're having. So, so if you're like me, and that you really are looking to create an elevate that customer experience. Plus, honestly, you guys, if you automate it, it doesn't take you any more time. But it means so much to the people that you're working with. So there you go, there is a little bit on gamification. I'm going to talk a lot more about gamification in this podcast as we go, because it is is said, the essential component to having a successful online course experience is really thinking about how do you help people be successful in what you're teaching? Because you can put them on the path, right? You can get them to raise their hand and say, Yes, I want to be on the path. But it's much more difficult for them when they get into actually having to take action, maybe change their mindset, maybe you know have to do things that put them a little bit out of their comfort zone. That is a little bit more difficult, right? Because you have to go on a journey in order to make a change in order to do something differently than you're doing today. It there are some challenges, there are some obstacles that come up along the path. And it's super easy to build in various ways that you can give feedback and recognition and reward for them taking action. Alright, there you go. Have a great rest of your day.