Hi, and welcome back to Marketing Qualified. Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• Using games as a marketing tactic. Are puzzle games the next big thing to drive brand awareness?

• You need three brands. How to nurture so you eventually get sales.

🧩 Using games as a marketing tactic.

In case you missed it, LinkedIn recently launched three daily puzzle-based games for users.

This is their answer to the wildly popular NYT games like Wordle, Connections, and The Mini crossword.

NYT games were played over 8 billion times last year. Every day, millions of people log on to play — any by proxy engage with the brand.

LinkedIn’s business model depends on attracting users to their site, where they can interact with ads and sponsored content. Launching games is a clever marketing tactic that will help them increase daily users, engagement, and, most importantly, revenue.

How?

If users visit to play Pinpoint, Crossclimb, and Queens, they’ll likely stay to scroll their feeds for a while, increasing LinkedIn’s ad revenue opportunity.

This launch got us thinking… could other brands leverage games to increase their number of users and/or engagement levels?

Using gamification in marketing isn’t a new concept. For example…

Duolingo uses leagues, awards, and badges to keep users engaged in their language learning curriculum.

Grammarly shows how a person’s writing compares to other users via a weekly email.

Sephora uses quizzes to help customers select the right products.

Snapchat uses Streaks to encourage users to pick up the app every day.

The list could go on.

These gamification tactics are tried and true.

On the other hand, using puzzle-based logic games as a marketing tactic is still in its infancy. So, it’s too soon to tell how well it will work in the long run.

But it does have one thing going for it that makes us optimistic about its outlook — sharability.

People love to talk with friends, family, and coworkers about these puzzles. Did they manage to solve it today? Was it too difficult or too easy? Was the puzzle maker being trickier than usual? Etc.

One of the reasons Wordle went from 90 players to 3 million in a few months was because they made it easy to share by automatically producing an emoji message for users who solved the puzzle.

Every day, people (including celebrities) would text and post their scores on social media, which served as an unmatched brand awareness tool.

It will be interesting to see if original puzzle-based games will become the next big marketing tactic.

We won’t be surprised if we start to see more brands testing them out.

We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled.

📰  In the news this week.

🤝 3 persuasion techniques you should know.

☠️ Bumble fumbles with its new ad campaign.

📈 Instagram beats TikTok for video-based user acquisition.

👀 A look at who’s still using Twitter.

👨‍⚖️ TikTok is suing the US government over “unconstitutional” ban.

3️⃣ You need three brands.

At any point in time, only 5% of your audience is ready to buy. It’s called the 95/5 Rule (more on that here).

But you still need to keep the 95% engaged. That way, when they are ready to purchase, they will come to you first.

How can you do this?

Think of your brand in three buckets.

1) Media brand

This is your workhorse. The goal is to grow and nurture the people in your audience. They’re not ready to buy right now. But someday, that will change.

The goal: GROWTH

2) Personal brands

This is where you add a human touch. Have experts on your team or in your industry share personal stories that will resonate with your audience. The key is to be authentic.

The goal: CONNECTION

3) Corporate brand

This is how you close. Show the 5% that are ready to buy that you’re trustworthy and easy to work with.

The goal: CONVERSION

When you’re online, everyone is trying to sell you something. The ones who nurture instead of selling are the ones who win deals.

h/t to James Carbary for introducing us to the three brand concept.

😂 Marketing meme of the week.

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