Gamification with Faisco: What I Tell My Clients Actually Works
Honestly, let's just get straight to it. Last month, I was working with this craft brewery in Minneapolis. Great guys, fantastic beer, but their marketing was... well, it was going nowhere. They were doing what everyone tells you to do-posting pretty pictures of their IPAs on Instagram, boosting a few posts, running the occasional Facebook ad. And getting crickets. Just dead air.
They were about to spend a few thousand dollars on another agency that promised them "brand synergy" and "optimized content funnels"-words that make my skin crawl.
Instead, I had them try something different. We spent maybe 10 minutes setting up a "Burger Stacker" game on a platform called Faisco. The prize? A $50 taproom gift card. The cost? A tiny fraction of that agency's retainer.
The result? In two and a half weeks, they got 2,592 new Instagram story views directly from people playing and sharing the game. People were literally tagging their friends to try and beat their score. It wasn't "brand synergy." It was just... fun. And it worked. That's the stuff I care about.
So, What's the Big Deal with Gamification Anyway?
Look, I've been doing this since 2010, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that small businesses do not have the time or money for theories. We need stuff that works now.
The whole idea behind gamification-and yeah, I know it's a buzzword, just stick with me-is pretty simple. People are tired of being sold to. They're blind to ads. They scroll past another perfect "lifestyle" photo. But you put a simple game in front of them with a chance to win something? You get their attention. It’s a tiny dopamine hit. It’s an interaction, not an interruption.
It's the difference between shouting "HEY, FOLLOW US!" and whispering "Psst... want to play a game for a chance to win free stuff?" One is annoying, the other is intriguing. Frankly, it’s shocking to me how many marketers still don't get this. They're all still yelling about "content is king" but nobody ever specifies that your content shouldn't be BORING.
Why I Landed on Faisco (After Trying Everything Else)
I've tested them all. Seriously. I've spent my own money on Gleam. io, Woobox, those enterprise-level tools that want $500 a month... you name it. They all have their place, I guess. But for the small businesses I work with-the bakeries, the yoga studios, the local breweries-they're mostly overkill.
Here's the thing about Faisco. It's not trying to be everything to everyone. It does one thing, and it does it really, really well: it lets you launch an engaging, game-based campaign in minutes. I timed it with that Minneapolis brewery. From login to live campaign, it was under ten minutes. With a tool like Gleam, which is solid but complex, I'm usually fiddling with settings for an hour plus. Most business owners just give up.
And the platform integration... this is where most tools fall apart. They give you a link to share, and that's it. Faisco actually builds campaigns that feel native to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. That matters. A LOT. How a user interacts on TikTok is totally different from how they behave on LinkedIn, and a generic link just doesn't cut it. It has to feel like it belongs there.
The Games That Actually Get Clicks and Leads
Not all games are created equal. You have to match the game to the goal. This is what I've seen work over and over again with my clients.
For pure lead capture-I mean, you just want emails-nothing beats their Instant Draw games. The "Lucky Spin" wheel or the "Scratch Ticket" are killer. I've seen landing pages with these embedded hit 40%+ conversion rates. Why? Because it's immediate. There's no waiting. You play, you enter your email, you see if you won. Bam. Done.
For engagement and social sharing, you want the Reactive Games. The "Burger Stacker", the "Whac-A-Mole". These require a little bit of skill, which gets people's competitive juices flowing. This is what makes people tag their friends. I had a Chicago bakery use the "Happy Hopping" game, and they ended up with 2,521 new user-generated posts on TikTok in two weeks because people were screen-recording their high scores. It was wild.
And then you've got quizzes and catching games. I used the "Summer Catch" game for a yoga studio in Miami. Simple goal: catch the falling lotus flowers, avoid the junk food. It was on-brand and simple. They got 1,208 new newsletter subscribers in three weeks. People just... like catching things, I guess.
Don't Sleep on Seasonal Campaigns. Seriously.
This is the part that I think is genuinely brilliant. Faisco has pre-built game templates for pretty much every holiday. Christmas, Halloween, Black Friday, Valentine's Day...
Last December, I ran their "Fill My Christmas Stocking" catching game for three different retail clients. Every single one of them saw over 300% more engagement on their campaign posts compared to their regular holiday content. It cuts through the noise. (And let's be real, the holiday noise is deafening). Instead of just another "20% Off!" graphic, they had a fun, interactive game that people actually wanted to play. It's not magic; it just makes sense.
Okay, So What Do You Do This Week?
Look, you can read marketing blogs until your eyes bleed, or you can just try something. The businesses I work with who see these 200-400% bumps in followers or 150-300% growth in their email lists aren't marketing geniuses. They're just willing to run an experiment.
Here's what I typically recommend to my clients to get started:
- Pick ONE goal. Don't try to get more followers AND more sales AND more emails all at once. Just one. Let's say it's growing your email list.
- Pick ONE simple game. For an email list, go with the "Lucky Spin" or a "Scratch Ticket." Don't overthink it.
- Pick ONE decent prize. It doesn't have to be a car. A $25 or $50 gift card is plenty to get people's attention.
- Run it. Just launch the campaign and share it on your socials for two weeks. See what happens.
What's the worst that can happen? You spend a little bit of money and get a few hundred new people on your email list who actually want to be there. Honestly, for a small business, that’s a massive win.
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