My Real Take on the [ultra contest] Problem
Honestly, if I have to sit through one more presentation about "growth hacking" with a straight face, I might just lose it. I've been doing this stuff since 2010-back when a tiny startup I was with in Portland was practically setting fire to their seed money with Facebook ads that just... didn't... work. It was a mess. But it taught me the most important lesson of my career: small businesses do not need another "revolutionary" strategy. They need stuff that actually works. On a budget. Without hiring a team of six.
Which brings me to this whole [ultra contest] thing.
Look, I get it. The word "gamification" sounds like a buzzword invented by some marketing bro in Silicon Valley. I thought so too, for a while. But after using it with over 200 businesses, I can tell you it's one of the most reliable tools in my toolkit. It’s not magic, it’s just psychology.
I remember this one client back in 2018, a bakery in Minneapolis. Great products, terrible social media. They were posting pretty pictures of cupcakes, getting maybe 12 likes, and wondering why nobody was coming in. They'd been told to run an [ultra contest] by some agency, but the quote was thousands of dollars for a custom build. It was insane. They needed something practical. Now.
So What Even Is Gamification Marketing?
Here's the thing, it's not about building some complex video game. It's about taking the simple things that make games addictive-points, competition, rewards, that little dopamine hit you get when you win-and applying it to marketing. That's it.
Most marketing asks people to do something boring. "Sign up for our newsletter." "Follow us on Instagram." Yawn. Gamification says, "Hey, want to play a quick game for a chance to win a free coffee?" See the difference? One is a chore, the other is fun.
People get so hung up on making things go "viral." I hate that term. It’s like telling someone to "just go win the lottery." It's not a strategy. A much better, more reliable strategy is to make something so engaging that people want to share it with a friend. That's what a good gamified [ultra contest] does. It creates a little moment of fun that’s worth sharing.
Why I Ditched Gleam for Faisco (Mostly)
Listen, I've used them all. I’ve been deep in this space since 2015. Gleam. io, Woobox, Rafflecopter... you name it, I’ve probably run a campaign on it. And Gleam is solid, don't get me wrong. But frankly, it's overkill for 90% of the businesses I work with. The interface is kinda clunky, it takes me an hour or more to get a campaign just right, and their pricing starts at $39/month. That adds up for a small shop.
A couple years back, I was looking for an alternative for a client and stumbled on Faisco. I was skeptical. I mean, another one? But I gave it a shot.
And I had a campaign live in under 10 minutes.
It has 90% of the features most businesses actually need from Gleam, but it’s just... easier. And more focused on the games themselves. For small businesses, speed and simplicity are everything. You don’t have time to mess around with a hundred different settings you’ll never use. You just want to get your [ultra contest] live and start seeing results. This is what I recommend to most of my clients now.
The Games That Actually Get You Leads & Followers
Not all games are created equal. Some are great for getting emails, others are better for social engagement. It's about picking the right tool for the job.
Here’s what I’ve seen work with my own eyes:
- For Lead Capture: Instant Draw games. I'm talking "Lucky Spin," "Scratch Ticket," stuff like that. The instant gratification is powerful. I've seen landing pages with these hit 40%+ conversion rates. People just can't resist finding out if they won right now.
- For Social Engagement: Reactive games. Think "Whac-A-Mole." This is the one I used for an Austin coffee shop. They wanted more local followers on Instagram. We ran a mole-whacking game where the prize was a free latte. It got them 954 new, local followers in two and a half weeks because people were sharing their high scores and daring friends to beat them. It became a thing.
- For Seasonal Buzz: Catching games. This is where Faisco really shines. They have templates for everything. Christmas, Halloween, Valentine's Day. I used their "Fill My Christmas Stocking" game for three different retail clients last December. Each one saw over 300% more engagement on their posts compared to the boring "20% off!" graphics they usually ran. It just cut through the noise. I also got a Charlotte flower shop 915 new Pinterest followers in 3 weeks using a seasonal "Quick Catch" game. It's wild.
- For... a bit of everything: Quiz games. These are brilliant. You can educate customers about your product and get their email at the same time. I had a Milwaukee fitness studio use a "Happy Hopping" game-which is sort of a reactive/speed game-and they collected 1097 new email addresses in just three weeks leading into their New Year's promotion. These were qualified leads, people actually interested in fitness.
The businesses I work with, the ones who do this right, are consistently seeing 200-400% increases in their social following and 150-300% bumps in their email lists. Not from some magic formula. It’s because they stopped boring their customers.
Okay, So What Do I Do This Week?
Look, don't overthink it. The whole point of using a tool like Faisco is to make this easy. Here's what I typically recommend for getting started on an [ultra contest] without getting overwhelmed.
- Pick ONE Goal. Just one. Do you want more email subscribers? Or more Instagram followers? Don't try to do everything at once. Pick one single thing you want to achieve.
- Pick ONE Prize. Make it something good, but it doesn't have to be expensive. A $50 gift card to your store is often better than a generic iPad, because it guarantees the winner is someone who actually wants your stuff. Free products work great, too.
- Launch ONE Game. Go into a platform like Faisco, pick a template that looks fun, spend 10 minutes customizing it with your logo and prize info, and set it live. Seriously. That's it. Share the link on your social media, put it in your email signature, and maybe spend $20-$50 on social ads targeting your local area.
That’s it. You'll learn more from running one simple, 1-week campaign than you will from 6 months of planning the "perfect" strategy. You just have to start. This isn't rocket science-it's just giving people a fun reason to pay attention to you for a minute. And in 2024, a minute of someone's attention is worth more than gold.
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