17 Fun Marketing Games to Play with Teams in 2023

Here is our list of the best marketing games.

Marketing games are activities to enhance the marketing skills of employees. Examples include cold-calling, five-minute pitch, and the exaggerated story. These activities aim to improve the team’s marketing and communication skills and boost morale.

These activities are subsets of team building games and communication games.

This list includes:

• marketing games for students
• marketing games for employees
• free online marketing games
• marketing management games

Here we go!

List of marketing games

Developing marketing skills in employees is necessary to help folks in all departments engage with the customers and increase sales for the company. Engaging your employees in marketing games is the best way to improve their skills while ensuring excellent team building. These games are helpful for students, and employees like to help them develop professional relationships. Here is our list of the best games for marketing teams.

1. New Product Marketing

In addition to overseeing product promotion, the marketing team also plays a vital role in new product development. You can divide your team into groups of five members and ask them to brainstorm and generate ideas for a new product.

It is better to make a product similar to the company’s products to avoid making the game complex. This way, the participants will focus on improving the present products. Since they would have experience manufacturing the products their company offers, marketing for the new product will be relatively easy for the employees. The team members will think of new features they can add to the existing products or develop an entirely new product for the company.

Then, the members will devise a complete marketing plan, including planning, promotion, and advertising strategies.

This game will encourage your employees to think out of the box, and the new product might come into physical existence later to boost sales for your company.

Check out this list of product design books for inspiration.

2. Five-Minute Pitch

Pitching is an essential element of marketing, and the five-minute pitch is among the best marketing games for employees.

In this game, you will divide your marketing team into groups and ask each team to pick a random object from the office. The object can be any item like a notepad, a desk, or a laptop. Then, each team will get five minutes to decide and pitch for the product.

All the teams will come on the stage one by one, pitch their product, and try to convince the audience to purchase.

This game will enhance employees’ marketing and communication skills since  they  must market the product and convince the audience.

3. Find The Object

Find The Object is a simple game that can significantly impact your marketing team.

​Here are the rules:

1. You will divide the team into groups of four.
2. Show a random object to the team and hide it in the office.
3. Only one member of the group will know where the object is hidden.
4. The member will guide the other participants to help find the object.
5. However, the directions will be limited. They can only use the words “forward, backward, left, and right.”
6. The member will guide their teammates to find the object using these words.
7. ​The team that finds the object in the least time will win.

This game will teach coordination to your marketing team, which is essential because the best marketers collaborate with other departments like sales or product development. As the employees depend on each other to perform tasks, this game will increase their cooperation and develop trust. This game also helps marketers improve communication skills.

4. Marketing Trivia

Trivia is the best idea for any office activity. You can also play online trivia or in-person trivia with your employees. Online trivia is best for remote teams and makes it the best among free online marketing games. You can find or make customized questions and a scoreboard to record your progress.

For office-based trivia, you can prepare questions targeted to marketing. These questions can be random or related to your company.

​Examples include:

• What was the first ever domain registered? Symbolics.com
• What are the 4 Ps of marketing? Product, promotion, price, and place.
• Google has what percentage of the online ads? 85.3%.
• Which company generates the highest sales revenue in the world? Walmart.
• Microsoft owns which social network? LinkedIn.

You can also craft questions specific to your company’s marketing. You could even play ”name that campaign” and show teammates images, ad clips, email subject lines, slogans, or campaign descriptions and challenge them to name the corresponding company.

​Trivia will help your employees use their critical thinking skills. In addition, as they will work in groups to guess the answers, the employees will deepen professional relationships and learn while having fun.

Check out this list of trivia activities for adults.

5. Dragon’s Den Or Shark Tank

Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank is a fun and engaging activity for marketing teams because the members will work in groups.

In this game, you will divide the team into two groups and give them imaginary money. Then, one team will come up with the idea of a fictional product. The team’s goal will be to develop the best service or product so that the other team, the dragons or sharks, invest in their product.

The team will be responsible for making a complete business plan and marketing plan. Teams will also discuss the financial data with the dragons to convince them how the deal can benefit them.

After the discussion, the team of dragons will discuss and decide whether they should invest the imaginary money. The other team gets the point if the pitch is successful and the dragons agree to invest.

6. Get The Most Likes!

Social media is an important marketing tool for businesses. You can check the skills of your employees with this game.

​Here is how you can play the game.

1. Divide the team into groups of three.
2. Assign each team a product.
3. Have teams design a post promoting the product.

The participants will be responsible for making a catchy slogan, graphic designing, and writing the caption.

You will then post all the products together on the site. The team that gets the most likes on their post in a limited time will win the game.

7. Fantasy Elevator Pitch

Elevator Pitch is one of the best marketing games for students and office workers. In this game, the teams will strategize to market a fictional product. As this game involves critical thinking skills, the team members can showcase their creativity and go beyond their imagination to make the best pitch.

In this game, you will choose a fictional movie and ask the participants to pitch for some products.
For example, they can prepare a pitch for Spider-Man’s suit, Batman’s mask, and Ironman cannon. You will be surprised how the participants integrate unique ideas and develop innovative and imaginative marketing strategies that we usually do not apply in the real world.

8. The “Suddenly” Story

The Suddenly Story is a fun game that will provoke creativity in your marketing team. This exercise also improves communication skills among employees and reduces shyness.

​Here are the rules:

1. The team sits in a circle.
2. One member initiates the story.
3. Each member will only speak three sentences and then say “suddenly,” and the next member will continue the story.
4. The story continues until it reaches the last participant, who will conclude the story.

The participants have the choice of making a fictional or real-world story. This game will allow the marketing team to work together and develop unique ideas for continuing the story making it amusing.

9. The Exaggerated Story

The Exaggerated Story is a fun online game for marketing teams. However, this game does not involve any competition.

The activity will only focus on boosting the morale of your marketing team and encouraging  out-of-the-box thinking.

In this game, each participant will take a turn as the tale-teller. For example, the first narrator will look for a random object in the office, like a pen, a pencil, or a tissue. Then, the participant will have one minute to create the most exaggerated story related to that item. The story will be one to two minutes long.
This game will teach your marketing team to work under pressure, which makes it one of the best marketing management games.

10. Still Did Not Get It

Still Did Not Get It is a fun and engaging game that requires your marketing team to interact with strangers, which will help build better communication skills and gain new perspectives.

In this game, each participant will randomly go out on the street and pretend to be a tourist unfamiliar with the area. Players will ask random passersby for directions.

However, the participants will get points for how long they keep the conversation going. For example, the players can ask for directions to a specific place, and when the stranger answers, the participant asks for more directions. Similarly, they can ask for a phone call if they get lost.

This game will build communication skills and help your employees interact better with the customers.

11. Marketing Lingo

Marketing Lingo will encourage your employees to use critical thinking skills and develop unique ideas to market their products. This game is simple and will not take much of your time. You can also include the exercise as a buffer activity or play it during a coffee break.

In this game, you will divide the marketing team into groups of three. You can ask the team to select a random product or assign them an item yourself. Each team will have two minutes to think and craft a catchy slogan, tagline, motto, or jingle.

You can also set some clear rules that the tagline will indicate the product. However, this game is not as simple as it might seem. The teams can have difficulty compiling long phrases and developing concise sentences.

12. Mock Commercials

Mock Commercials are a fun activity for marketing teams. However, be aware that this exercise will take some time and dedication. This activity will also unveil the actors and filmmakers in your marketing team.

You will ask the employees to choose a product and make a commercial or advertisement to sell to the targeted audience. Each team will have different products to market.

Another creative idea is to have two bowls. For example, put the different genres written on paper in one bowl and the type of product in another bowl.

Each team will pick a piece of paper from both bowls and design a commercial around the object. For example, one group might have to make a horror commercial on a soft drink, and the other might make a fiction commercial on furniture.

You will be surprised at the creative ideas and positive portrayals.

13. Concentration

This game is inspired by the famous game show in the 1960s named Concentration.

In this game, you will place 30 tiles or papers on the board. The tiles will have their prizes at the back. The front of the tiles will be products the company offers or random objects.

The players will get their chance to select and flip the tiles. Two tiles on the board will have the same prize. The player will win the game when they flip both tiles with the same prize.

You can also set different rules, allowing each member to make only ten flips.

To make the game easier, you can include the product at the front, similar to its prize at the back. This game will help your marketing team understand the importance of making the right decisions at the right time. When they have limited flips, they think strategically instead of flipping any tile they want.

14. Marketing Charades

The marketing team can also enjoy charades to keep themselves engaged. However, the marketing version of this game will be different.

In this game, you will divide the team into two groups. Each group will get a product or slogan to act on, and the other group will guess it.

Some examples are:

• ​Applying a makeup product
• ​Baby shark
• ​Practicing yoga
• ​Curiosity killed the cat
• ​Running on a treadmill

​You can include products your company provides or miscellaneous items from the general market.

Here is a charades generator to help with the game.

15. Pop Quizzes

Pop quizzes are an excellent idea to keep your marketing team focused and engaged. You can play a pop quiz after the training session or at the end of the meeting.

​You can also stick to a specific category or include different categories in one quiz. It is better to choose a category your employees are familiar with to make it easy for them. Some examples of categories for a pop quiz are:

• Cultures
• ​Science
• ​Music
• ​Entertainment
• ​General knowledge

You can organize a pop quiz on platforms like Kahoot!

The team members will have limited time to solve the quiz and select the correct answers.
A pop quiz will help you keep the marketing team focused during meetings as they will answer questions related to the meeting in the quiz.

​16. Subtle Hints

​Subtle Hints is a great activity that will improve the focus of your marketing team and help them understand how marketing works in the real world. This exercise is among the best marketing games for students as it helps them learn new things.

​In this game, you will show the participants a part of a movie or episode. The directors and producers of teams know exactly where they need to put the products they need to advertise. For example, these products can be a food item placed on the table as the actors eat in the movie. The marketing target can also be a brand slogan shown in the movie as the actors pass by a specific location.

​You will show the movie to the students and ask them to take notes about product placement and how specific products are placed at different locations for marketing purposes.

​17. Place The New Product

​Place The New Product can help your marketing team how to place the products they need to market.

​Here is how you will play the game:

1. ​Give a few products, names of brands, or logos of brands to your marketing team.
2. ​Then, show a small part of a movie or any episode. However, make sure that the clip does not already have any brands marketed.
3. ​Next, ask your marketing team to use the product placement strategy and place the given products, brand names, and logos in the right locations in the movie.

​Your marketing team can work individually or in groups for this activity. They will use their marketing skills to incorporate the products and logos at the right locations to increase brand visibility and customer attraction.

Marketing teams need to be engaged in several games and activities to boost morale and focus on work. Games and activities customized for your marketing team will have a greater impact than generic team building games.

Your marketing team needs to develop and enhance critical thinking and people skills. The best way to improve their skills is by engaging them in fun and interactive sessions that make them learn new things while having a good time. When employees participate in games, they will develop confidence, and the relationships among employees will also strengthen.

Conclusion

Playing games with your marketing team is an excellent idea to boost employees’ confidence and prepare them for better customer interaction. You can play these games online and in person, and both versions will offer the same level of fun and engagement if you choose the suitable games to play.

Our list of the best marketing games can be of great help to boost the morale of your team.

Next, check out these lists of marketing books, social media books, and books on growth hacking.