Meme Marketing

Many people spend more time on social media today than they do watching television. This means that for a brand to stand out amidst an ocean of other brands it needs a clever and catchy meme marketing strategy. Memes resonate especially well with younger audiences but also make an impact on middle-aged and older audiences. What makes meme’s especially useful to brands is that meme’s enable brands to visually associate their brand with a clever video or image that is humorous and catchy and which helps enhance the brand’s image. A successful meme may even say out loud something about a brand that has as yet been left unsaid.

It is imperative that a meme that is associated with a brand be relevant to the brand. When a meme goes viral, meaning it is shared by thousands of people on social media, it is usually good for the brand associated with the meme. However, there are also certain risks for brands that come with creating memes and so brands must learn how to best navigate while promoting their brands using memes.

Memes produce instant response and engagements because they are simply relatable to the common people and teenagers. By definition, memes are meant to be shared, so the idea or content is frequently reposted and re-memed over the various social platforms to reach a wider audience. When people send the meme to a colleague or any friend for a laugh or for sarcasm, they emotionally engage with your content and the brand.

Below are the mentioned factors which create instant response and engagements.

1. Humour
2. Sarcasm
3. Easy to understand
4. Latest trends
5. Relatable
6. Friendliness
7. Fun
8. Aimed for a quick laugh

Why Marketers are Embracing Memes?

Social Media make you laugh and feel connected with others. Brands are taking advantage of the meme culture on social media to enhance the value of their online marketing. They’re creating catchy content people can share and that can potentially go viral (crossing fingers). This approach is way more appealing and engaging.

Memes That went Viral on Large Scale:

1. The New South Wales Police Department in Australia stepped up its social media game by using this popular meme to bring some humor to their followers.
2. Memes are perfectly aligned to the highly visual nature of Instagram. Barkbox, a subscription service for dog treats and toys, recognises this, making up the majority of its Instagram content with animal-related memes.

Memes Heavily Rely on Humor

Memes are supposed to be funny. And because several memes have a sarcastic or satirical approach, it can be difficult for your entire audience to understand. If you think a meme could work in your marketing favor, you have to ask yourself a very serious question–Are you that funny?

There are plenty of brands that invoke humor and engage their customer base with weird, satirical humor. Just look at brands on Twitter like Old Spice, Totinos or Charmin that significantly invest in humor-based social campaigns.

On the other hand, humor is not for everyone or every business, which means as a social media manager, you have to know what you’re getting into when it comes to viral content.

Memes Produce Immediate Reactions

This can be good or really bad. Because memes rely so much on humor, it’s somewhat easy to miss the mark or come off inappropriate or insensitive. As you know with anything involving the Internet, there’s plenty of offensive viral content on the Web. But as a social marketer, you have to be careful not to damage your brand in attempts of going viral.

The Benefits Of Meme Marketing

• When it comes to marketing, there are plenty of benefits of memes that allow them to connect with audiences much better than traditional methods.
• One of the best benefits of memes is that they are very easy and cheap (mostly free) to make. With plenty of free online meme creators available, unlike other methods of advertising, you can create a whole range of memes for free which greatly increases your chances of a return on investment.
• Aside from being able to create these memes on a whim without any real planning required, these memes also have a great chance to go viral. Going viral is the scenario that every brand and business dreams of.
• Not only does it greatly increase your brand exposure, but it can also drive a huge swarm of traffic to your website.

Now you have a good understanding of memes and how brands use them to increase their brand exposure, what are you waiting for? Get out there and make some original and quality memes to share with your audience!