Meme Marketing – More than Just a Trend!

Advertisers today have endless ways to connect with potential customers through various methods of online advertising.

From running Display Advertising to Search engine advertising I bet you have tried all the tips and tricks under your sleeve to get in front of your customers.

However, trying too hard to get in front of your ideal customer may not always be the best strategy for your brand, in fact, this may even end up pushing them away because customers of today are fed up with seeing ads all over the internet.

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Source

Then comes the question of how do you advertise to a customer who is fed up of seeing ads?

Have you tried converting those advertisements into Meme Ads?

Aaand that brings us to our topic of discussion – marketing through memes can make anything popular… It can make an egg popular, it can make a movie popular, it can make a cat popular and it can also make your brand popular.

Memes can often spread like wildfire so why not include them in your marketing strategy right?

With the correct marketing and timing, users will share your memes without a second thought.

This provides free exposure to your brand as long as you can combine the right amounts of text and images to keep your audience engaged.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of businesses and brands that just don’t get meme-based ads.

Their efforts to produce viral meme content sometimes may come across as trying a bit too hard to appear relevant.

Here are four tips to keep in mind when using memes in your ads.

1. Use memes that fit with your brand image

Not all memes can relate to all types of businesses, the ones you plan to use for advertising need to be at least slightly related to your brand.

To do that it should meet at least one of the following criteria’s;

  1. The meme needs to correlate with your brand’s audience.
  2. The text references, events, or news are related to your business.
  3. The content pokes fun at your competitors or even your own company.

Creating and sharing memes that don’t have anything to do with your business might result in a few engagements however it doesn’t do anything to boost your brand awareness or increase conversions which can make it a relatively poor marketing strategy.

2. React to recent events or trending topics 

Jokes are all about timing and in most cases so are memes.

Putting aside a few classic examples it’s important to strike while the iron is hot.

If you keep up with the news you’ll likely find plenty of opportunities to create or adapt memes for your marketing needs.

It’s all about creativity and finding a funny angle to engage with your audience.

Have you noticed that certain images become very popular for short periods?

At the moment this woman yelling at a cat meme is especially prevalent people have taken to customizing it with their own text and re-sharing it 

You could do the same incorporating some message relevant to your brand, however jumping on every bandwagon is not a solid strategy.

Trending memes emerge and can disappear quickly, you always run the risk of getting to the party too late and looking like you’re behind the times.

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Burger King and Wendy’s having a go at it on Twitter 

3. Communicate with your audience that creates memes around your brand.

Have you heard about prosumers? Sometimes it’s your very own users who will create memes that you can use to point attention towards your brand.

If you’re going to share user-generated memes to roll in sales to your business it’s only good manners to provide attribution to them and it signals other people that if they too rise to the challenge of generating memes they too can get a shout out from you

This may encourage more followers to generate memes on behalf of you and therefore marketing your brand!

Once again however you want to be selective with the memes you choose to share.

Remember Quality over quantity.

4. Don’t try too hard 

This usually involves creating and sharing unfunny memes, spamming your followers with new memes all the time, and not having a grasp on how specific meme templates actually work. 

It’s always a smart move to beta-test your memes by running them past your team. 

In many cases, it’s best to use meme marketing sparingly, save these photos for when you’re absolutely sure you have something witty and engaging in the pipeline. 

That way you won’t spam your followers + when you do share this type of content it’ll come as a nice surprise!

Memes are a precise combination of visual cues with pop-cultural shorthand that results in entertaining viral posts.

If you are able to understand how this combination works it can help you spice up your marketing strategies.

 If you want to use memes as part of your marketing plan keep in mind these four tips 

  1. Use memes that fit with your brand image
  2. React to recent events or trending topics
  3. Engage with users that create memes around your brand
  4. Don’t try too hard

In the meantime, if you’re running meme-based ad campaigns, hit us up! 

We’d love to talk to you and learn from your experiences.

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