Meme marketing has gained a lot of popularity recently. Several marketers are now investing in advertising memes to keep their audience entertained and have their share of the pie for moment marketing. Memes are a content form that uses different elements from the ongoing situation to make people laugh. From a new product in a market to a new fashion trend, you can make funny marketing memes on everything.
However, memes are not just limited to entertainment. They form a very important part of digital marketing today. Many marketers now use memes to reach out to their audience and engage with them. Also, the best thing about meme marketing is that it is not restricted to a platform. You can create and share memes across all digital platforms. Companies are now hiring people to make memes for better audience engagement.
This guide will help you navigate the world of meme marketing and shed light on what you should consider while creating advertising memes.
What is Meme Marketing?
Before understanding what meme marketing is, we should try to understand what memes are. A meme is a cultural text that depicts an idea or behavior and spreads within a community of people. It represents a theme, and the primary purpose of it is to imitate a culture and experience and give people something to talk about.
Memes are a viral sensation and the most shared form of content across all social media platforms. Hence, companies are now using memes to connect with their audience and offer them something they resonate with. Therefore, meme marketing refers to using memes to promote a product or a service across different digital channels. Memes are generally topical and are based on ongoing trends. Hence, they are highly relevant and snackable, helping businesses capture the audience’s attention.
Things to Consider while Creating Marketing Memes
Memes are a very important part of digital marketing. You can create advertising memes to reach out to different audiences and then engage with them. Creating a meme is quite easy. However, if you want your meme to be effective enough, you must bring a few considerations into the picture before creating a meme for your digital marketing channels.
Some of these considerations are:
Target Audience
You need to conduct thorough research to understand your audience. As memes are topical, different memes will have different audiences. You should try to know your target audience before you start creating a meme. For instance, if you want to reach out to kids via your memes, you must use more colors and graphics in the meme and jargons that the kids will understand. The strategy will be the exact opposite if you want to target adults with your memes.
Hence, defining your target audience is very important if you want to use meme marketing. Also, the primary purpose of a meme is to entertain your audience. You should not make it sound too sales oriented. Marketing memes should have the right balance of marketing and content to make you look witty and help you connect better with the audience.
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Originality
Most memes are funny, but they lose their essence if used repeatedly. Hence, recycling memes and using them again is not a good option. While you can take inspiration from some memes, try to avoid copying the meme altogether. You should keep your memes as original as possible to stand out from the crowd.
You can use a popular meme template but try to understand its context and then create a text for the template accordingly. You must think out of the box and come up with ideas as to how you can add your brand’s touch to the meme. Adding a twist is crucial if you want to try your hands on meme marketing.
Follow the Trends
Trying to make a meme on a trend that was being followed long back? Your purpose of creating a meme and engaging with your audience will fail. You must conduct thorough research and try to ride on the wave of moment marketing. You should identify what is trending, which will pique your audience’s interest.
If you want to create a meme that might go viral, you must select the right topic and time to post it. However, you should pick the trends carefully and refrain from trying to make a meme for every small occasion. If you post a meme every alternate day, the audience might consider it spam. Also, you must ensure that the memes you create should not affect your reputation.
Avoid being Aggressive
There have been cases where a few advertising memes have been considered rude or offensive by a certain audience. If you want to make the most out of meme marketing, avoid hurting a community, an individual, or a group of people. You must run the meme through the people in your company and get their opinion before posting it on any digital channels.
Also, avoid memes that can hurt the religious or cultural sentiments of the people. You should try creating funny marketing memes that are light and can be enjoyed by most of your target customers.
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Follow Some Unsaid Rules
Memes are a content form that gives you a platform to express creativity and jump on the bandwagon of ongoing trends. There are a few unsaid rules that you should follow while creating memes if you want to maximize the impact.
You should keep it simple and crisp, as long sentences may not reveal the meme’s essence. Also, you should write what you mean. If you try to change the original meaning of the meme, it might not be as effective as you want it to be. You can check the meaning of the phrases before you add them to the meme if there are any ambiguities around them.
Also, memes are for entertainment. Adding a CTA to it might make it quite transactional. The viewers might get irritated as it indicates that you are trying to push your sales quite hard.
Branding
Meme marketing has several objectives, of which establishing your brand is the primary one. You should try to create memes that have relevance to your brand. A good meme can connect business with entertainment. Hence, try to find a connection with your industry of business and create something that reflects the identity of your brand.
Also, when creating a meme for social media marketing, you should try to use your brand elements, like brand colors, mascots, etc.
Benefits of Meme Marketing
There are several benefits of creating memes. You should consider these benefits and create memes that will keep your audience hooked and help your brand in the long run. Some of these benefits are:
Memes are free
Creating a meme comes with zero cost. You just need an online image editor and an idea to create a meme that can help your brand engage with the audience. The meme can go viral if you create something quite out of the box. Hence, you might create a buzz without spending any money and resources.
Great reach
People are on a constant lookout for memes. If you use the right keywords and hashtags, you can expand the reach of your original meme. A massive chunk of people relate to memes and consume them regularly. If your memes are funny enough to be shared within closed groups, you can achieve a good reach for your brand.
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High Engagement
Memes create a brand recall; if people enjoy your memes, they will like, share and comment on them. Hence, your engagement will reach newer heights. Also, you can create a few generic memes using a standard template to keep your audience hooked to your content. A good meme has the potential to make the consumer stop scrolling and engage with the content.
If you have a knack for meme marketing and hope to explore many other interesting marketing strategies, you can enroll in the Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing and Communication anchored by MICA, Ahmedabad. The course will guide you on creating memes and using them to enhance your brand’s image and expose you to the diverse scopes of digital marketing.
Some highlights of the course are:
- Get in touch with the industry experts
- Have access to more than 70 video lectures
- Get an exclusive MICA Executive Alumni Status
Conclusion
Meme marketing has surprisingly turned out to be an exceptional marketing tactic, informing and entertaining audiences at the same time. A huge section of the audience is now consuming memes; hence, to stay on top of all trends, you must know how to create memes and market them across channels. You should try to create engaging and relatable memes for the audience.
