Since time immemorial, humor has always been a poignant tool of persuasion. It is a general psychological tendency to respond to things better when it is conveyed with humor. Marketing professionals realize that humor can establish an instant connection between two parties. Such a connection is healthy and can be used as a means for future communications.
Memes are an effective way of leveraging humor to establish a relationship with the end-user. Typically, a meme is the overlaying of a familiar image with a funny message. Since 40% of people are more receptive to video content, memes have higher chances of being shared. With more than 30 million posts on Facebook every day, you need to create content that stands out.
In a situation like this, leveraging humor through memes will ensure that any message that comes from your brand will be better received on the social media platform. For better marketing visibility, you can opt for memejacking. In memejacking, you take a viral meme and add your brand message to it. To assist you in your meme-making journey, here are some tested tips.
Understand Your Audience:
Before you start out creating memes, you need to have a clear picture of your audience’s taste. Start by reflecting on your posts and identify the type of content that is best received. If you are new to digital marketing and do not have sufficient posts to analyze, you can check your competitors’ posts that cater to a similar audience. Find out which of their posts have the best engagement.
Once you have an idea of your buyer persona’s online taste, you can create the memes. Ensure that every meme that you post goes through multiple levels of quality check at your end. The quality checks will allow you to filter out irrelevant content and do away with offensive items. If you want to leverage meme marketing, you should be ready to walk the extra mile and ensure that your content is not hurtful to any individual or community.
Choose a Hot Meme:
The golden rule of meme success is to stay relevant to the times. Keep an eye on the latest YouTube viral videos as memes often stem from these. If you are alert, you will pick up on social media trends faster than your competition. You can then create an overlay with an image that has just started to gain traction on social media.
By being one of the initial spreaders of the viral content, your post is likely to get better engagement. There are several meme generator tools that you can use to promptly create memes. Some of those tools also allow you to customize a watermark so that your viral memes allow you to establish brand familiarity.
Do the Background Research:
One of the main reasons why brands enjoy creating meme content is because it takes minimal effort. It is socially acceptable to repurpose someone else’s memes by adding a twist. However, before you refurbish a meme, you should remember to invest in adequate background research.
For this, do the background research of the meme that you intend to share and find its origin. Make sure that the original sentiments of the video are in alignment with your company values. That way, you will save your brand from landing in a soup and having to apologize to an offended prospect. Social media embarrassment over an inappropriate meme can be a pull-back to your digital marketing initiatives.
Add Originality to Your Memes:
Since you are using memes for marketing purposes, you cannot just repost a meme and give your followers a good laugh. You need to express creativity in the memes that you share. To do that, understand the implication of the meme that you intend to share and look up ways to incorporate your brand into it. You can add your brand’s name, logo, slogan, mission, or a picture that people associate with your brand.
Cross-Promote Your Memes:
Brands tend to associate memes with social media and direct their efforts accordingly. However, you can maximize the reach of your videos by posting them on your blogs, website graphics, and other relevant areas. If utilized appropriately, printed copies of memes can also aid in boosting your brand popularity.
To understand this better, let us consider an example where you are a grocery store keen on connecting with younger demographics. You can create starter pack memes to illustrate some of the items from your stock that can be bought together. The memes can be added to your circulars and a few copies may be pasted on your outlet premises as well.
When such memes reach the eyes of millennials, it adds value to their lives while also entertaining them. Such people will be thankful to you for the content that you create, and this will lay the foundations of a healthy business relationship.
Build a Brand Persona for Your Memes:
Irrespective of whether your brand creates only memes, or they are just a part of your digital marketing initiatives, you need to create a brand persona for your memes. While this will take some research and planning, we recommend that you stay consistent with the brand persona. That way, as you publish more memes in the future, people will start relating them.
This will work in your favor and give a boost to your digital visibility. It is a good practice for you to come up with a detailed posting schedule where you chalk out the type of memes you intend to post and the posting interval. That way, you can ensure that your viewers get consistent content and engage with you regularly.
Create Original Memes:
There is no dearth of memes in the social media world, which might tempt you to repost that. However, it is worth the effort to use satire or sarcasm to come up with original content. Such content will make it easier for you to get your message across to the viewer. Since the meme will be fresh, the recipient will be more likely to share it with their peers if they enjoy the content.
Another major advantage of creating original content is that it offers a lot of room for experimentation. For example, you can tap into the nostalgia factor of the ’80s and ’90s and create memes that help in community building. Feel free to poke fun at yourself or your brand if that helps in strengthening your brand identity.
Luckily for you, with tools like InVideo creating memes is simple. You need to log in and select the template, add the captions, and create your meme, save, and share it. While you do need to brainstorm on the content, executing the process of meme creation can be executed in a matter of minutes.
Every brand has unique expectations from their marketing campaigns and the meme strategy should be amended accordingly. With the above tips, you are now equipped to initiate your meme journey. As you walk on this path, you will eventually figure out the strategy that works the best for your brand. You can then work on improving and come up with better ways of connecting with your audience.
Nirmal Sarkar is a Biotechnologist from the city of Joy, Kolkata. He is the founder of this blog and covers a wide range of topics from Gadgets to Software to Latest Offers. You can get in touch with him via nirmal@hitricks.com
