Memes are ideas, concepts, themes, beliefs, or a comedy in the form of tease videos, pictures, and phrases. Memes are getting more popular among the young population. Advertisers can creatively use them for brand promotion. They have become one of the essential types of marketing strategy in the modern, mobile-friendly world. Memes are ideal for engaging a whole, like-minded community.
Popular memes use captions at the top and bottom of funny images. The text is also imaginative, engaging, and humorous. The pictures of celebrities, children, pet animals, and cartoons help express emotions in a comedic manner. Marketers can design brand-specific memes and post them on Facebook or Instagram.
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Why the best types of marketing strategy rely on memes?
Viral digital marketing uses social media platforms and word of mouth to cover a wider audience. Memes are a subset of this viable strategy. They are helpful to advertise a brand’s appeal, value, and vision to the customers in a simple manner. The consumers themselves share the memes without any prodding. Beyond these, it offers these significant benefits:
Creative convenience
Memes are easy to create using generator tools like Imgur. Moreover, you do not need expensive image editors either. Search for popular memes, filter them, and choose an appropriate image. Add the text in a readable font, and you are ready to share it on social media.
A marketing strategy for community engagement
The cultural photos and text can engage a whole community. The Instagram account of subscription service BarkBox is a good example. They promote quirky and funny jokes about dog and squirrel battles. The dog lovers get the inside joke, and they enthusiastically share the memes. When your community shares the meme, the individuals are also sharing and promoting the visibility of your brand or product.
Entertainment value
Memes can entertain and evoke genuine laughter. The luxury fashion brand Gucci took a great risk. It promoted a self-deprecating and humorous meme on Instagram. The audience connected with the artistic value of the meme and related it to the brand. Thus, the brand could avoid bombarding marketing information on the customers, and yet promote their brand name.
Brand personification
Brands can reinvent themselves without too much effort or a new strategy. Or, they can promote the old persona with renewed vigor. Moon pie is a 100-year-old marshmallow cookie and confectionery company that enhanced its brand name on Instagram by posting youthful and contemporary memes.
Top ways to deliver impactful memes
A meme with a watermark of your brand name will not essentially improve your visibility. The memes should deliver humor, idea, or a story that the individual would remember or find worthy to share. But, what type of memes would kindle interest in your audience? How often should you create memes?
The best types of marketing strategy always know the audience’s interest
A meme-based strategy will not work without the consumers’ co-operation. So, you have to know the target audience and their preferences. At the same time, the meme has to satisfy the prospective customers’ preferences, beliefs, and opinions.
A meme promoting tours in this situation will be a disaster. Likewise, a polluting industry promoting its brand through ecological concerns will not work either. So, the memes have to hit the mark by relying on buyer demographics like age, gender, income, and marital status. For instance, if you are using political comedy memes to promote a kid’s toy, it will fall flat without any impact.
Bring originality to avoid brand controversies
Funny brand memes get the most shares and likes on social media. But you cannot rip off existing cultural themes and concepts. Come up with an original idea and design a relatable meme within a context. For example, Doritos builds a strong community using nostalgia for the 80s and 90s culture.
Some brands display humility through satire and sarcasm. Gucci and Chipotle have tried self-deprecation with success. But the humor may backfire if it involves sensitive or controversial issues. Therefore, it is best to use funny memes when you want to invoke a nostalgic response from the customers.
Keep your concept or theme relevant and recognizable
Contemporary political events, personalities, and incidents are valuable. They generate exceptional images with great humor value. Comedy Central played up the Trump-Kim Jong summit to promote its brand of humor. Of course, the trend stayed alive long enough for them to create some impact.
Brand relevant messages can use any mysterious incidents too. Amazon used the Utah desert monolith trend by advertising a disclaimer. This strategy has to get timed well, or the meme will fail and bring down the brand’s reputation.
Bring attention to your brand’s affable personality
Fast food brands compete and even fight hard to stay profitable. The meme types of marketing strategy are appropriate for such challenges. Wendy’s and Burger King had a minor spar on social media. The former took the risk and tried hard to bring attention to its brand’s supremacy.
Wendy’s attempt to change its mascot’s persona from sweet to snarky created an online war of words. And, it spilled out into the real world when Burger King responded with a visible insult.
Crude and pretentious humor does not work
Online reputation is important and hard to regain if lost. Do not post vulgar memes with a tacky content on serious issues. Indeed, you would receive a lot of views because the public wants to check the new crude meme. But, it would ruin your brand image. After that, your competitor might come up with an appropriate meme to counter your insult, and it would turn your competitor into a protagonist.
Do you remember the memes related to religious insults? You wouldn’t want such a negative impact on your brand, would you?
Research the best types of marketing strategies
What is there to research for a meme? After all, all you need is a funny image and an appropriate concept to use that funny image. Do you have a new brand of chips in the market? A cat enjoying a bowl full of food would be a good funny image to promote your brand. However, meme marketing is not that easy. You need to research what’s trending now, make sure there are no racial or religious factors involved in it. Understand how your competitors are utilizing the market, and create unique concepts.
For example, Wendy’s got into hot water by promoting the Pepe the Frog meme. This symbol indicated harsh racist ideas, and the ad received negative publicity.
