Does your brand really need to use meme marketing on social media? Let’s explore. 

Nearly 4.48 billion people across the globe use social media.

It’s obvious then that social media marketing is non-negotiable for any business.

Social media marketing, however, is quite tricky.

For most people, social media marketing translates into creating and dumping content on various channels without any objective whatsoever. There is no preamble as to whether it will truly resonate with the target audience or not. 

And this can be counterproductive.

Social media is a place where businesses can connect with their audience and engage them. And it is important to have a strategy that is actually tailored to your target audience. It is important to stay on top of the latest trends and to utilize them to your advantage.

One such tactic is what we call meme marketing, which has, in recent years, taken social media by storm. 

Memes are a fun, engaging, and low-effort way to strike a connection with your audience, and it has proven to be quite effective. A number of big brands, such as Netflix, Fenty Beauty, and Disney, have been using this tactic to drive their marketing.

In this article, we take a closer look at meme marketing and how you can get started with it for your business.

Keep reading!

What is meme marketing?

Just like it sounds, meme marketing is nothing but using memes as an important part of your social media strategy. It is a fun way to engage your audience and costs almost nothing to get started.

Memes are notorious for going viral pretty quickly, and this is exactly why marketers should not sleep on this tactic.

Of course, not every meme is likely to hit the right note and, in some cases, can even attract a flurry of negative comments.

This is why it is important to ensure that any meme put out by your business is funny, relatable, and, more importantly, sensitive to your audience’s views and beliefs.

Why is meme marketing so important?

Meme marketing, if used right, can create a huge impact on your social media marketing strategy. The right meme has the potential to go viral and make your brand famous among social media users.

But there’s more to it.

Here’s why meme marketing is important and why you should consider it in your content marketing strategy.

1. They are relatable

One of the best parts of a meme is that it can be used to tell a narrative to your audience in an easily digestible format. Visual aids have always been successful in engaging an audience, and funny memes do just that.

It is a great way to build rapport with your audience and to take a break from the monotonous content that most brands tend to post on repeat. Meme marketing allows you to showcase your original ideas in the most lighthearted way possible and it can completely change the way your audience views your brand.

2. They are low-effort and low-cost

Any time a meme goes viral on social media, you might have already noticed that many people jump on the trend and use it to showcase their own ideas.

In most cases, you don’t even have to work on a graphic representation. All you have to do is keep an eye out for what’s trending and use the same image but with your idea shining through it.

For instance, let’s take a look at a meme marketing example from Netflix. The OTT platform uses an image from the popular sitcom ‘Friends’ to simply engage with their audience in a fun way.

Apart from this, you can find dozens of meme generators that can actually help you churn out memes as per your requirement and content in no time.

Clearly, it is a cost-effective and easy tactic to incorporate into your marketing strategy. You can spend close to nothing, and yet the right meme can generate so much exposure for your brand. 

3. They are effective in engaging your audience

If you are someone who scrolls through social media frequently, you might have noticed that a lot of content out there requires a lot of effort to understand. You might find paragraphs and paragraphs of captions, lengthy videos, and a lot of boring content. More often than not, it’s easy to miss the message a brand is trying to convey.

Memes are fun and, more importantly, quite engaging. It is easily digestible and requires zero effort from your audience to get what you are trying to say. Humor always resonates with people and social media meme marketing is a great way to add humor to your marketing campaigns. Moreover, sharing memes that are in tune with the latest trend or event increases your brand relevance. It makes your brand seem more real and modern.

How to get started with meme marketing?

Now that you’ve understood the impact meme marketing can bring about for your business, let’s take a look at how meme marketing by brands actually works.

1. Keep your ideas original and relatable

While meme marketing is definitely a popular way to strike a connection with your audience, not every meme gets the kind of engagement you hope for. This is why it is important for your meme marketing strategy to be original and relatable.

Politically incorrect ideas, inside jokes, and overused memes need to be weeded out. 

Whenever a meme goes viral, and you are planning to hop on the trend, make sure you thoroughly understand what it means. Once you do, then think of how you can personalize it to your brand’s identity in the most authentic way possible. Simply recycling an overused meme is just not going to cut it, and that’s one of the disadvantages of meme marketing. If not done carefully, it can become repetitive.

The important thing to remember is that while its okay to use a popular template, the idea behind the meme needs to be as authentic and unique as possible.

2. Know your audience

Like with any kind of marketing, your meme marketing strategy also requires you to have a detailed understanding of your target audience. For instance, the segment who is likely to be largely interested in memes is going to be the millennials and Gen Zs. The older generations might not resonate as well with memes.

Apart from this, it is also a great idea to know your audience’s preferences, common pop culture references, topics that might likely capture their attention, and so on. 

Having a clear understanding of these aspects will also help you to generate creative and authentic ideas for your meme marketing strategy. Making a meme about a topic your audience is not remotely interested in takes away the purpose of this marketing tactic.

3. Know your audience’s preferred channels

There is no dearth of social media channels today, and it almost seems like new ones are popping up every other day. However, different audience segments have different channel preferences. 

For instance, a good chunk of baby boomers might be more inclined to use channels such as LinkedIn, while millennials and Gen Z might be present on channels like Instagram, and Twitter, along with LinkedIn.

Similarly some memes might work better on a channel like Twitter while some others may be better suited to a network like LinkedIn.

Tailoring your meme marketing strategy according to the right channel is the best way to elicit positive reactions from your audience.

4. Set clear objectives

As with any other marketing strategy, meme marketing also requires you to set clear objectives for what you want to establish.

Memes can be used to create marketing opportunities, provided you use it wisely. Objectives of your meme marketing strategy can vary. It could be about making your brand relatable, to share insights with your audience on a light note, boost engagement, or reach out to tougher audiences.

5. Define your marketing goals

Another important aspect of a meme marketing strategy is to have clearly defined goals in place. Essentially, you need to have clarity on your success parameters.

Goals could look something like measuring how many people engage with it, how many people share it, and so on. This helps you to understand your progress between setting objectives and actually establishing them.

6. Identify trending memes

One of the disadvantages of meme marketing is that memes can get pretty old pretty fast. A meme might be trending one day and by the next morning it can be completely obsolete. This is why it is important to stay on top of what’s been buzzing on popular social media channels.

Getting a meme to go viral is all about timing. Keeping an eye out for interesting topics and events will help you to decide what works best for your meme marketing strategy.

7. Add your angle to it

Like we said before, memes have an expiration date. Overusing the same meme over and over just results in boring your audience. Your social media meme marketing strategy should focus on original, authentic ideas.

While the creative can remain the same, what matters is the idea that you wish to express through a particular meme. You don’t want to sound repetitive and boring. 

Make it fun, quirky, and ensure it hits the right spot with your audience by adding your unique take on it. It can take on different forms such as reacting to a cultural phenomenon – for instance like the 2022 Fifa World Cup. Or it can be a repurposed meme that subtly promotes your product or service without sounding too salesy.

8. Share and encourage others to share

This is a sure shot way to make sure your meme goes viral. A well-executed meme, complete with an explanation of your perspective on it is likely to resonate with your audience.

Sharing it over the right social media channels is important to get the engagement it needs. You can also add eye catching CTAs and attention grabbing captions to motivate your audience to share it from their networks as well. 

Aside from this, the more a user shares your memes, the more they are inadvertently advocating for your brand. And that in itself is the best kind of marketing. The higher the number of shares, the more popular your brand becomes.

9. Measure and optimize your meme marketing strategy

At the end of it, everything boils down to the ROI. Meme marketing is only as effective as the impact it brings about.

This is why it is important to constantly measure the outcomes of your meme marketing strategy. Defining metrics to track success is critical as it helps you to identify what’s working and what’s not. Based on these insights, you can fine tune your meme strategy so that you can achieve your objectives easily.

For instance, Radarr, a digital data monitoring platform offers comprehensive, end-to-end social analytics to users. It helps you to stay on track with the latest trends through real-time alerts. It also allows you to effectively track your meme marketing campaigns and gives you in-depth data and actionable insights. This will in turn help you to optimize your meme strategy for better ROI.

Conclusion

If you think meme marketing is a phase then you’re wrong. Meme marketing is here to stay and you need to take it seriously. Simply because memes are entertaining and fun and a great way to engage your audience.

That being said, memes can also be tricky to put out. Meme marketing requires a thorough understanding and interpretation of viral memes. You  need to be able to make a clear distinction as to what can possibly work and what can come off as sensitive.

You also need to have a clear idea of where and how you will be using these memes and if you will be using them to complement other types of visual content.

Nevertheless, memes are used by different segments of a target demographic and are quite an effective tool when leveraged correctly.

So, if you are on the lookout to use memes for your social media marketing strategy, we’ve got your back. Discover how you can easily find trending memes and more with Radarr.