Since they are easy to create and simple to share, memes have become very popular on social media. Many of them are liked so much that they go viral with hundreds of thousands of shares in just a few days. With the potential of memes becoming apparent to marketers for raising brand awareness and boosting the level of engagement, memes have become more common in marketing campaigns. As successful as memes are, not everyone will like them or be able to relate to them. A few things to keep in mind, if you are considering leveraging the power of memes in your marketing campaigns:
Better Quality of Engagement
Memes permit brands to engage with their target audiences without engaging in hard-sell tactics and forcing advertisements down their throats. It is important in a context where most of the audience is learning fast how to ignore in-the-face advertising when they are online. In this situation, engaging the audience becomes very difficult for brands, according to Forbes. Memes, on the other hand, can be used to attract attention to the brand and to share the brand’s personality and ethos with the use of humor, entertainment, trending topics, and inspirational quotes. Since the content of the memes is easy to consume and share on social media, they can help boost the engagement rate. With memes being funny and less obvious as a vehicle for brand advertising, people let down their guard and engage with them more easily.
Memes Can Make Even Dull Brands Exciting and Fun
Because memes are entertaining and fun to consume, they can assist brands that are considered dull, to raise their profile on social media and become exciting. For example, marketers understood that nobody in their right minds would get excited over a bottle of ketchup and be tempted to engage with content featuring the common condiment just to get a discount on their next purchase. However, Heinz, a leading ketchup brand created a memorable meme-centric social media campaign with the target of generating one million impressions and managed to get four times that, according to Meme Scout, a leading resource of memes.
Memes Connect At an Emotional Level with Audiences and Allow Better Communication of the Brand Personality
By using memes relevant to your industry that contain inspirational messages, you can reach out and connect with your target audiences better. With the help of appropriate messaging and visuals, you can communicate your brand ethos, values, and engage in telling a story that audiences can connect with and create an instant emotional response that can make your communication and your brand more appealing and memorable.
Conclusion
Even as memes become increasingly popular with both brands and their audiences on social media, you must find ways of making yourself more relatable by your target audience, typically the millennials and the Gen Z that are more internet-savvy. Be sure to create memes for a specific target audience, as trying too hard to please a wide cross-section can fail. Also, riding the curve of trending memes and topics will ensure that your memes will engage better.
