Do you love a great meme?
Did you know you can leverage memes for your business?
Memes are everywhere now and have become a cornerstone of social media; they are the most likely form of online content to “go viral”.
75% of people share memes with their friends and followers on social media[1]. This presents amazing opportunities for clever, creative marketers and business owners to capture the attention of their target audiences and drive potentially huge volumes of sharing online to generate new and even unexpected leads.
What is a Meme?
The term “meme” comes from the Greek mimema, loosely meaning “imitation”. It was coined in 1976 by British biologist Richard Dawkins, according to whom a meme is a shareable cultural artifact; an idea that is copied and transmitted from person to person within a culture.
Memes use recognisable images, GIFs, and/or phrases to creatively and often humorously convey ideas through several components:
- Content – an image, GIF, text block, or combination thereof.
- Text – provides context, commentary, or humour.
- Cultural Reference – may draw on a current trend, historical event, iconic person, character, or movie scene.
- Emotion – triggers an emotive response.
- Branding – used for business marketing, original memes are usually branded with the inclusion of a company logo, website URL, or another integrated branding element.
Memes may reference popular culture, current events, attitudes, feelings, or universal trends. They foster connections between people by creating a relatable, shared understanding, and humour often plays an intrinsic role in this. After all, we all love a good chuckle!
Easy to transform or adapt, these snippets of content can be relatable for any brand and, by their very nature, they are quick and easy to share. A great meme can travel to and through diverse audiences all over the world remarkably quickly.
Memes can be:
- Funny
- Emotive
- Inspiring
- Satirical
- Ironic
- Motivational
- Thought-Provoking
Memes bring people together.
What is Meme Marketing?
Meme marketing exploits the popularity and effectiveness of memes in savvy ways to connect with and engage a target audience and generate new leads. For example, you may use a particular quote or phrase, with or without an image, uniquely and compellingly in a way that complies with your brand and conveys an intended idea or message.
It is also a fantastic way to leverage humour and other emotions for your brand to better connect with and captivate your target audience.
Humour can be a very powerful tool to grab your audience’s attention, increase your brand’s relatability, and create a positive emotional connection with customers and prospects.
Researchers have found that ads that make people laugh are 30% more likely to be remembered than more serious ones – and this is true too for memes. You must, however, make sure that your approach to humour is curated for and appropriate to your target audience as well as in alignment with your brand values, identity, and messaging.
Why Use Memes for Marketing?
Consider:
- Almost 95% of professional marketers have used meme marketing[2].
- Almost 80% of meme posts improve engagement rates on social media.
- Meme reach exceeds normal content by 10x[3] – and 60% of this is organic.
- Memes are not overly promotional – they give audiences a welcome break from purely sales-based content.
Advantages of meme marketing for your brand include:
- Enhanced Reach/Higher Engagement – memes offer a low-effort, high-effect method of reaching and engaging audiences. They make for highly shareable posts across social media platforms and resonate most highly with Millennial and Gen Z audiences, especially via Instagram.
- Relatability – memes are incredibly simple for audiences to consume, and their relatability almost guarantees they will resonate with their targets. They should take little effort for their intended audiences to understand and are a fantastic way for businesses to deliver accessible, entertaining content.
- Memorability – as a business, you want your messaging to be memorable. Memes have a very positive recall value and this translates to making your brand more memorable as well when you do it right – perfect for building brand awareness and fostering loyalty.
- Impact – memes are an effective way to communicate and make a real-world impact by distributing information and influencing public opinion, popular culture, and even political outcomes.
- Humanising Your Brand – those brands that perform best tap into their humanity and create a tangible sense of community with their customers and leads. Funny, relatable memes used in brand marketing provide a great way to connect with audiences, develop a brand voice, and humanise the audience’s experience with the brand.
- Cost-Effective Strategy – developing an original meme requires only an idea, some creativity, and a little time – making meme marketing a low-cost, high-ROI investment for your brand.
Some Legal Considerations
Be aware that you must use memes for business only with the proper rights and attribution. Failure to do so can incur legal ramifications and harm your business.
Trademark and copyright laws apply to most meme content and almost all content within a meme is copyrighted. This means the original creator has exclusive rights to its distribution, modification, and display. There are “fair use” exceptions to this rule for non-commercial or casual meme sharing.
Defamation law is also of importance here; memes must never intentionally aim to manipulate media to spread false information that damages credibility or reputation as it relates to a business, product, or individual.
Maintain legality as you incorporate meme marketing safely:
- Vet all existing memes you intend to use with professional legal advice first and obtain written consent where possible.
- Credit original creators; drive traffic their way by linking to their websites.
- Create original memes using free-image databases like Pexels or Pixabay, or through your own paid subscription to providers like iStock.
- Focus advertising/monetisation around your own original memes.
Tips for Successful Meme Marketing
A great meme is:
- Entertaining – memes are FUN – and inspire a feeling of being in on something (like an inside joke) shared with thousands of other people.
- Relatable – it embodies and summarizes a widespread feeling/opinion/desire/thought that “everyone” can relate to. This creates a feeling of community.
- Witty – both funny and clever, memes succinctly state the obvious in new and interesting ways.
- Potentially Viral – because they are so easy to share, great relatable memes are ideal for virality across platforms on social media.
DO:
- Maintain simplicity – your memes should be simple and crafted for your targets. The easier they are to understand, the higher the engagement they’ll achieve.
- Be authentic and relatable – alignment with your brand is imperative. Use memes that naturally speak to and for your brand and that suit your target audience. Maintain your brand’s voice, tone, and values consistently and don’t force humour.
- Remain on-trend – know what is happening in the world as it pertains to your audience and use this in your approach to marketing. If using an existing meme (even one of your own original creation) make sure it is still relevant, trendy, and not liable to offend.
- Be original – ideally, you will create original, unique memes for your brand to stand out and blaze a path rather than riding on the coattails of others who came before.
DON’T:
- Overlook your legal responsibilities – see above.
- Overuse memes – repetitive content may harm the relevance of your brand and its SEO outcomes. Diversity in your meme content, on the other hand, keeps your engagement efforts dynamic and helps you reach broader audiences.
- Offend – this is extremely important! Make sure any meme you intend to post is not going to potentially offend any community, individual, or other entity. This is critical to avoid damaging your brand’s reputation and bottom line – it is very difficult to come back from even a single misstep in the viral social media landscape.
Meme marketing is much more than a passing trend; it’s here to stay.
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[1] https://www.ypulse.com/article/2019/03/05/3-stats-that-show-what-memes-mean-to-gen-z-millennials/?ref=buffer.com
[2] https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/meme-examples?/
[3] https://www.clearvoice.com/resources/leveraging-meme-marketing/
