Why Meme Marketing in SMM is a Great Idea

Availability of efficient data-analytics tools embedded in modern social media as well as the immense popularity of various platforms that only keeps increasing nowadays open new perspectives for both small and large businesses. Meme marketing is just one such possibility but it is the one that already becomes an immensely powerful tool.

The majority of people know what a meme is. All those funny pictures and gifs that can be easily adapted to almost any situation and become viral in no time whatsoever have more potential than just improve people’s moods. Good marketing specialists always pay attention to research and new trends that predetermine the growth of opportunities as well as new tools’ emergence. Meme marketing in social media marketing is a great tool that can be very efficient if used properly or extremely dangerous if critical considerations are ignored.

Characteristic Features

Just like any other marketing tool, meme marketing has its own peculiarities that should be considered by SMM specialists while coming up with social media campaign ideas:

• Memes have a rather short lifetime relevance, very few memes remain popular and relevant for years.
• Memes usually possess a satiric nature that allows them to become viral and spread across social media within a short time.
• Memes often imply controversial nature which is good when individuals use them but may become extremely inappropriate if used by companies or organizations.
• It is easy to observe the level of engagement and understand what the audience likes.

Major Benefits

Utilizing memes in a company’s social media campaign may result in the synthesis of positive effects on advertising and revenues. Appropriate use will be highly appreciated by the target audience:

• Successful memes create a connection with the community, especially when a company is focusing on new generations who cannot imagine their lives without the Internet. Focus on jokes and funny representation is very attractive to young people and it implicitly makes them prefer your brand instead of any other.
• Memetic marketing related to one’s brand is rather cheap as it doesn’t require creating original content. The picture is already available and everything that should be done is creating original and catchy short text and post it via the brand’s social media. Moreover, people may even create their own memes related to your product and contribute to free advertising, as happened with many of Apple’s devices already.
• Memes create opportunities for viral marketing which is claimed to be important in terms of modern audience’s peculiarities. Memes are extremely easy to share which will contribute to the popularity of your content in case it was truly original and funny. As a result, a wider audience becomes informed about your brand which is a very positive long -term perspective.
• Memes create a positive image for a brand that appears to be modern, fresh, and relevant to people who live here and now. All these positive associations make the brand more attractive. The modern world appreciates uniqueness and personalized approach. If your company is innovative enough to exclude regular marketing techniques with obligatory calls to action and similar things, customers will appreciate suggested content more.

Potential Disadvantages

While adopting meme marketing may appear to be super easy, it is far from being true, which is proved by multiple examples of big companies’ failure to create memorable or at least understandable meme. SMM specialists responsible for using this instrument must understand what the audience wants and whether the suggested meme will create the desired effect. Otherwise, these are some of the disadvantages that may undermine the effectiveness of meme advertising:

• Absence of meme’s understanding. If the meme’s context was used inappropriately, the company will appear to be completely out of touch. As a result, the company’s reputation will be damaged instead of being improved.
• Missed popularity point. Using outdated and no longer popular memes will not affect the reputation as severely as the previous issue but it will not create the desired effect. Not so many memes remain popular for many years and outdated memes become hardly useful. Wasting time is unacceptable if the company wants to utilize some currently viral memes.
• Meme’s irrelevance to the target audience. The best scenario, in this case, is that people will just ignore it and a low level of response will neither damage nor improve the company’s reputation and sales level. The worst-case scenario is that people become offended by inappropriate or controversial content and in this case brand’s reputation may be severely affected.

How to Integrate Memes into Social Media Content

If you were recently introduced to marketing and memes, we present a short list of basic tips on how you can incorporate a simple  meme into your social media feed:

1. React to a cultural phenomenon that happened recently. React to what happens in real-time, on the national holiday, news, live NASA broadcast, father’s day, etc.
2. Take part in calls (flash mobs). Taking part in trends is always an opportunity to get many likes, views, and engagement of the audience. Do not miss your chance!
3. Tweet screenshots. There is much hilarious stuff on Tweeter that social media managers can use for free. Just joke quickly by repurposing Twitter content for Instagram to create a brand meme. Important: do not forget to include the name of the Twitter account in your screenshot, to give credit.
4. Repost relevant memes. Do not be afraid to repost memes created by some other user as memes exist to be shared! Anyone would be happy to see how their content goes viral. Just give credit if you use someone else’s meme.

Many companies, organizations, and brands are not afraid to use memes as a tool for their marketing strategy. In order to do it successfully, just trust your instincts, observe how others’ do it, and go on. If you think that the meme you created is not funny, insightful, or relevant your customers probably won’t as well. Know that the more memes you consume, the better you will create them. Go and meme!

Wrapping Up

Correct use of already existing classical memes or creating entirely new content may be extremely beneficial but as with any other technique, this SMM strategy must be balanced, carefully developed, and utilized by people who know what they are doing. The appreciation of new generations is the perfect tool to indicate the correct use of this novel SMM strategy. When customers are laughing because of funny and effective content you created instead of your company itself, the meme advertising strategy may be treated as effective.

It is a very tricky technique but its correct use will be highly beneficial in the modern world, where millennials constitute a large part of the target audience of many brands and social; media use became prevalent. Finally, work should not be boring but challenging and funny instead. Only in this case it will inspire other people and create the best possible connection.

About the author

Mark Blackwood dedicated a lot of effort and his time studying the development of marketing trends with the pace of time. Oftentimes his responsibilities included keywords research and checking online translation services reviews to ensure cultural appropriateness of developed marketing campaigns. He is currently considering writing a book based on gathered experience in the marketing field.