Wednesday, September 19, 2018
If you have a small business or social media presence you hope to bolster, you may have noticed that memes are a fast way to snag eyeballs. Internet marketing agency Fishbat notes that savvy businesses can employ memes as a valuable tool for viral marketing. Unfortunately, using memes incorrectly can have the opposite effect, making your business appear out of touch. To help, Fishbat shares the following four tips for marketing with memes.Know your audience. One of the primary aspects to keep in mind when considering marketing with memes is to know when they’re appropriate and when they’re not. Memes primarily appeal to the younger generation, and the content may not deliver the results intended if they are used in an industry with an older average buyer. Knowing the demographics that the meme will be viewed by can also better inform the content of the meme, as many memes are highly tied to current trends and viral images that will vary in popularity across different groups. Do market research to understand whether this type of content will appeal to buyers before spending the time to craft the perfect meme.
Don't force it. Memes are a great way for a company to establish a reputation for being "cool" and relatable, but trying to force memes that aren't funny or relevant into every article will come across as trying too hard. While young consumers are definitely receptive to memes, they can also be very judgmental of companies that are obvious in their attempts to promote their business through "relatable" content. In many instances, they have responded quite negatively to clear marketing ploys. Memes can be extremely effective, but they should be used sparingly and with restraint for the majority of companies.
Understand the memes you're using. To expand on the section above, it's important that memes are used correctly. Since the popular memes change on a near-daily basis and often require some sort of context or even knowledge of previous memes to understand, it's important that all memes are both funny and fall in line with the spirit of the meme. A company trying and failing to relate to users with memes is much worse than not using memes at all, so the marketing team should only create content that they truly understand.
Don't sacrifice originality or quality in other content. For a talented marketing team, coming up with memes is relatively simple and doesn't take much time. Effective memes are also a valuable way to engage with an audience and increase hype for a company or product. With that said, they aren't a substitute for quality in other areas of online content. Providing value through regular articles or blog posts still remains one of the best ways to increase a website's online ranking in search engines, and an overload of memes will lower the quality of the company's online presence as a whole.
Source: Fishbat
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