Log in to any social media platform; you will find memes literally everywhere. And like, why not? Sharing memes is the love language of Gen-Z, and even millennials have adopted the trend. Simply, no matter if you are colleagues, friends, or even family, there are memes and jokes fitting everyone.
Hence, having a tremendous proportionality to attract social media users daily, memes are a must-have addition to your social media content strategy. Many brand managers and marketers have already jumped on the bandwagon of creating jaw-dropping meme content that revolves around your brand’s niche and can serve as a good laugh for your audience.
Well, at this point, if you are wondering why you have not included a meme-posting schedule yet in your marketing plan with an efficient social media tool to manage it all, this meme-marketing cheat sheet is everything you need before getting started.
Let’s begin!
The Culture of Meme Marketing
Memes are humorous elements that spread rapidly and go viral from person to person in a humorous or relatable manner through sharing on social media channels. A meme can simply be anything from a visual, image, audio, action, dialogue, and more.
However, when it comes to meme marketing, the concept refers to the strategies of using a meme or a collection of memes to promote your product/service and create awareness about your brand. According to a survey on Statista, social media activities created a positive brand perception for businesses.
Of all the respondents, 39 percent said that memes and jokes posted by brands also played a vital part in grabbing eyeballs for the business. Hence, the culture of meme marketing requires less and gives more, as you can imply this strategy in less time and effort involved and with little to no cost. In return, a massive engagement turnover, an increased number of followers, and higher reach are all you get through executing stellar meme marketing ideas.
Steps to Create a Meme Marketing Strategy
First of all, a portion of your social media content strategy should include meme marketing techniques and plans that you can execute from time to time to generate profitable results.
Step 1: Know Your Brand’s Voice
The first and most crucial step is to know the core voice of your brand. You must analyze the vibe of your voice, reflecting your brand’s image, vision, identity, and personality. This way, you will be able to make a meme marketing strategy relevant and compatible with your brand. For example, political memes won’t align with your brand’s niche if you are a shoe store.
Step 2: Analyze Your Audience
Another important step is to know who your targeted audience is. Are you making meme content for Gen-Z kids, or is it for old-age personalities? Is it for men only or men and women both? Ask yourself questions like these so that you can integrate personalization within your meme marketing strategy to attract more people.
Step 3: Incorporate Personalization
Memes go trending and viral on social media because they are funny for the audience. However, you must mold the context of the memes to suit your target audience. For example, if you are a social media marketer, you can create memes cracking jokes about your community to make it relevant and a good laugh for people in your network. This way, you will be able to achieve good numbers of engagement.
For example, Semrush is a keyword research tool that fits best in the interest of marketers. Hence, it creates marketing-centric memes quite often.
Step 4: Set Up Meme Patterns & Follow Them
Now that you are aware of how to create memes to elevate your social media engagement, another important factor to ponder upon is how your meme content will look. The answer to this question is quite simple: A meme should be easy, crisp, and trending.
Some pointers that can help you create a viral meme:
- Keep the text in bold fonts and easier to understand.
- Do not change the original context of the meme so that the audience can relate to it.
- Do not overdo personalization.
Here is how our beloved Social Champ has done it.
Step 5: Promote Your Memes
And lastly, share your meme content on social media handles and with your peers so that the engagement track begins. Promote your memes as much as you can to jump on the bandwagon of virality and get a fair share of the limelight.
Related Article: TikTok Marketing 2024: An Ultimate Guide From Basics to Inspirations
6 Tips to Master the Art of Meme Marketing
Following are a few ways to get hold of the meme marketing trends and create a winning strategy for incredible business profits. Check out below.
Stick to Existing Memes
As you begin your journey of meme marketing on social media, do not try to force it purposely. Memes either live long or die fast; there is no in-between. Some memes got less limelight despite being great content pieces, and then some memes proved to be an evergreen content pieces in terms of effectiveness. Hence, choose the content that aligns with the timing, current scenarios, and market trends.
Create Meme Templates for Your Campaigns
If you often run brand campaigns on social media, a great strategy is to create pre-hype by executing a series of hilarious meme templates that hint at your campaign’s product/service and grab the audience’s attention. Brands and businesses often create meme templates of their own to promote their new launches and guess they succeed in bringing sufficient hype and engagement for their content.
For example, brands and individuals have often used this two-button meme template.
The Two-Button Meme Template Post at the Best Time
Social media has its fair share of complexities that individuals must take a grip on before getting started. For example, the timing of when a content piece is getting posted on social media matters a lot in terms of visibility and engagement. Hence, get your hands on a social media management tool that provides you with the best time to post on social media, analyzing your audience’s engagement with your content.
Keep an Eye on Trends
Plan content for your memes, but at the same time, pay attention to the virality grind of social media. Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing, what they are talking about, and what’s hot on social media currently. If the buzz news is relevant to your brand’s niche, you can create memes on it and provoke some fiery debates.
For example, Khaby Lame’s classic meme template ruled the trends for a long while.
Khaby Lame’s Classic Meme Template Engage in Challenges & Contests
Meme-style challenges are a thing on social media, right? No matter how much you try to keep a decent identity on social media, once you begin your journey as a meme marketer, you will have to appear a little goofy. Hence, make up your mind to participate in meme challenges and contests, tag your team members to indulge in the activity, and create a fun ground for your audience to engage with.
Post Tweets & Messages as Memes
As a frequent social media user, you must have often run into funny tweets. Even if that never happened, hilarious conversations with friends or colleagues exist. A winning tactic is to post a screenshot of a tweet or conversation as a meme and let your audience engage in a good laugh. This will take less time and effort, and your social media posting will remain consistent with a fresh meme running on all the platforms.
For example, this was quite a banter, no?
Elon Musk’s Twitter Meme
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Inspiring Meme Marketing Examples by Popular Brands
Times Prime
Times Prime is a digital membership service to gain access to premium content and exclusive member benefits. It served its audience well with a relatable meme based on the globally popular trend of ‘Barbenhiemer,’ which gained massive limelight with the release of Hollywood masterpieces Oppenheimer & Barbie the Movie.
The Barbie-Oppenheimer Meme A wise use of a viral meme with crisp content, right?
Netflix
The globally ruling streaming platform Netflix often engages with its audience through meme content based on its popular shows and movies. Below attached video is a sarcastic and relatable example for a few of you (haha).
View this post on InstagramThe meme targets Netflix’s popular shows Brigerton and Queen Charlotte, its prequel.
Lays
As I discussed, meme templates work well as a pre-hype for important campaigns and announcements. Lays showcased a stellar example in this regard with this visual and a quirky caption urging the audience to think and guess what is coming next.
View this post on InstagramSpotify
The popular music streaming platform Spotify regularly talks about musicians, singers, and composers – their fashion styles, public appearances, and what’s cooking in their playlists. To entertain the audience with a good laugh, it often indulges in taking a dig at a few celebrities, and guess, the strategy works, bringing in quite a lot of opinions and debates.
Here is an example.
Spotify Meme Marketing Example WhatsApp
- Well, you must see how WhatsApp uses meme-marketing strategies on its Instagram handle and grabs all the attention of its audience. Check out this video.
View this post on Instagram Tim Hortons
One of the most favorite Coffee brands, Tim Hortons, made an inspirational use of the ‘Barbie’ trend when the movie was released. This video showcases how it utilized the character of Ken from the movie for its promotion, offering free coffee to all the Kens if they offer it through their app.
Did you see how they pulled off a great tactic to promote their application? That is how it works.
View this post on Instagram
Trending Memes for Each Day in 2024
Well, now that we are almost wrapping up this exclusive meme marketing cheat sheet, dropping some memes that you can pull off with stupendous creativity every day of the week.
Meme for Monday
Mondays are boring and bring with them quite a lot of workload. Employees usually feel dizzy, slow, lazy, and unproductive. Sharing a meme with a similar context might help.
Meme for Tuesday
Tuesday is usually easy yet quite productive for many employees, but this is what most people feel on the day.
Meme for Wednesday
Well, on a Wednesday morning, you might see people around you and on social media in energy, similar to Wednesday’s Adam.
Meme for Thursday
Thursday’s feelings are happening and exciting because you are near the weekend. So, it is all about the excitement and the energy of a party freak.
Meme for Friday
I personally love Fridays at the office because it is the WEEKEND, and I am sure everybody else feels the same. So, generally, your audience is likely to love a meme resonating with their weekend vibe.
Meme-Marketing Is the New Buzz!
Putting the discussion to a wrap, meme marketing trends are all you need to spice up your social media marketing strategy and give a boost to your reach. Sophisticated social media content ideas should run on your digital streams, but a little humor and creativity is never a no. So, grab the opportunity, learn from this guide, and make the best use of this meme marketing cheat sheet to rule the space.
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