In simple words, meme marketing is an aspect of content marketing and social media marketing, where brands use humor to engage customers in an entertaining way. The purpose of meme marketing is to entertain & engage the audience and persuade them to become a longtime customer.
A research by Wavemaker claims that 55% or users on instagram share memes every week and 30% share everyday. So it’s like a new channel for millennials. They use it to communicate and share their feelings and honestly I do too.
But how can memes be a good way to communicate with customers?
If you want to know why then you’re at the right place, we are a digital marketing agency that loves meme marketing. Hence in this article we will explain to you what meme marketing is and how it will be beneficial for your brand.
What is Meme Marketing?
Meme marketing refers to advertising of internet memes, in the form of image, video, and text on the social media platforms. Memes are the most popular thing on the internet between Gen-Z, because they are the most shareable thing on social media. Brands use meme marketing to engage the target audience in an entertaining way, there is no purpose to sell something to users.
Invention of Memes
Honesty, It’s not possible to identify who created the first meme or invented the “meme” word. But as the Wikipedia suggests the word “meme” has been used 60 times in New York Times crosswords since the puzzle began in the 1940s.
But the first meme is considered to be Dancing Baby created in 1996.
How Meme Marketing Works and the purpose of it?
Well it’s hard to explain how meme marketing works but I prepared some bullet points for you.
- Relatability – The crucial part of meme marketing is relatability. No matter how high your humor is, if your target audience is not relating it with them.
- Engagement – When the audience feels like “it’s me” they will engage with the meme and share with friends and families. Because they found that meme amazing and hilarious, so they will notice who published that meme and they follow your page.
- Purpose – The purpose of meme marketing is building a community through entertainment. Because no one wants all day promotional posts about products and services.
- Building Community: When you have a good community that loves your sense of humor. Unconsciously they will trust in your brand and now you can share promotional posts about your product and services but not too much they will unfollow you.
Examples of Meme Marketing By Brands
Here are some successful meme marketing examples by brands including waffle bytes.
1. Waffle Bytes: “ Ye Rog Purana Hai”
We created this meme at the beginning of 2023, and it was the most viral meme by us. The benefit we get from these memes is that we got 20 clients who want to promote their business on instagram and also it featured by Social Samosa on Insta.
2. Netflix: “Christmas meme”
Netflix is most popular among people under 35, so it’s not surprising that they frequently use meme marketing to connect with their young audience. Being a video streaming service, Netflix has an abundance of content that easily translates into memes, as seen in the example above using a shot from their popular series, YOU.
3. Domino’s: “CERTIFIED DIP OBSESSED”
This is another excellent example of a brand taking advantage of a popular meme and giving it a unique twist to make it relevant to their brand. In this case, Domino used an edited version of Drake’s Certified Lover Boy album cover, a meme that surfaced shortly after its release.
Domino’s quickly adopted this trend by including their famous garlic dip in the edited image (because momentum is important on social media!).
4. Bewakoof.com: “Memes, memes, memes, “
In India bewakoof.com is a great example of meme marketing, they share memes all day to engage the audience with their brand. They use all types of humor even though they post 8 times on instagram in a day. As a result they will get users on their website organically and most of them are teenagers.
How to Start Meme Marketing?
There are two ways to start meme marketing for your brand. The first is to hire a meme marketing agency like us, they will make your work smooth because they already have experience with meme marketing. Because meme creation needs creativity and it’s hard to find a creative person who can think and have a sense of humor.
The second way to follow the guideline of meme marketing:
- Identifying the Target Audience: first identify what your target audience is, because humor is very different. For example, customers who live in New york, can’t understand a meme on the TV show Big Boss.
- Staying Relevant: Moment marketing and meme marketing are the much similar terms when we talk about staying relevant. Staying relevant refers to getting up to date about events & trends such as festivals, new movies, web series shows, and viral videos.
- Creating Memes: You can start with your unique meme template or use those who are already trending on social media platforms.
- Injecting Humor and Relatability: While creating memes remember to relate with the audience, for example if your audience is those who know a particular language or form a particular religion.
- Platform Selection: Select the channel of social media, where you want to share the humor.
- Engaging with the Community: Collab with meme pages that have your targeted audience, it will be beneficial for your brand to exposure.
In conclusion
Meme marketing is a great strategy to engage and entertain your customers. Because people use social media for fun and humor, buying intent is second. So use memes to grow your brand and if you want some help you can contact us. We are a marketing agency that helps businesses to grow business with ethical marketing tactics.
