Meme Marketing: A gateway to the hearts of Millennials and Gen-Z
Your social media feeds definitely overflow with funny videos, snapshots from your favorite Sitcoms, and trending topics that are hard to ignore. Can you imagine life without Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat? Social media has also become a source of news for a lot of people especially the millennials and Generation Z because of meme marketing. The term “meme” although sounds new but actually dates back to 1976 when it was coined by Richard Dawkins. The meme was defined by him as any shareable cultural artifact that spreads through a culture like a wildfire.
Just as technology has been physically getting closer to us through wearables and chips being inserted into our bodies to make our lives easy, the same is happening virtually as well. Digital assets and services have become an irreplaceable part of our lives. It’s difficult to imagine life without Amazon and Netflix, isn’t it?
Brands have to engage with their audience in order to convince them to buy. Targeting millennials and Gen Zers are not a cakewalk for brands with a traditional marketing approach. Meme marketing comes to the rescue here. The average screen time of Gen Zers and millennials has been on a rise and study shows that a huge chunk of this screen time is spent on social media and if you go into granular levels the majority of their time on social media goes into memes. You won’t believe the amount of information memes convey these days- From election statistics to Hollywood gossip, they miss almost nothing. Brands cannot afford to miss such opportunities, so they become a part of the conversation through meme marketing.
Memes are a potential space for marketers to empathize with their target audience. There is an extremely high chance of Ads going viral in this space. An advantage that meme marketing has is that these ads don’t look like the Ads that annoy you and you just want to skip them. If the Ad copies are made with care, it is quite difficult to tell it apart from a usual meme that you would come across. Isn’t it amazing to make your audience laugh and convey the message that your brand wants to at the same time? That’s the dream of every marketer!
What you need to know before you start
- The short life span of memes
- Audience Targeting
- The Meme Language
- Geography
- Call to Action
I have discussed each of these points in detail below.
As compared to any other form of advertising memes have an extremely short life span which can just even be 24hrs. This is not something to really worry about since the potential impact memes can have is massive even in such short spans of time. This also means that you have to be extremely quick and spontaneous with your marketing strategies. This form of marketing doesn’t allow you to plan ahead.
Audience Targeting
The audience consuming memes is unimaginably huge. You need to target your audience even in the millennial and Gen Z space based on their interests, and times they are active on social media. Days and times to post on social media play a very vital role in defining the engagement rate of your post and the success of your meme marketing campaign. You need to study insights and data of your social media handles to see the best times to post. A great post can be a waste if your active audience do not interact with it. Higher interaction simply means more visibility of your posts. Here is an example of a post by Netflix.
The Meme Language
The correct usage of social media slang plays an important role in empathizing with the target audience. Using complicated language and sophisticated terms don’t do the job here. Aligning with the culture is necessary since a lot can even go against your brand and you might end up being trolled. Try to make it as humorous as possible. Although humor is what rides the wave here, the balance is what makes a difference. Figuring out the trending sentiment during the time you want to post can help you take the leap.
Memes and social media have given brands a personality. Huge brands have started diverting their marketing budgets to social media for meme marketing, influencer marketing, social media Ads, and a lot more already. Being easily shareable, trendy, recognizable and to the point is what millennials and Gen Z dig for. Memes serve the purpose and are there to stay as a fresh form of marketing for a long.
Geography
One of the most important parameters that are often overlooked but should be kept in mind while you are ideating the creatives, is to look for memes that are trending in a specific country or culture. You might also want to use your audience’s regional language to empathize with them more effectively. You can even put to use the historical analytics data of your sales channels be it your website or social media like Instagram or Facebook. Most social media have an insights tab. You can find this data on Google Analytics for your website. To make sure your meme marketing doesn’t go wrong, learn about the culture of your target audience. If an offensive meme goes viral it could turn into a nightmare for the brand’s PR.
Call to Action (CTA)
You must have heard about this a gazillion times but yes, having a CTA has shown higher conversion rates even in meme marketing. The best part is that you don’t need to have a boring CTA button here but you can humorously include a CTA in the meme itself.
Now you have an idea on how to start from scratch and the pointers to keep in mind to build a viral meme marketing campaign, what are you waiting for? Go out there and create some highly engaging memes that your audience will love and interact with, most importantly align with your brand's ideology.
