Ashley D. Su 
Memes are easy, crisp, practical, and most of all, humorous. Their tendency to go viral instantly, coupled with a high recall value, makes them suitable tools for marketing. Changing consumer preferences also play a crucial role in attracting the attention of marketers to memes.
Modern buyers at first glance find marketing methods superficial, forceful, and too brand-centric. However, when marketers use memes to market their products / services, their efforts are appreciated. They can create a sense of belonging and keep their audience engaged.
Does that mean every memes campaign is followed by applause and remarkable results? Unfortunately, some plans fail. To prevent your strategies from falling apart, here are a few things marketers should keep in mind while continuing to market memes:
Look for the right talent
Humor is easy to perceive and enjoy, but creating fun content isn’t every man’s cup of tea. Even those who are used to creating hilarious articles often stretch the storyline way beyond what is necessary to just make it fun. In such cases, the very purpose of engaging in meme marketing fails.
Marketers need to look for the right set of “members” to create their content. Additionally, one person may not be suitable for all brands or products. During the research period, you should pay attention to the previous works, ideologies, and tone of your potential creator.
Relevance is the key
Memes are topical. From global issues to the daily struggles of an ordinary man; anything and everything can be used to create a meme. However, not all topics correspond to your brand’s goal. Additionally, certain areas may be preferred by your target audience; while others may seem irrelevant to them. So, marketers should do proper research before selecting the issues or topics they want to talk about.
Staying relevant will give your campaign meaning and help you hit the mark. A strategy designed to force memes just because everyone else brings them down will fall flat and lead to no productive results.
Request feedback
With consumers becoming king, reviews have gained a strong hold in the business world. Marketers ask for frequent feedback on features to introduce, post-purchase experience, product quality, in-store convenience, and many more. They collect data to better understand their consumers and deploy products that meet or exceed their expectations.
Likewise, feedback is essential to understanding your consumer’s perspective on ongoing marketing efforts. By taking their opinions into account, marketers will be in a better position to differentiate between trends the brand should be a part of and those it can drop.
In addition, collecting customer feedback will also help kickstart and introduce trends. This saves time, effort and energy as brands are well aware of what their buyers really want. They should no longer waste time trying to test.
Create memes templates
Memes are dynamic, versatile, and time sensitive. If you delay engaging in a trend, you might miss the opportunity to extract all the results that might have been achieved otherwise.
While following the meme marketing route, the concept of first-come-advantage should be kept in mind. By creating memes templates, marketers can avoid losing the initial excitement created by a specific trend. It is an efficient way to operate.
Plus, leaving everything to the last minute could end up jeopardizing the quality of the content. Any delay in posting your idea may tarnish its uniqueness, as others might have posted something similar. So, to prevent this from happening, brands should always keep a set of models ready. A good mix of generic and topic-specific patterns will be beneficial in the long run.
Be different
Memes marketing isn’t always about following trends. It also allows your brand to be a trendsetter. Starting a trend may seem tricky, but it’s not impossible. To get started, keep a close eye on current trends; this will help you determine what type of content generally goes viral.
Once you have researched other campaigns, it will become easy to design something unique and worthy of glory. As long as you stay real, funny, crisp, and entertaining; There is nothing to worry about.
If you keep these five things in mind, your next campaign will surely be more meaningful, customer-centric and impactful!
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)
