How and Why to Integrate Meme Generators into Your Marketing?

There’s hardly an Internet user that doesn’t know what a meme is. But if you’re one of those, then here’s a little explainer. Meme is a funny and typically viral picture with hilarious captions on it.

Businesses now are willingly using memes as it helps to grow an audience and leads to the sales increase. Especially if your memes reflect the idea of your brand and your brand voice. Memes are also popular because it’s easy to make a meme go viral. Your clients will do everything for you - if your meme is on point, people tell everyone else about it.

Such virality positively influences brand awareness, engagement on social media, and eCommerce activities. Besides, memes are cheap. It means that you waste no huge amount of money or no money at all to create these pictures. And if you use memes already made by someone else, it costs you nothing but your time.

But how to make memes, you wonder.

Answer: with meme generators. The 4k Download team prepared a compilation of the top 3 meme generators to help you integrate memes into your marketing strategy.

Imgur

Imgur is one of the largest free image hostings on the Internet, and it has its own meme generator. The tool has lots of premade memes you can edit by yourself. You need to have an account there to post your memes to the community.

Meme Center

Meme Center is divided into four meme generating tools: the meme builder, the GIF maker, the quick meme, and the uploader. All the features and tools are available for those who have an account there. The tool includes an advanced meme builder and lets you make custom pictures using ready-made memes. There’s a large variety of memes to choose from which you can save or post on the website after creation. Another pro of the tool is that you can install it on your smartphone. You can easily find similar memes within the tool. But the tool has a drawback - you can’t delete the memes you’ve made on the website.

Make a Meme

Make a Meme is a quick and easy-to-use tool to create memes. The tool has a lot of memes backgrounds to choose from, allows you to share your content easily, and requires no user account. Among the disadvantages is that you can’t customize the text boxes, and the app is not available for Android.

Why do memes go viral?

Internet and social media, in particular, are full of memes, but not every one of them goes viral. Videos and pictures can become viral overnight and be discussed weeks ahead, so the question arises: what makes memes go viral?

One of the reasons is controversy. Do you remember that meme with the dress when no one could guess the right color? It went so viral because people were crazy about figuring out which color this is - white or blue. The trick is that controversy makes people share the meme, and thus, it gets viral and talked about.

Or “Yanny/Laurel” meme? The same principle here - Internet users were literally arguing about what the computer-generated voice says - Yanny or Laurel. And what do you hear, by the way?

Another reason is that memes are fun, easy, and typically are down-to-earth. It means that memes show us our lives, our problems, our behavior, or something we’d definitely laugh at. They sometimes even have a profound message.

But none of the above answers the initial question - how to use memes in your marketing and business?

How to integrate memes into your marketing strategy?

You should definitely consider using memes in your advertising campaigns if your target audience (or part of it) are young people. But you’re mistaken if you think that memes can get noticed only on social media or the Internet as a whole. For example, British company Virgin Media uses a well-known meme The Success Kid to advertise its services offline and thus gets its young target audience.

If you want to integrate memes into your marketing, use these tips:

Choose memes for a young audience only. Young people are more likely to spend their time on social media, so they will surely understand what a funny picture means, and your campaign will work. If your audience is 40+ years old, then probably, memes are not going to have the same effect.
Implement fresh and viral memes only. If you choose a meme that is already forgotten by your audience and not up-to-date, this will look stupid and fake, as if you’re trying to attract a younger audience but don’t know how.
Choose the memes thoroughly. To do so, you need to have deep knowledge about your customers, understand what they like, and what they despise. Some brands use provocative memes and gain brand awareness this away. If you want to do the same, you need to think it through first and be ready to see loads of negative comments in your social media accounts.
Use the meme that will literally fit into your business and will look harmoniously in your ads campaign. One wrong step and your brand image may be destroyed or mocked around the digital space.
Inspire with pop culture. If you decide to make memes on your own, include the elements of people’s behavior, make references to widely-known movies, songs, Internet phenomena, books, and so on.
Use social media platforms to share your memes. Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Facebook are those platforms that will make your memes (and your brand) go viral. Make people talk about your brand through memes.

Memes, like any other content marketing tool, will work well if you use them wisely. Consider the tips above before implementing memes into your content marketing strategy and advertising campaigns. Memes don’t stop growing their popularity, and you’ll surely find the ones to reflect your brand voice. So go for it and meme!