Introduction

What started as jokes and were merely meant as a form of light-hearted humour has now evolved to be one of the best ways for marketing almost any kind of product or service. Memes have surely come a very long way. Netflix, Uber, Durex, Swiggy, Zomato, etc. almost every single major leader of the market uses memes for marketing their products and a major source of attracting new customers. It is justified too, as in the 21st century it is important for old as well as emerging companies to take the advantage of the internet and cover a much larger base of customers, as the meme goes “modern problems, require modern solutions”. The success of memes and their role in digital marketing is significant and seems to yield a lot of profit in the future too. The Success of Memes and Their Role in Digital Marketing is discussed below.

Wait! It was all memes…. Always has been.

In case you do not know, what a meme is here is the textbook definition for you, “an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means is, known as a meme”. Here is the more modern spicy definition any kind of image, video, or text that has some sort of humour to it and goes viral is a meme.

No matter what generation you belong to, memes are relevant to all of you and so do they to your customer. Memes in themselves are powerful enough for conveying any kind of message and when you combine such raw power with strategic marketing, you become the wielder of…

The simplicity of memes makes them an extremely powerful tool for marketing. Unlike traditional digital marketing methods where you would need to do a lot of market research and highlight your product in the best possible manner with innovative methods, memes need some text and a fun trendy background image. However, this does not mean that you can slap on any kind of text or image together and hope for your product to sell out overnight. Meme marketing is an art easy to learn but difficult to master.

However, memes are not something that just arrived last year and gained sudden popularity. They have a very deep history to themselves and surprisingly even after so many years they have not lost their charm to themselves and in fact, have evolved over time in the best possible manner. To gain a perspective on how long memes have been around, get this, if you are a 90’s kid you might have seen a very popular image of a little kid with a clenched fist and the word “Success” written underneath, which was later on even used for political purposes in the US. Perhaps an image might jog your memory.

Surely, memes have been around for a very long time, the first emergence of memes can be, traced back to mid-1990 when the internet had just started to gain popularity. However, the popularity of memes and a great surge in them was, observed since, 2012 and they just do not show any signs of stopping. The reason behind this great surge is unknown but it does not matter, as long as we are getting spicy memes, everything is just fine.

The reason for all the success behind memes is simple, they are funny, and who does not like a funny and cute image of a dog or a cat being playful. Moreover, if you find a smart enough reason to promote your product through it, congratulations you have a sale.

In recent years, there just is not a good enough way to connect with your potential customers other than memes. People find memes relatable and relevant, and they look for the same things when deciding to purchase a product. Millennials are perhaps the best target audience for any kind of meme marketing. You would hardly find any millennial who does not use memes for even having a normal conversation and what better way to increase your customer base other than blessing their social media feed with some spicy memes promoting your products.

Even though marketing through memes can be a very effective way of selling your products. You do need to be highly creative and attentive towards various trends on social media to gain relevancy. You need to make catchy phrases, learn word bending, need to have Photoshop skills, need to be funny, etc. whoosh just so much work right, but do you really need to do all of that?

This is a very weird effect that has been, observed in recent years and it’s perhaps one of the prime examples of how strong digital marketing with memes can be.

Remember when Apple launched its wireless earphones known as Airpods. Apple made huge profits that year just by selling their new earphones. The product itself was unique in itself and had some of the best hardware specifications too. However, you may also remember the surge of memes that came with it. Almost every second post on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram was about how funny, expensive, or cool they were. This may have been, a fun time for most people, but for Apple, it was free marketing and publicity. Similar happened when they unveiled their iPhone X, iPhone XR, XS, and the infamous Apple stand.

How can we forget, the man, the myth, the legend, Eccentric businessperson, philanthropist, playboy, and of course meme lord Elon Musk? Elon Musk has always been unique in whatever he has done. The same can also be, observed when his company Tesla launched the Cybertruck. Just like apple, the product was weirdly unique, had phenomenal specifications, but during the launch day, something unexpected happened. The trucks supposedly bulletproof glass cracked when it was, hit with a steel ball. This was an international event and hence, many people watched this happen live. Consequently, a surge of memes followed, making the Cybertruck one of the most influential products of 2019. Other than that due to the unconventional shape of the vehicle itself, the memes just did not stop. Even Elon himself got on the meme train and helped to market the product as much as possible for virtually no cost at all.

As they say, “There is no such thing as bad publicity” and whether it was Apple or Tesla, they both profited from free marketing through memes a lot.
There are many such examples out there; however, there are some key points to remember from these examples. The products itself were unique and weirdly familiar too, the companies may have had a hidden strategy, these were complete brands and they took whatever that was being said about their products sportingly.
Now, that we know how memes can become a complete game-changer in digital marketing, you might have a question.

Well now, you are asking the real questions, and to be honest, there are many ways but we will look at a few of them, which we find to be the most effective.

You might have seen some posts promoting products such as mobile phones, or promo codes for room services such as Oyo. Many big companies often make use of marketing their products through “meme pages” on many different social media networks. These pages have a large following and hence, they turn out to be an instant gateway for reaching a large audience. In turn, the companies provide these pages with some monetary benefit. Often these meme pages, will promote any product or service unless and until they are being, paid enough for it. The expenses vary depending on how large, the page is and their engagement with their audience.

Another way is by approaching social media influencers for paid promotions. Social media influencers are everywhere. They are not meme pages; they are individuals who are celebrities with a large enough following and have a much larger engagement with their followers. You might have seen many people on Instagram promoting beauty products, or any other kind, what they post also falls under the category of a meme in some manner. They are quite expensive and may have many preferences as to which, product to promote.

Another very popular method used by companies is hiring YouTubers to promote their products. Now they are a special kind of way to get your products out there to a large untapped customer base. They fall somewhere between being a social media influencer and sort of a meme page. Many big YouTubers such as PewdiePie, Markiplier, Carryminati, etc. often do product promotions. They can be an extremely effective way to promote your products as they do it in a way that is “memey” and they have a great influence on their audience like a social media influencer. The Success of Memes and Their Role in Digital Marketing

Now all of these above methods, even though they can be very beneficial, can also be very expensive and have many constraints. Hence, if you want an option that can be considerably less expensive and provide you with the much-needed flexibility, your best bet would be to approach a digital marketing agency like WeLoveDigitalMarketing (WLDM).

We think that our name is enough to give you an idea of what we do and how deeply we love it. We are a Kolkata based digital marketing company that specialises in developing new marketing strategies for business. Creativity is our core belief towards success and our only objective is to improve Brand recognition to generate inbound sales and increase the Return on Investment (ROI). Our core philosophy is to follow the path you love and dedicate yourself to it. We offer varying services such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social media marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Content Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Email Marketing, Graphic designing, and Web development. Through all the hard work and principles that we followed today, WLDM has become one of the leading marketing agencies in Kolkata but our clients are from all over the world.
We are in the end game now.

Great! Now that you have known all that, you could have known about memes and marketing with memes, you can now make the switch from traditional marketing methods to something much more modern and relevant and sell your products to customers even more effectively.

We hope that our blog was interesting enough for you to read and at the same time informative enough for you to learn something new. The Success of Memes and Their Role in Digital Marketing has been discussed in this blog. If you ever need, any help related to digital marketing and especially meme marketing feel free to Contact us at WLDM and we will be at your service.