Using humor as a marketing strategy for your content is one of the most common, and most effective tools used in marketing campaigns around the world. When done correctly and done well, using humor as a marketing strategy generates traffic as well as more shares, clicks, and interactions with your content directly.
So, how do you use humor in a way that works for your brand? We’ve put together a few guidelines to keep in mind if you’re trying to find your inner Jerry Seinfeld.
Quick Takeaways:
- Get to know your audience through collected data and market your content appropriately.
- Keep up with current trends to improve relatability
- Play with words to create a consistent brand persona
- Focus in on your marketing goals and achieve them by thinking about your why.
Get to know your audience
We see humor being used as a content marketing strategy across all platforms – on social media, on chalkboard signs outside of coffee shops, and in television ads. Now, whether this marketing humor is received well, will be dictated by your audience. To prevent any awkward backlash, you need to know your audience. Figuring out who is consuming your content and why is a must if you want to use humor in your marketing strategy successfully.
Conducting this research is simple – just use any current data you already have about your target audience. Tools like Google Analytics are super helpful when it comes to understanding data about where traffic to your site is coming from and why people are clicking.
Additionally, try using data from focus groups you may have already done as a starting point to getting to know your audience on a deeper level. After you’ve collected your customer data, use your demographics to frame your humor according to your audience. If your audience is made up of a younger generation, make sure that the format of your content is age appropriate for your target group. You wouldn’t make a Three Stooges reference to a genZ audience, would you?
Getting to know your audience is a process that will involve a lot of trial and error in the beginning. However, once you become more knowledgeable in how your audience absorbs your content, you make it just that much easier for your customers to stay engaged and keep coming back to those knee-slap-worthy jokes of yours.
Make it sound au naturale
Not all of us were born with the gift of comedy, and we all know from experience that the person who tries too hard to be funny creates an awkward situation for everyone involved. Luckily, you have a great personality – inject bits and pieces of it into your work. Making yourself sound more natural and relatable is easy, and you don’t need to dig too deep to find it.
You’re aiming for relatability here – and having a grasp on today’s current trends will give you the insight you need to sound both natural and relatable. Using a unique voice to market your business will help you to stand out from all the dry, reused routines in the marketing world.
Pringles perfectly combines humor and relatability in their recent 2022 SuperBowl ad, which addresses a problem that Pringles fans have long been complaining about – getting your hand stuck in the bottom of the pringles can.
It’s common practice to see brands using humor to interact directly with consumers via social media. This is a great example of using your voice naturally to inject humor into your marketing campaign. Don’t let Wendy’s follower roasts on Twitter intimidate you though – ease yourself into marketing humor by testing your jokes with a small focus group first. Then, use that feedback to modify your humor marketing strategy to pertain to your target audience.
Personify your Brand
Using humor as your marketing strategy does wonders for brand recognition. Research has shown that humor in marketing is growing – with 56% of advertising campaigns during the last 4 years using humor as an effective tool. It’s proven to increase recognizability across continents.
You’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here – just add a little bit of spice. Try rephrasing your words or find new ones that maybe you don’t use as often. Hint: a thesaurus is your trustworthy old friend here! If you don’t feel super comfortable trying your hand at marketing humor yourself, you can always utilize the skills of a comedy writer.
Humor will do a lot to humanize your brand. In turn, you can easily create a “feel good” response in your audience as well as some sense of trust between your brand and your audience. Comedy does a good job of bringing everyone together – and who doesn’t want their brand to be synonmyous with good feelings of togetherness and trust?
Using humor to market your content gives your brand a clear persona, and consumers will be more drawn to your quirky and relatable brand. It’s no secret that people love to share funny content. Having an amusing voice behind your brand will help you stand out, and will distinguish your brand from competitors who may still be using marketing techniques from 1986.
Moral of the story here – if your jokes are always-on, your brand is always-on.
Remember your why
At the end of the day, there needs to be a reason for why you are doing something. In this case, ask yourself why you are considering implementing humor into your current marketing strategy. Without a reason behind it, it may be harder to see your goals as something that’s attainable for you.
Start by thinking about what your marketing goals for the quarter are. If your goal is to get more people to remember your content, you’re on the right track. According to the According to The American Psychological Association, humor produces psychological and physiological benefits that lead to both memory retention and learning. A little goes a long way here – and a little laughter will have a lasting effect that keeps your audience engaged in your brand.
Without a clear goal or focus in the forefront of your mind, your attempt at humor may not land well and you risk your brand becoming the joke itself. Stay focused on you why, or reason behind using humor as a marketing strategy to prevent confusing your audience.
The size of your content does not necessarily matter. What you choose to do with your content to achieve your marketing goals is what matters. When you add humor and comedy into your marketing strategy, you are marketing your content in a unique way that makes your brand more memorable and sets you apart from competitors.
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