Your Guide to B2B Memes

Yoooo, it’s been a while!

Welcome to another edition of PROse, the B2B marketer's no BS guide to growing an engaged audience.

Sorry for the long break there. Between life and building our new agency, Antidote, things got out of whack.

But we’re back! And, we’re going to be better than ever.

Alright, let’s jump into today’s letter!

I’ve talked to dozens of companies that are starting to invest in audience development.

And I’m sure many more will make the same decision as marketing budgets tighten next year.

Right now, they’re all trying to figure out how to get into the meme game.

Why?

Because it’s the easiest way for your audience to determine if you really understand them or not.

And, in turn, whether they should reward you with their attention.

But doing memes well is harder than you might think.

Most brands see inconsistent or mediocre performance…

Including a few brands I’ve worked with.

So I spent time digging into our performance data.

And, I spotted several trends that I’m going to break down with you.

I’m going to share:

1. The different types of memes

2. When to use each

3. Strategy considerations you should keep in mind

1. The different types of memes

Most people only think of memes as funny images with white captions. But there’s more to it than that.

By definition (via Oxford dictionary), a meme is “an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.”

The most common meme types for B2B brands are text and image.

We could just stop there, but I also discovered memes can fall under two other buckets: narrative & cultural.

Narrative memes are memes that center around a brand’s value proposition or core messaging themes.

They’re adapted to be funny, usually by poking fun at competitors or traditional ways of working.

Cultural memes are memes that center around something happening in a specific industry or subculture (e.g. industry: retail & commerce, subculture: DTC media buying).

These memes focus more on what’s happening in the world of your audience than on your product/service.

2. When to use each 

Let’s start off by taking a look at some aggregate data (from Antidote client brands Sept - Nov 2022):

Cultural memes tend to get more attention, for logical reasons.

If someone's scrolling their feed and they see content that they expresses how they feel in a funny way, they're much more likely to stop scrolling and engage.

That doesn't mean narrative memes are useless.

Once you've built a community that understands and loves your product, getting them to engage with more company-centered messaging isn't too hard.

Knowing what formats and types of memes to post is a mix of art and science.

Want to build product awareness? Narrative memes are probably your best bet.

Want to build brand awareness? You’re one cultural meme away from virality.

Whether you use text or an image is more art than science. There are good reasons to use either.

I would default to images, though, because it’s easier to stand out in the feed.

3. Strategy considerations to keep in mind

Memes are a great way to connect with your audience without seeming too sales-y or boring.

BUT, like anything, you need to decide upfront what your goals are and know your starting point.

If you’re trying to go from 0 to 1, you need a plan for getting distribution.

Even killer cultural memes can flop if you don’t already have an audience.

You can solve that by partnering with a B2B influencer in your space…

Or you can try building a senior exec’s social audience and siphoning attention to the brand account from there.

If you’re building a more technical brand persona (e.g. Stripe or Gong), timing becomes important.

If you post memes too often, your audience might feel like the brand account is misaligned with how they experience you elsewhere.

But an occasional meme does wonders for your impressions and engagement rate.

It’s like that one coworker who’s normally sharp and professional at work, but then they bust out killer dance moves at a company party.

It shocks people, in a good way. And it generates conversation for a while.

Lastly, memes are not a strategy… unless you’re building a theme page.

But since you’re likely not, you need to mix in other content.

Don’t get so caught up in the trendiness of it that your audience becomes fatigued and starts tuning you out.

This is especially true for companies using social as part of their launch strategy.

Yes, use memes to get attention.

Just make sure to follow that up with substantive value if you want social to mean anything for your company's bottom line.

Annnnnd, that's a wrap!

If you're thinking about how to incorporate memes in your social content strategy (or otherwise want to talk shop), I'm around!

Always fun to bounce around ideas.