What is a Meme?

Memes are simple ideas that spread quickly through the internet. They typically take the form of videos or photos. Here are a couple of popular memes:

Grumpy Cat                                                              Success Kid
                    

 Double Rainbow

Memes and Marketing

While memes are typically thought of as a funny image to share with friends, they can also be utilized as part of a marketing plan to generate buzz and word of mouth. They are a great way to reach an audience, especially through social media. The light-heartedness and easy sharability of these images increase their likelihood of going viral. This is especially useful on Facebook, as this helps to improve your page’s Edgerank, increasing the organic reach of your posts.

Memes can also be a useful way to generate leads. One method for generating leads from memes is by using them to drive traffic to a landing page featuring a valuable and relevant resource, such as a white paper or an eBook, behind a simple, short form.

As with all other marketing tactics, it is a best practice to continuously test in order to derive the greatest results from a meme campaign. We have found that memes related to popular culture posted around lunchtime or after 5:00pm have the highest engagement. While this is true for our page, it may not be true for yours. Test different calls-to-actions, formats and posting times to find the best combination for your Facebook page.

Marketo does a great job of this on their Facebook page:

Launch’s B2B Marketing Memes

We recently created a series of memes focused on B2B marketing and lead generation. Here are a few examples:

As discussed above, we always link the memes to a relevant piece of content, in order to use the memes to drive traffic to our website.

How can you use memes in your company’s marketing campaigns? Be sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook for more B2B marketing best practices.

Here at Launch Marketing we strive to continually share our B2B marketing expertise through regular blog postings and articles on our website. Below are Launch Marketing’s ten most popular B2B marketing resources, covering various B2B marketing topics such as email marketing, social media and lead generation.

1. A Client’s Bill of Rights: Ten Key Points to Consider When Selecting a Marketing Firm
   Once you’ve identified the need for a marketing firm, how do you decide which firm to engage with? There are several qualities that you should look for, and this article lists the top 10 to consider when evaluating a firm.

2. Thinking Outside the (Mail)box: Insightful Tips for Creating Better Emails
   Since email is an essential aspect of many B2B marketing campaigns, it is important to ensure that you are deriving the greatest value from your email campaigns. Read our blog post for tips and takeaways we learned while attending the 2012 Marketo user conference.

3. 4 Best Practices for Google AdWords
   While Google AdWords is a useful marketing tactic for many companies, successful campaigns take an extensive amount of knowledge and effort. Read our blog post to learn some of the best practices we utilize in AdWords campaign management.

4. Back To Basics: Spotting Common Grammar and Punctuation Mistakes in Your Copy
   There are a few common grammar and punctuation mistakes that occur frequently in marketing copy. Understanding how to avoid these mistakes is essential in order to present a professional image. This article lists a few of the mistakes we come across most often, as well as ways to avoid them.

5. Utilizing Infographics to Break Through the Chatter
   Images are becoming an increasingly popular avenue for content marketing, and infographics specifically have increased in popularity recently. Our article lists several best practices to ensure that you are deriving the greatest marketing value from your infographics.

6. Extend Your Reach: Use a LinkedIn Company Page to Increase Exposure
   LinkedIn continues to grow in usage and has expanded beyond just a way to connect with your personal network. This article covers the capabilities of company pages on LinkedIn as well as several tips to maximize their impact.

7. Timeline for Brands: What’s Changing and Best Practices
   When Facebook introduced Timeline for Company pages, there were many changes that occurred. Read our blog post for tips on how to make the most of these changes and drive results from your company’s Facebook page.

8. Fourth Quarter Fire Up: The Importance of End of Year Marketing
   During the last few months of the year, it is important to continue your marketing efforts in order to derive even greater results from your campaigns. This article lists the top 3 reasons why this is important and the best ways to effectively utilize your remaining marketing budget.

9. Send a Package, Capture Attention: Generating Qualified Leads with Three Dimensional Campaigns
   To stand out from the crowded marketplace, make sure that your marketing materials are impactful. One way to catch prospects’ attention is by utilizing a three-dimensional marketing campaign. Read our article to learn more about the benefits and components of effective three-dimensional campaigns.

10. The Most Critical 50% Of Event Marketing: 4 Tips to Maximize Event Impact
    Successful B2B events require a great deal of planning and preparation prior to the event. However, the activities that occur after an event are just as important. This article highlights several best practices to follow after an event in order to maximize your lead generation results.

Looking for more B2B marketing resources? Visit the resource center on our website to read all of our blogs and articles, and be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest B2B marketing tips and trends.

Photo by: Robin~All Things Heart and Home

We recently began a Facebook ad campaign for Launch’s Facebook page and thought it would be helpful to share some of the insights we have gained so far. We’ve found that there are four essential aspects of a Facebook ad campaign, and that utilizing all of them are critical for success.

1. Ad Targeting

Facebook offers a wide variety of targeting options. Use several of these together to develop a target audience that is both highly targeted but still large enough to make an impact. Facebook recommends a target audience size of roughly 20,000 people as a minimum.

Categories available for targeting include location, age, gender, interests and advanced options such as education level and relationship status.

2. Ad Creative

There are 2 parts of an ad, the image and the copy. There are several best practices to follow for each.

Image

Photos of people tend to be successful, especially close-up shots. We used this image, which fit with our two target audiences of marketing professionals and entrepreneurs:

Choose photos or graphics with colors that will jump out of the screen. Avoid blue-tones images, as the Facebook interface is composed mainly of blue. One of the images that we found to be successful was this lemon picture:

Copy

Use a strong call-to-action.
Catch their attention by thinking outside the box.

3. A/B Testing

Set up A/B testing to determine the best copy, image and targeting. Continue to refine these aspects until you have found a “sweet spot” that garners you the best results based on your campaign’s goals.

4. Facebook Page Content

As important as the previous three aspects of Facebook ads are, it is perhaps more important to make sure that your Facebook page is updated, as you don’t want visitors to click on your ad only to see that you haven’t updated your page in six days. So before you begin an ad campaign, you may want to work on building your page.

Need social media help? Contact Launch today. Be sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook for the latest B2B marketing tips and tricks!

Social media provides a real-time outlet for customers to interact with your company, and trade shows or conferences are great times to utilize social media to enhance your presence at these events.

In addition to allowing attendees to interact with your brand online, social media event promotion encourages interaction among event attendees and extends your message far beyond those who actually attend your event. This means your marketing messages will have a greater impact than just to event attendees alone.

Here are 5 social media platforms with key ways to use them to boost your next event.

1. Twitter

Twitter’s strength is the real-time nature of the platform. Create an event hashtag for attendees to use (and let them know what it is by promoting it heavily in your conference marketing materials). This way, it is easier to track conversations that may be taking place. These tweets also provide you with great content for your corporate Twitter account.

2. Foursquare

Foursquare’s location-based technology offers companies an opportunity to further interact with those who are at the same trade show or conference. Creating a check-in spot at your booth can spread the word about your presence, as each check-in will be shown to that person’s network. Also, Foursquare recently introduced a new update that allows business owners to post updates that are shown to users who are connected to the company on Foursquare. This can be utilized at events to update booth visitors on your company’s activities at the trade show or any special promotions you might be having.

3. Instagram

Instagram’s visually engaging platform and integration with other social media networks make it an ideal place for companies to share trade show/conference photos. Encourage attendees to use the same hashtag they use for Twitter when they upload photos to Instagram. That way you can utilize them as content for other marketing materials. Consider these examples of creating a “Top 10 Instagram Photo” blog post or a gallery of the best Instagram photos that are posted using the hashtag.

4. SlideShare

SlideShare offers brands the ability to upload presentations or other documents. It is a great platform to share keynote or breakout session presentations after the conference is over. You may consider offering tidbits of the presentations to the public while keeping the full presentations exclusively for attendees. Read our blog post for more tips on using SlideShare for B2B marketing.

5. YouTube

Much like SlideShare, YouTube can be a great place to share presentations that occurred during the event, except in video form. Besides the presentations, consider creating videos of other things that occur during the event such as awards presentations or fun outings. Showcasing these other aspects of the event besides the presentations gives your event a personality and serves as another enticing aspect to attract attendees for your next event.

Parting Words

As you can see, social media can play a key role in your brand’s strategy for a trade show or conference presence. By integrating various social media outlets, you have an opportunity to portray your brand’s personality and extend the reach of your message beyond the walls of the conference center.

Need help with the social meeting strategy for your next event? Contact Launch today! Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay up-to-date with B2B marketing tips and trends.