How To Make a Meme With Your Own Picture
Many companies go after engagement in social media. Others go directly for sales. If you can get both engagement and sales at the same time, that’s the holy grail. In this post, we’ll talk about both, using a type of post that not everyone has already worn out.
Engagement itself is valuable because it:
- Grabs Customer Attention: Many companies spend millions just on reach and exposure, but it’s hard these days to grab and hold attention, and the competition just for attention is fierce.
- Starts a Conversation: Engagement proves you not only got customer attention, but interest, which is one level better. You can get valuable information from customer interaction that can help you sell better.
- Creates an Emotional Relationship between your customer and your brand, which increases the chance you’ll get the sale and increases the chance they’ll become loyal to your brand and stay loyal to you. It’s not just about sales, but about long-term customer loyalty.
There are many types of Facebook posts that create engagement. But few companies have taken full advantage of memes, which is crazy because we want Facebook posts that get shares, and…
A meme is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture”.
How To Make a Meme With Your Own Picture
You can take any of your own images and turn them into memes with this tool: https://makeameme.org/upload
For example:
Or use one of the standard memes: https://makeameme.org/. This is a much better way to go, because you’re going to hit things that people recognize and that are relatable. The dangerous of creating your own new meme is: if no one understands it, it won’t succeed.
Want to see more examples of memes created by all kinds of people? Try http://memegenerator.net/.
You’ll notice that it’s typical with meme images to have text at the top and bottom of the image. But if you want to promote your meme image with Facebook ads, you’ll need to put all your text at the top or bottom online to adhere to Facebook’s 20% text rule. Otherwise they will disapprove your ad. And if you’ve listened to any of my other teachings, you know that your reach is going to be pretty limited without Facebook ads.
The general idea with Facebook post engagement is to do anything fun, funny or emotion-provoking to get likes and shares.
As I said above, you can do this JUST for engagement, or you can also try to tie it into your sales message, which is even better.
Tying Your Meme Image Into Your Sales Message
While creating your meme image, connect what you’re writing to:
- Your customers’ pain points and “nightmare” (the worst thing that could happen to them)
- The benefits of your product
- Their goals or “dream” (what their ideal scenario looks like after getting the benefits of your product)
I talk about those above elements in the Social Marketing Profit System videos on Facebook copywriting. Basically, there are a few things you need to know about your offering and your customers, you need to be able to write about those things in a powerful way, and then turn that into great ad copy.
Here’s an example of how I’d use “The Most Interesting Man In The World” to promote my social media courses:
So the blueprint is:
- Understand the formula of the meme.
For “The Most Interesting Man in the World” it’s “I don’t always [do some action] but when I do, I choose [product].” - Put your sales message into that meme’s format.
- Post it and advertise it!
Make sure you choose a meme that is either:
- Well known to most people…
– OR – - Easily understandable if they’ve never seen it before.
Some of the best memes to use are:
- “One Does Not Simply… [something complex]”
This meme features the character Boromir from The Lord of the Rings… he originally said, “One does not simply WALK into Mordor…” to emphasize how serious and dangerous it is, and how you need a plan. And if you get that, and like Monty Python, you’ll love this. - “That Would Be Great.”
Manager Bill Lundbergh from OfficeSpace “If you could just [do whatever] that would be great…” If you don’t get this meme because haven’t seen this movie, you’re probably also not a real American. - Skeptical Third World Kid:
“So you’re telling me…[something unbelievable about America]”
Now, this one could be a sensitive topic for some people. In my opinion, it’s ok because this joke usually makes the first world lady the victim (who we guess is some kind of missionary), but the whole issue of third world poverty may be too disturbing in certain contexts. - First World Problems:
Something she‘s crying about that isn’t a problem for people in the third world. - Success Kid: all this cute kid needs is some statement of success.
- Dumbstruck Dog: this one is about something shocking or confusing.
- Annoyed Picard: This is for pretty much any kind of frustration or “what the heck?” kind of sentiment.
- Grumpy Cat: This could be used for any complaint you want to make, or pain point your customers have.
- Matrix “What If I Told You”: This can reveal any important insight, or for a humorous spin, something obvious.
- Condescending Willie Wonka: “Oh you… Tell me more about…” This one is best used for sarcasm. Anything you want to make fun of or belittle.
If any of the above memes don’t make sense to you, don’t use them! I’ve been looking at memes for about eight years, so if this is new to you, you”ll actually have a better idea which ones make sense to the general audience (who doesn’t know all the memes like I do).
Always put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Will they think any one particular meme is weird or great? For example: is your customer the type to watch Star Trek? If not, maybe don’t use the Annoyed Picard meme. But if they’re big nerds, Annoyed Picard could be perfect.
Here’s the That Would Be Great Meme, for example…
Do you see how you can use a character’s voice as the excuse to say something you wouldn’t normally be able to? Or in a way you wouldn’t be able to? It frees you to be able to sell better.
And don’t forget about the 20% text rule! Put your captions all on top or all on the bottom if you want to be sure you can advertise them.
Then combine your new meme image with a call-to-action and a link in your post (to a site where they can take action, like buy something or sign up for your emails)… then promote the post with ads to your best customers!
What Kind of Results Should You Get?
I’ve written elsewhere about the Facebook Benchmarks I debuted at the Amazing.com conference, but the short version is:
- Check your Facebook Page Insights, click over to Engagement Rate, and try to get your posts up to 3-5%, and then to 5-8%. Our best clients get 8-12% regularly.
- Your cost per post engagement in the U.S. should be under $0.20, and under $0.05 is quite reasonable if you’re creating great memes. If you get down to $0.01, you’re a rock star!
- Cost per link click can be higher when you’re running post promotion ads, but you can get them down to $0.10-0.20.
- For leads and sales, make sure you’ve installed conversion tracking… lead gen costs depend on the niche, but we’ve seen B2C as low as $0.10-0.50 per lead and B2B $2.50-30.00 (again very niche- dependent). Cost per sale also varies a LOT but can be as low as $2-3 in B2C and $5-10 in B2B. It’s all over the map here- if you’re selling a $20,000 computer system, you might spend $3,000 on a sale and call it a success…
How to Get Great Meme Post Results Over Time
Try 5 or 10 of these over a few weeks. And it’s ok to try different versions of the same meme- it’s not like you can only use them once- I would rotate through them initially. But after a month or two you could go back and say something different with a meme you’ve used before.
As with all of Facebook, continuous testing to find the best creative is the name of the game.
Over time, you’ll see which of them get the best engagement rates and the lowest cost per engagement, and which ones get sales and which ones don’t, just like any posts or ads.
Keep creating and keep testing. That’s how the best Facebook marketers do it!