How To Use Humor In Content Marketing

How To Use Humor In Content Marketing

Using humor as a content marketing strategy is one of the most common and effective tools in global marketing campaigns. When done right and done well, using humor as a marketing tactic will generate traffic as well as more shares, clicks, and direct engagement with your content.

So how do you use humor in a way that works for your brand? If you want to find your inner Jerry Seinfeld, we’ve put together a few guidelines to keep in mind.

Quick Takeaway:  

• Understand your audience and market your content appropriately with the data collected.
• Keep up with current trends to improve the relevance
• Play with words to create a consistent brand image
• Focus on your marketing goals and achieve them by thinking about your reasons.
• Know your audience

We see humor being used as a content marketing strategy across all platforms – in social media, on chalkboard signs outside coffee shops, and in TV commercials. Now, whether this marketing humor is well received will depend on your audience.

To prevent any awkward backlash, you need to know your audience. If you want to successfully use humor in your marketing strategy, you have to figure out who is consuming your content and why.

Humor in Content Marketing

Conducting this research is simple – just use whatever current data you already have about your target audience. Tools like Google Analytics are great for understanding data about where traffic to your website is coming from and why people click.

Also, try using data from focus groups you may have done as a starting point for a deeper understanding of your audience. After collecting customer data, use your demographic data to structure your humor based on your audience.

If your audience is younger, make sure your content is formatted for your target group. You wouldn’t mention the Three Stooges to a Gen Z audience, would you?

Knowing your audience is a process that involves a lot of trial and error at first. However, once you gain more insight into how your audience absorbs your content, you can make it easier for your customers to stay engaged and keep coming back to your harrowing jokes.

Make it sound natural

Not all of us are born with a talent for comedy, and we all know from experience that people who try too hard to be funny can create embarrassing situations for everyone involved.

Luckily, you have a great personality – inject bits and pieces of it into your work. It’s easy to make yourself sound more natural and relevant, and you don’t need to dig too deep to find it.

Your goal here is relevance – grasping today’s current trends will give you insights that sound both natural and relevant. Using a unique voice to market your business will help you stand out from all the boring, repetitive routines in the marketing world.

It’s a common practice to see brands use humor to engage directly with consumers through social media. This is a great example of using your voice to naturally inject humor into your marketing campaigns.

Don’t let Wendy’s followers’ rants on Twitter scare you, though – test your jokes with a small focus group first, and let yourself relax with marketing humor. Then, use that feedback to revise your humor marketing strategy to suit your target audience.

Personalize your brand

Using humor as your marketing strategy can do wonders for brand identity. Research shows that humor in marketing is growing – 56% of ad campaigns in the past 4 years have used humor as an effective tool. As it turns out, it improves recognizability across continents.

Humor in Content Marketing to Engage Your Audience

You’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here – just add a little spice. Try rephrasing your words or finding new words that you may not use often.

Tip: Thesaurus is your trusted old friend! If you feel uncomfortable trying to market humor yourself, you can always tap into the skills of a comedy writer.

Humor can greatly humanize your brand. In turn, you can easily generate a “feel good” response from your audience, as well as build a certain sense of trust between your brand and your audience.

Comedy does a great job of bringing everyone together – who doesn’t want their brand to be synonymous with good togetherness and trust?

Using humor to market your content can give your brand a clear image, and consumers will be more likely to be attracted to your quirky and relevant brand.

It’s no secret that people love to share interesting content. Having an interesting voice behind your brand will help you stand out and differentiate your brand from competitors who may still be using 1986 marketing techniques.

The moral of the story – if your jokes are always online, your brand is always online.

Remember your reasons

At the end of the day, you need to have a reason for doing something. In this case, ask yourself why you should consider implementing humor in your current marketing strategy. It can be harder to see your goal as something you can achieve without a reason behind it.

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 American Psychological Association, humor produces psychological and physical benefits that lead to memory retention and learning.

A little goes a long way here—a little laugh can have a lasting impact, keeping your audience engaged with your brand.

If you don’t have a clear goal or focus in your head, your attempts at humor may not work out well, and you may run the risk of making your brand the joke itself. Focus on why or behind your use of humor as a marketing strategy to prevent confusing your audience.

The size of your content doesn’t necessarily matter. What you choose to do with your content to achieve your marketing goals is paramount.

When you add humor and comedy to your marketing strategy, you are marketing your content in a unique way that makes your brand more memorable and differentiates you from your competitors.