Appealing to customers’ emotions is an effective way to make your brand stick in their minds. Think about it: what are the things, people, and moments that stand out most clearly in your memory? They’re the ones that made you feel a strong emotion like fear, love, or joy.
Humor is an especially powerful tool because it serves double duty. It’s a strong emotion to anchor your brand in their brain, while also making your company fun and entertaining. That’s largely why, in a 2022 Oracle survey of more than 12,000 consumers, 90% said they’re more likely to remember funny ads, and 72% said they’d choose a brand that used humor in marketing over their competition.
Done right, humor can drive people to seek out your ads and eagerly await the next one. That’s a much easier place to start from than if you need to convince them to engage with your marketing materials.
How do you harness the power of humor to drive more brand engagement? Here are 5 tips to help you tickle customers’ funny bones.
1. Get to know your target audience (and their sense of humor).
Not everybody thinks the same things are funny. This is one of the biggest challenges with using humor, and likely the reason 95% of business owners said they’re afraid to use funny advertisements in that 2022 Oracle survey mentioned above.
A joke that doesn’t land is, at best, forgettable, and it can be actively detrimental to your brand if customers find it offensive or in poor taste.
This is why it’s crucial to understand your target audience before implementing humor in your marketing campaigns. This starts with basic information like their age and gender, but also includes their cultural background, occupation, education, and broader interests.
Once you’ve identified these touchstones, do some research to find out what gets the biggest laughs from the customers you want to attract. Some places to find this information include:
- Social media posts and their comments
- Forums and online communities
- Popular media like movies, TV shows, and music
- News outlets and commentary
2. Be concise.
People don’t usually spend long looking at ads. The average consumer looks at a print ad for around 2.2 seconds, and less than half that for a digital ad. Using humor could entice them to linger longer, but only if it gives them a reason to do so.
When you use jokes in marketing, they need to be easy to understand at first glance—because, if they’re not, most people aren’t going to take a second glance to figure them out. This doesn’t mean you need to dumb-down your humor, but keep it snappy and don’t make customers try too hard to find the punchline.
3. Use humor that’s relevant to your industry and brand.
Humor can be a great way to attract people to your brand—as long as the ads you use it in still make it clear who you are and what you do. Remember, you don’t just want to make people laugh, but also want them to want to use your product or services. You won’t get the full benefit of a well-told joke if it doesn’t also anchor your company in the viewer’s mind.
Finding relevant humor is easier in some industries than others, but even serious fields have aspects that can be funny if framed the right way. Just think of the ad campaigns from insurance agencies like Progressive or Geico. Most people would agree that insurance isn’t an especially entertaining topic, but both of these brands have effectively found sources of humor in an otherwise dry idea.
4. Use a variety of humor to keep things fresh.
Most people can think of a friend or family member who likes to tell the same joke over and over. Think about how you respond to that same joke over time. It might have gotten real laughter on the first telling, but that quickly fades into polite chuckles and, after enough repetitions, it can get downright annoying.
Many jokes get their power from a surprise or reversal. That means they lose their power once the listener knows the punchline. Because of this, humorous ads will often see a sharp drop in their engagement after they’ve made the rounds to your customer base. Varying the humor in your marketing helps keep it from getting stale, and prevents you from becoming the brand equivalent of that one uncle who tells the same 30-year-old joke at every family function.
5. Be selective and don’t go overboard.
A touch of humor makes your brand more engaging and approachable for customers. If all you offer them is jokes, though, it can make it harder for them to figure out what your company actually does.
There’s a right time and place for everything, and that includes humor. A good rule of thumb is to limit your jokes to things that could be a customer’s first interaction with your brand, like online ads, social media posts, or physical materials like window graphics and fliers. Follow this up with content that has real substance and provides information about the services or products you provide.
Along with this, keep humor out of the places customers will expect you to be professional, like contracts and legal documents. This way, they’ll know you can be serious when you need to be (even if they still appreciate that you don’t take yourself too seriously).
