Marketing strategies are always evolving with brands actively seeking new ways of reaching new customers and building relationships. One of those ways is integrating popular culture into marketing efforts. Pop culture marketing is not a new concept; it has only gained prominence because of the converged and globalized media environment.
In fact, marketers across the globe view social media and digital marketing forms as popular culture in their own right. Commercial culture, based on popular taste, allows you to tap into people’s emotions and be part of trending conversations. In essence, it makes you relatable and less robotic. Keep in mind that everyone loves to engage with businesses that they can relate to. Wondering why you need to integrate pop culture into your social media strategy? Let us give some of the reasons below.
An opportunity to News Jack
If you want to remain relevant in business today, you must be where the audience is. You must care about what’s making headlines on social media and lend a voice. Pop culture provides an opportunity for what is known as Newsjacking. Now, Newsjacking is the process of leveraging trending news and stories to elevate your brand’s message. It can give your business a nice boost if you think critically, choose the right news story, and know when to weigh in on a trend. An excellent example of new jacking is Oreos’s tweet during a blackout at the Super bowl in 2013. The tweet which read Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark netted more than 15,000 tweets and 6,000 favorites. You might also remember their hilarious “long live the crème” tweet when Kate Middleton gave birth. Mastering the art of newsjacking can increase your social media traffic, engagements, and translate to sales.
Pop culture helps you to know your customers better
Truth be told, you cannot wake up one morning and start tweeting about everything or anything. If you do so, you will find yourself battling a PR nightmare. You need a proper strategy that fuses pop culture to your brand. It is otherwise known as entertainment marketing. It is perhaps self-explanatory. You use entertainment methods like product placements to sell your products, services, and brand. An effective entertainment marketing for brands demands that you take the time to understand your customers beyond demographics. Otherwise, you might come up with ads that convey you as sleazy and disingenuous. Take, for example, the disastrous Pepsi Campaign with Kendal Jenner on police brutality. You need to dive deep to understand your audience’s culture and lifestyle to effectively leverage it in your marketing and messaging. Begin by hashtagging behavior and social media engagement during popular events to gain insights and potential predictions for the next big popular trend.
Tip:
Monitor top trends like blockbuster film releases, global sporting events, celebrity product endorsements. You will get prognostics for pop culture marketing that can be customized for your brand.
Build and maintain relationships
Did you know that one way to make your customers connected to you is to demonstrate a shared interest? Get personal with your audience and give them reasons to stick with you. For example, if you love pets or food, why not share that on your social media. It will be impossible for pets or food lovers not to stick with you. In essence, your audience will feel connected to you if there is a shared interest.
Gain traffic
Traffic is essential in growing your sales. Think about what you can do with a show that received more than 500,000 tweets and counting! Now, imagine the traffic you might gain if you joined the bandwagon and tweeted about it. If you didn’t know, we are talking about Game of thrones. Almost everyone watched this show. If you didn’t watch it, you must have come across it on social media or your favourite brands. This show reaped millions and generated traffic for brands that understood the importance of pop culture and integrated it on their social media. For instance, Mac took advantage and decorated the Game of thrones styled throne with its lipstick line showing different shades with a true royalty touch. The lipsticks were sold out in most stores after its launch.
Source for social media content
The easiest way to create content for your social media is by scheduling popular culture moments in your content calendar. You must have come across brands tweeting during events or celebrations like the Super Bowl, Wimbledon #Friday feeling. Scheduling these popular events in your calendar gives you the opportunity to join in on popular conversations and increase your social media engagements. To do it successfully, try to
- Tailor the message to your audience
- Relate the moment to your product
- Reflect your values.
Wrap Up
Pop culture has a lot of marketing potential for your business. From our discussion, it is quite evident that capitalizing on the latest pop culture trends is an excellent investment in ‘soft-selling’ your products, services, and your brand. Thanks to digitization and the myriad social media listening and monitoring tools, you can stay on top of trends and grow your brand using what your target consumers love.
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