There’s something funny about your content marketing, or at least there should be. Humor is one of the most effective elements of a successful marketing campaign, yet most marketers are still learning how to use comedy to engage customers and help them laugh their way through the sales funnel.
If you are like a lot of marketers, you think that writing comedy is hard (it’s not!) or that humor is not an appropriate approach for most industries (it actually is!). Creating funny content that sells is easy once you know how to tickle your customers’ funny bones.
Comedy Is Helping Content Marketing Evolve
There is a surprisingly short distance between the punch line and your bottom line. An ancient 1993 multinational analysis of humor in advertising found that giving your customers the giggles – or at least making them smirk – can enhance recall, evaluation, and purchase intention. More recent research links humor to higher recall, which means a dab of humor makes your product or services easier to remember. Making your target demographic chuckle can also boost brand recognition.
Many stuffy brands are turning to humor to boost sales. Even insurance is hilarious nowadays, with State Farm, Progressive, All State and Geico laughing all the way to the bank. Old Spice’s “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign pulled the scent from the smoldering heap of failed products, for example, while Captain Obvious makes the experience of booking a hotel room seem like a hoot and a half.
The thing is, though, if all the bigwigs are making money from being funny, then your competitors are probably turning to comedy, too. This year, Content Marketing Conference dedicates one whole day to helping you get the last laugh on competitors.
CMC’s Comedy Marketing Day features one action-packed event after another. On Friday, April 19, you’ll enjoy how-to workshops, tactical sessions and TED Talk-style keynotes that explore the intersection of comedy, marketing and business growth. You’ll explore new ways to insert comedy into your marketing efforts to support the growth of your business, and walk away with an entire arsenal of actionable tactics and techniques that help you create humorous, enjoyable content that really connects with readers.
CMC’s Comedy Marketing Day brings together today’s funniest and most successful marketing geniuses from around the nation
Speakers include “Technically Funny” Don McMillan, the #1 rated corporate comedian who helped design the world’s first 32-bit microprocessor, alongside writer, comedian, and creator of the satirical blog TheCooperReview.com Sarah Cooper. Wildly popular blogger and author of Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean, Josh Bernoff joins the list of keynote speakers. The world’s first Humor Engineer, Andrew Tarvin, will also be there – he’ll help attendees understand the foundation for most humor and outline a process for punching up content in ways that earns more clicks, increases engagement and is a whole lot of fun.
Entrepreneur Nadya Khoja will be there too. She’s the Head of Marketing for online infographic and poster-maker, Venngage, and she runs the fun web-series Drunk Entrepreneurs, in which she shares growth strategies and marketing tips after enjoying a few libations. During her CMC’s Comedy Marketing Day sessions, Khoja will share her five unconventional and risky strategies that are proven to boost followers, gain industry recognition and press mentions. She also gives attendees insight on how to snag free stuff with minimal risk of getting sued. Sweet!
Tim Washer has done it all, from studying improv under the great Amy Poehler to appearing on Saturday Night Live, Conan O’Brien and HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Now Washer will be at CMC’s Comedy Marketing Day, bringing his unique brand of marketing humor to this conference-within-a-conference.
Former television writer, producer and agency executive, Andrew Davis, leads a fast-paced, 3-hour workshop in which he’ll help you makeover your marketing videos. You’ll rework your case studies into actual stories that captivate your audience and inspires your viewers to act. In other words, he shows you the secrets of how to turn duds into dynamite.
We’re not done yet! Performer, director, producer and entrepreneur, Norm Laviolette, will show you how to get out of your comfort zone with your brand and content campaigns by focusing on shared experiences using improv techniques. And last–but certainly not least–David Nihill, whose work has been featured in Inc., Lifehacker, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Irish Times, and Forbes, will teach you ways to become a better (and funnier) public speaker.
This year, learn how to put some funny in your money and some chortle in your website portal by attending Comedy Marketing Day at Content Marketing Conference in Boston, MA. Have you registered yet?
Lynn H has been a professional writer, providing exceptional content online and offline, for nearly 20 years. In that time, she has penned thousands of articles for doctors, universities, researchers, small businesses, nursing organizations, sole proprietors and more. She writes everything from blogs to white papers; her specialty is putting complex scientific concepts in simple terms. She specializes in medical writing, creating informative and engaging content for professionals in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, medical manufacturing, chiropractics, optometry, emergency care, plastic surgery and others.