What Did The Fish Say When It Hit The Wall?

Effective marketing is about standing out from the crowd. One way to do this is to use humour. In this article we’ll explain how this can be used and give a few examples.

If you are selling a product or service on the internet or simply promoting your website, you may be advertising where your ads are shown next to ads from similar companies. If your ad does not stand out from the crowd, you have only the same chance of getting the visitors’ attention as all the other ads. Humour is a very effective way of getting a customer’s attention and standing out.

If for example you are selling squeaky toys for pets you may create an ordinary ad like this one:

The Squeaky Toy We sell toys for your dog Very good prices and durable products

But who is going to notice that? If you instead opt for:

New Toy For Your Bitch? We have one that’ll make her jump up an down with excitement

- you are bound to get more attention and therefore more visitors.

Here’s another ordinary one, for an optician.

Nielsen’s Glasses and Lenses All known brands, good service and low prices. Buy today

And one that’ll get you the customer’s attention:

If You Can Read This You are either too close to the screen and need our glasses or we don’t care about you

All too often, marketers choose to create an ad very quickly and see the location of the ad as more important that the content. The decision often appears to be whether to choose Google or Yahoo for advertising rather than spending the efforts on creating a good ad.

There are limits to the extent to which humour should be used in your ads. If you are in a line of business which is of a highly sober or serious nature, you may want to abstain from using humour in your marketing. Undertakers, financial advisers and drug companies tend to rely less on humour than certain other types of businesses.

You should also limit the use of humour to something which will not offend anyone or at least only very, very few people. While provoking a bit may be good tactics, outright mocking of a certain group is unlikely to bring a positive outcome. Jokes based on race, religion and sexual orientation is unlikely to appeal to a large audience and will probably cause offence rather than added sales.

It is also important to note that what is humorous in some markets and geographical areas may not go down well in others. The things are considered funny in a western culture may not be amusing in parts of Asia and vice versa. If a market is unfamiliar to you, you should always perform research before starting any marketing campaign, whether it relies on humour or not.

Humour can be part of a successful marketing campaign, but it does not ensure your success. There are multiple other factors to consider, which will be the subject of other articles.

Oh, and the answer to the question “What Did The Fish Say When It Hit The Wall?” is of course: “Damn!”

I wish you good luck.

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