Who hasn’t laughed at a joke about sales or marketing at least once in their lives?
The one about the qualifications for being an IT manager is probably my favorite:
“If you think of yourself as an IT manager, but nobody else does, that’s exactly what you are.”
I’ve heard dozens just like that. Ones that are all along the same lines, just with different punchlines. But not many would agree on whether they were actually funny. We may have had a chuckle reading it back here – but maybe only because we know the people involved. It could be argued that the punchline is so well-known now, there really isn’t any humor left in it anymore. Many of these jokes relied on our familiarity with the people involved. Without that familiarity, they would probably come across as sexist (especially if it’s about IT managers).
I’ve never seen a joke specifically aimed at the B2B market though. Maybe there aren’t any? A quick internet search reveals an entire industry providing shell eggs buyers info-graphics and witty jokes for our reading pleasure. There are even one or two examples we can learn from:
Two ways to increase your email open rates: Send fewer emails, and send funnier ones.
Now, this is interesting! It piqued my interest enough to keep reading their article, which highlights research results showing how increasing humor in B2B marketing content increases various metrics like click-through rate (CTR), reply rate, and purchase intent.
So… what do they recommend? The article advises us to sprinkle “funny bits” throughout our content, not to overdo it and keep it light-hearted. But there’s also a word of warning in there: “If these funny bits are based on inside jokes or pop culture references you have zero hope”.
That sounds familiar! It’s the same advice I see for anyone trying to create content that will be picked up by social media (don’t forget your audience). You need to establish some kind of commonality with them, but it can’t alienate people outside of that group – something we’re all well aware of when creating B2B content.
Recommendation 1: Mixing comedy into your business blog posts is a great way to keep people reading and engage with content. But be careful not to alienate potential customers who don’t share the same sense of humor as you.
Recommendation 2: Don’t rely on inside jokes or pop culture references that your audience won’t understand or recognize.
So, I guess it’s safe to say that making funny B2B marketing content isn’t a complete waste of time. However… if we’re going to inject some fun into our blog posts, let’s do it properly! Here are 5 examples of how NOT to write funny B2B marketing content:
1) is this what I think it is?
This article from Hub spot starts off with a clear message – make your subject line stand out, but don’t make it to Sammy. Their advice might be fine for an A/B test, but the content is terrible. After reading the first paragraph I had no idea what they were talking about anymore… but at least there’s a funny picture of a guy in sunglasses to keep me entertained while I try to work it out!
2) Way too many inside jokes
This article has some great infographics and statistics that really get you thinking. But this kind of content can present its own problems when trying to inject humor into it – how do you explain you’re inside jokes without confusing people who aren’t familiar with them? Here’s one of their graphs:
This graph alone would have been enough to inspire another blog post or two from me, but I couldn’t quite get into it. This kind of article needs to explain any inside jokes it has before the reader gets halfway through.
3) The fickle nature of one-liners
One-liners are a great way to build up anticipation for your punchline. But if one falls flat, there’s not much else you can do with them.
This example comes from the software company Capture, which describes itself as “a fully-featured B2B SaaS site”. They post regular articles about various topics in the SaaS world, each with its own hard-hitting quotes and witty puns. For example:
The problem is that many of these rely on humor that requires prior knowledge or an in-depth understanding of the issues they’re discussing. When you can’t do that, it’s time to think of something else (and even when you can, one-liners are still risky).
4) A questionable idea – making fun of your customers
This is a great example of why you should double-check everything before sending it out into the world!
This article was all about how much businesses love their customers. So what did the Zen desk choose to illustrate this with? Let’s take a look:
As both an employee and customer rep for the Zen desk at various times in my life, I have a lot to say about this. The main problem here is that customer service reps aren’t paid enough, so mocking them because you don’t respect their customers isn’t going to go down well – especially not with Zen desk’s target audience.
5) The fine line between funny and inappropriate
Of course, a lot of these issues can be avoided if you think before you hit “publish”. Just ask the marketing team at one of our biggest clients…
Content marketing is an integral part of any online business, and it needs to meet certain standards if the company wants to maintain a professional image. Inappropriate content will do more harm than good in many cases, but don’t rely on the “no inappropriate content” disclaimer either. After all, who would have thought that describing your product as “teledildonics” could be considered dangerous?
