Author: Jason Levin

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5 Marketing Strategies Polymarket Is Using to Be Everywhere at Once

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If you’ve followed the news or opened X this fall, you’ve probably seen Polymarket.

It’s that prediction market for politics (and more) that’s been all over the place lately. I’ve been following their rise for the past year from a no-name niche betting market to over $1B assets under management — with the CEO on the cover of Forbes and presidential candidates mentioning them in speeches.

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Throughout the rise of Polymarket, I’ve become friendly with a few members of their growth marketing team here in NYC. And the one thing I keep asking them again and again is: “HOW ARE YOU GUYS EVERYWHERE????”

Here’s what I’ve learned.

A Breakdown of Polymarket’s Marketing Strategy

Screenshot Marketing

The first time most people come into contact with Polymarket isn’t their site or app.

It’s usually a screenshot posted on social media or across the news. And if you look at any screenshot of Polymarket, you’ll see their name and logo.

This placement was not an accident, I promise you that.

During talks with their team, I learned there was quite a lot of A/B testing done to make sure their logo would appear on almost any possible screenshot.

Anytime a screenshot is shared across the internet, from X to LinkedIn to TikTok to Reddit, Polymarket is right there.

The logo and name are colored light gray so it’s not too in-your-face to the point where you’d want to crop it out. They’re smarter than that. Instead, the logo is just subtle enough to be seen, but it doesn’t take anything away from the image.

This is a genius strategy built for the age of social media that couldn’t have existed a couple decades ago.

In fact, there’s even a term for this style of marketing: it’s called screenshot marketing, and it involves using screenshots to make your marketing feel more natural.

It’s like sending screenshots of someone’s messages to a group chat. It’s juicy. Intriguing. And in the age of AI pictures and Photoshop, screenshots are unfiltered and raw.

Polymarket lives and breathes off screenshot marketing. $23B cybersecurity brands like Wiz do it. And I’ve used screenshots to go viral dozens of times.

In marketing, you always want to be as authentic as possible — and there’s nothing more authentic than sharing a basic unedited screenshot with your following like you would with your friends in a group chat.

Founder-Led Marketing

I’m a firm believer every startup should be doing founder-led marketing.

Whether you’re Elon or an 18-year-old AI founder, you should always be the biggest voice and proponent of your company. If the founder isn’t yapping about the company, then no one else will be.

The founder of Polymarket, Shayne Coplan, definitely believes in the importance of founder-led marketing.

He’s built his audience up to 26,000+ followers on X, and he keeps his content to a strict diet of 100% Polymarket-related tweets and retweets.

When Polymarket hit #1 on the App Store this October, Shane tweeted a simple screenshot (*cough cough* screenshot marketing) showing their success.

Because there’s been a lot of questions and attention on Polymarket betting versus regular polling, Shayne wrote a tweet to address this concern.

When Shayne spoke with famous political poller Nate Silver, he tweeted out the podcast to share this perspective on building Polymarket.

Shayne is locked in!

All Polymarket 24/7. No selfies with his dog. No pictures of his Lamborghinis. Not even any pictures of his team. All business all the time. And that business is making billions on the internet. You gotta respect it.

meme representation of being locked in

Social Proof

Typically when we think of social proof, we think of customer reviews.

But for Polymarket, it’s a little bit different.

Rather than customers “reviewing” Polymarket, their social proof strategy revolves around two things:

  1. Amplifying thought leaders who are talking about Polymarket.
  2. Sharing new big bets on Polymarket (thus normalizing the act of betting on Polymarket).

When other business leaders reference Polymarket, they repost it and hype it up.

When Polymarket hit #1 on the app store, Shayne tweeted a picture of it. When a presidential candidate talked about Polymarket during a speech, they tweeted about it.

But talk is cheap.

What’s more important for them is showing that people are actively putting money into the platform. They frequently tweet out screenshots of big bets and share updates around them.

(There we go with the screenshot marketing again!)

Capitalizing on ‘The Current Thing’

The public’s attention shifts like Charlie Sheen checking in and out of rehab programs. Remember him? Oh yeah, it’s been a while since he was The Current Thing.

See, with the rise of the 24-hour news cycle, there’s always a new current thing. And whatever The Current Thing is, people can’t get enough of it.

Polymarket is built perfectly to capitalize on The Current Thing.

Anytime there’s something happening in the news, Polymarket spins up a betting market for it, which they then make content to promote. It’s the perfect cycle. And during the election season, there’s a new current thing everyday.

Here, you can see their post about the latest swing state odds keeping people up to date with the swing state current thing. When a new big movie is hitting theaters, they’ll spin up a market for that too.

Because The Current Thing is always changing, there’s literally a never-ending flood of good content ideas … which also means a never-ending flood of memes to be made.

Meme Marketing

The Polymarket team are some of the best memelords on the internet.

I originally became friends with the Polymarket growth marketing team because they’re customers of my meme marketing software, Memelord Technologies.

(If you haven’t already read my last HubSpot post on meme marketing, check it out.)

While Polymarket is a serious business with billions of assets under management, they also have a team of silly viral memelords on staff — and even more meme pages and freelancers on a consulting basis.

That’s because when it comes to capitalizing on The Current Thing, memes are the #1 tactic. They’re free, fast to make (and great for time crunch), and by nature, they can easily be shared and go viral.

The tactic that really blew me away though was how their social media intern put Polymarket merchandise on popular memes. It’s literally such a smart hack. You take an easily recognizable meme and put your brand assets on it. Easy.

Polymarket intern hat on popular meme

The coolest part though is that they don’t just use memes for their content. Memes are baked into their product UX and philosophy.

Not only do they post memes, but they spin up silly memey non-serious betting markets about whatever The Current Thing is. Like betting markets on whether presidential candidates will say “skibidi” or “brat” before the election.

These silly betting markets are a perfect recipe for virality. Money + Absurdity = Virality.

How You Can Market Like Polymarket

Obviously, not all of us want to talk about politics in our marketing.

And even if we do, most of us can’t at work.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t incorporate trends and whatever The Current Thing is into our strategies.

Every industry has its own current thing — whether it’s OpenAI’s exodus of employees in the Silicon Valley startup community, the Met Gala in the fashion world, or maybe Black Friday for the e-commerce industry.

Look out for The Current Thing and jump on it as soon as possible. Whether it’s using my daily email of new viral memes, X’s new trend analysis tool, or Hubspot Trends, make sure you’re incorporating new trends into your marketing.

BUT …

... That being said, you can’t just rely on trends.

Even me as the meme marketing guy, I don’t think you can just rely on just memes or capitalizing on The Current Thing for your marketing.

Yes, I wrote a book called Memes Make Millions, but they can only make you millions if you have a good product and message.

This is what Polymarket has done so well.

It’s not just memes and trends and news that is stale 24 hours later.

It’s Shayne clearly explaining why he’s building Polymarket. It’s Shayne going on podcasts with industry leaders like Nate Silver.

It’s the social proof of retweeting people like Elon Musk talking about Polymarket.

It’s the constantly updated screenshots of political markets. It’s the Forbes cover and billions of assets under management.

Polymarket’s marketing perfectly blends capitalizing on The Current Thing and using timeless marketing techniques. It’s truly brilliant to witness.

Watch out folks — I think we’re witnessing the beginnings of a generational company.

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How to Do Meme Marketing, According to Memelord Jason Levin

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When most people see memes pop up, they don’t think much about them.

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“Oh it’s just a stupid meme page,” you might say. “What’s there to think about? What’s the big deal?” But what if I told you some of these “stupid meme pages” are making millions?

And what if I told you it wasn’t just meme pages, but some of Silicon Valley’s hottest startups and the world’s most iconic luxury brands are using memes to make millions, too? Would you start thinking about how to use memes in your marketing too? Of course you would!

Meme marketing leverages the power of humor to get attention on the internet, but humor-based marketing isn’t a new thing. It’s been done for hundreds of years since newspaper ads in the 1700s for magical hair growth potions.

Meme marketing is just the newest internet-native version of it. And it’s been used by the biggest brands in the world — from Duolingo to Porsche, Sony, and more.

As Gen Z and Gen Alpha take hold and become the next class of founders, CEOs, and CMOs, I believe this trend will only continue to grow.

Here’s why you should implement it in your marketing strategy ASAP.

meme marketing examples, Duolingo, Porsche, Sony

Memes are the highest leverage marketing on earth.

Leverage is all about achieving bigger results with less work.

Meme marketing isn’t some magical get-rich-quick scheme. It’s a lever to pull like anything else. And I think it’s one of the strongest out there.

Think about it. Memes are:

  1. Free to make
  2. Fast to make
  3. An easy way to go viral

What could be higher leverage than that?

When I realized this, I became obsessed with understanding the tricks to meme marketing.

I interviewed every memelord, meme marketer, and meme page operator I could find: a memelord who sold a content agency for $1M+, a growth hacker at a fintech startup worth $100M+ whose main growth tactic has been ads on meme pages to grow it, and a startup founder who drove $3M+ in SaaS sales from viral memes and sold his company for $100M+.

Then, I wrote all about it in my book Memes Make Millions.

Jason Levin sitting on a couch reading his book, Memes Make Millions

But I didn’t just write about the tactics.

I put the tactics into action to prove they worked. I tweet memes like a madman and get millions of views every month.

I went viral and got 26M+ views for a video of me reading meme-y books on the New York Subway. I even went viral in Paris and got turned into a meme!

All this attention has resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as a marketing consultant helping startups go viral (and blow up the internet).

So, how does meme marketing work?

Step 1. Learn the industry and trends.

If you tried paying me $100k to make memes about hockey, I couldn’t do it.

I know nothing about hockey (except that Canadians are weirdly good at it for some reason). But I can make memes about startups and venture capital all day.

I live and breathe startups. I listen to All-In and My First Million. I go to the tech parties. I read the books. I work with startups all day everyday, and many of my friends are founders/VCs.

I’m on the timeline interacting with people in this world all day. I’m deep in this world. And I can make viral memes night and day.

The takeaway: You can only make memes about industries you’re deep in.

You can make memes about any industry from hockey to gardening to healthcare to startups. The main thing is you need to know the zeitgeist and what’s going on.

Because the meme world is so fast-paced, I actually started a daily newsletter with new viral memes to help people figure out the meme zeitgeist.

Step 2. Know the problems.

Good memes come from problems your industry faces.

If you look at the best meme pages across finance, tech, whatever, the best memes are typically about problems you’re facing.

If you’re in accounting, you meme about Excel. If you’re in startups, you meme about VCs taking the summers off to party in France.

If you’re making memes for your brand, become hyper-focused on what problems your users face. If you’re working on software for writers, you better know what problems writers face (e.g., writer’s block, not enough caffeine, etc.).

Step 3. Know who you cannot offend.

This is something super underrated that most social media managers don’t think about.

It’s actually okay to offend some people. I don’t mean using offensive language like insults or charged words — that’s never okay.

But it is okay to poke fun at a job group like accountants or YouTubers. You just have to be thoughtful and selective about who you’re offending and who you don’t want to ever offend or poke fun at.

For example, at one startup I work with, the product is all about helping founders, so we never try to offend founders. Instead, we pick on VCs (they’re easy targets).

At another startup, the customer was engineers, so we never tried to pick on engineers. Instead, we picked on product managers (again, another easy target).

Step 4. Embrace the cringe.

Is making money cringe?

I don’t think so.

After all, I’ve proved that memes make millions.

Memes are a powerful marketing tactic used by everyone from solo creators to public companies like Netflix. Stop worrying about being cringe, and focus on being funny and making money.

Cringe is the new cool. Become a cringe arbitrageur. When you’re willing to be cringe and do things others are afraid of, you can get so much more attention on the internet.

example of the evolution of three meme marketing posts on X (formerly Twitter)

Step 5. Master the tools.

The tools and software are actually the least important part.

Speed is the most important thing.

Yes, you can use paid software like Photoshop, but you can just as easily use free software like Imgflip or Canva. Really just use whatever is the fastest.

My advice? Don’t overthink the tools.

This isn’t a graphic design job — this is meme marketing. Don’t worry about high fidelity, just focus on being funny. Because remember, in the attention economy, being funny makes millions.

The Takeaway

“Humor is related to strength. To have a sense of humor is to be strong: to keep one‘s sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to lose one’s sense of humor is to be wounded by them. And so the mark — or at least the prerogative — of strength is not to take oneself too seriously.

The confident will often, like swallows, seem to be making fun of the whole process slightly, as Hitchcock does in his films or Bruegel in his paintings — or Shakespeare, for that matter.” – Paul Graham, Taste

Or as I wrote in my book, “Never underestimate the jester because he may be a king in disguise.”

From the 22-year-old NYC goofball posting finance bro memes to the venture-backed startups making memes about Silicon Valley to public companies leveraging meme marketing — they’re all proof that being silly on the internet can help you make serious money.