For years emojis have been just smiley buttons we used for direct messaging. They are now full-fledged communication tools. Emojis add personality to text and embellish social media posts. No wonder brands are paying attention to them and integrating them into their marketing.
Not only just as personal conversations benefit from clearer communication through emojis, but your marketing efforts can as well. Let’s dive into the many benefits of using emojis in your marketing campaigns, and the strategies that will help you communicate more clearly with your customers.
What Are Emojis?
In case you’re new to the trend, emojis are small images and icons that are created using the Unicode Standard. Originally invented in Japan, and are symbols and smileys normally used in digital messaging and on websites. Their primary purpose is to emote a certain feeling, thing, or place, and can take various forms including facial expressions, objects, places, weather, and animals.
What Are the benefits of using emojis in marketing?
There are a number of reasons to include emojis in your next marketing campaign.
1. Showcase your personality
If your brand has a humorous, light, or witty voice, emojis are the perfect tool for translating this personality to the digital space. Emojis can help add emotion to your writing and communication with customers, and in turn, help them understand the relationship you’re trying to build with them.
A cardinal rule for building a brand personality is thinking of your brand as a human being. Once you approach it this way, you will know exactly who your brand is, the kind of language it would use, and how it would respond to situations. Think of emojis as a medium to make this personality even clearer to your customers, so they can truly feel connected to you.
2. Convey what words cannot
Ending a message with an emoji conveys a lot more than ending a message with simple punctuation does. Social media is a largely visual medium, with some platforms like Instagram being better suited to visual communication, instead of written. While a paragraph of important writing might easily go missed on such a platform, emojis can help your words stand out and emphasize your message.
3. Increase engagement
There are a number of different statistics that have shown that the use of emojis has increased open rates, click-through rates, and engagement levels. Hubspot found that using emojis in a tweet can increase engagement by 25.4% and the number of likes and comments on a Facebook post by 57% and 33% respectively.
6 Tips For Using Emojis In Marketing
1. Choose a few emojis that identify best with your brand
Before you start adding emojis to your message, you should look for a few emojis that best resonate with your brand. Five is a good number to go for. You should then make sure these emojis are used regularly in your posts. This does not mean you should use all five emojis on every single post – you need to consider them with a bit of thought. However, by having five emojis that represent you well, you can make sure your brand is more consistent. This will ensure you do not make the mistake of misusing more obscure emojis too.
2. Remember, all emojis do not have universal appeal
Be mindful when choosing your standard emojis. Steer clear from anything that could potentially be problematic in the context of your brand, or controversial in general – for example, the bomb emoji or the gun emoji. It’s best to avoid these and stick with safer options.
Also, consider the translation of different emojis across devices. Some emojis appear differently depending on the device they’re viewed on, so keep this in mind before committing to your 5 emojis. The dog face emoji is a great example. It can appear differently on different platforms, i.e. from Apple to Twitter to Facebook to Google.
3. Make sure emojis don’t confuse your message
While emojis can add a playful and fun element to your message, it is vital to remember that emojis are not a replacement for the message itself. Important words should not be replaced with emojis. If you do this, you will typically find that they just convolute the message you’re trying to convey.
4. Know your audience
While emojis are generally a good idea for marketing, there are some businesses that would be better off not using them at all. For example, as a law firm, you might find that your clients aren’t taking your emails seriously when you’re using too many smiley face emojis.
To find out whether emojis are the right option for your business, get to know your audience thoroughly. Consider conducting market research or surveys to better understand the state of mind of your target customer and the types of problems they might be approaching your business for.
5. Only use an emoji if you know what it means
When we’re messaging our friends, we may send random emojis just for the sake of it. However, you definitely cannot take this approach when it comes to your marketing campaign. You need to think of emojis like visual slang. If you use an emoji without having a full understanding of what it means, you could end up offending people.
6. Make sure you do not overuse them
One of the biggest mistakes people make with emojis is that they get carried away. Putting five emojis at the end of a message is not effective. Too many emojis can feel forced and downright irritating. Plus, it will make your message confusing. One emoji is straight to the point and effective. Only use multiple emojis if your text is longer than 3 sentences, in which case, the emoji should be used to break the sentences and make them more digestible.
In Conclusion
You are never going to know if your use of emojis is effective if you do not track your efforts. This is imperative as you need to have an understanding of how emojis are impacting the performance of your marketing campaigns.
Author’s Bio
Aston Rhodes is a content writer and marketing expert from JatApp custom software solutions. She does research and discussion on tech-related topics. She enjoys sharing her experiences with a like-minded audience and writes about software development, digital marketing, business, career, wellness, and more.
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