Inspired by everyday life, from weather forecast symbols to street signs and even Manga, Emojis made their debut in the mid to late 1990s on Japanese mobile phones. Since being picked up by Apple and Android, the colorful emoticons rose to popularity on a global scale. Today, emojis are now an integral part of the digital language. Not only can the iconic little smiling yellow faces be found everywhere, they have also evolved to take on new styles, changing the way we communicate online forever.
Part of this evolution has been the introduction of emoticons into the professional setting. Emojis have given businesses more room to be playful with their marketing strategies, as well as the chance to create stronger brand identities in order to appeal to younger generations. But, before you start adding a string of crying smiley faces and cute cats with heart eyes to your communication plan, it’s important to understand exactly how to use emojis to your benefit without coming off like you have a teenager managing your communication plan.
Enliven your social media content
Like with most things, there is a time and place for emojis. If you interact with your audience primarily through social media, then you are most likely a good candidate for integrating emojis into your communication strategy. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram lend themselves to quick, punchy communication—and emoticons are the perfect way to replace a sentence or two with an image that conveys your message with a dose of personality.
In addition to getting more creative with your communication plan, emojis also allow business to engage with their audience in a more dynamic way. A recent post from the BBC One is a great example of how a major company can seamlessly use emoticons to liven up a post, without going overboard. A play on words that references a contemporary cultural reference, Jkwon’s Tipsy, in combination with emojis promoted the latest episode of Spy in the Wild, while also encouraging their audience to share the post.
Appeal to a wider market
Embracing emojis can be an effective way to refresh your brand identity, especially for more traditional corporate platforms that are looking to find a way to appeal to an increasingly mobile generation of consumers. Domino’s Pizza, which has been around since the 1960s, boosted their consumer reach with their pizza emoji campaign. Described as “It’s the epitome of convenience” by Domino’s CEO, the tech-savvy marketing campaign allowed costumers to simply tweet a pizza emoji and then simply sit back and wait for the delivery guy to arrive. Not only is this a playful and innovative way to boost revenue, but it also appeals to a wider audience who will most likely become returning customers.
Colorful marketing campaigns
If you aren’t exactly sure how to integrate emoticons into your marketing platform, consulting a market research analyst is a great way to get your finger on the pulse of today’s most effective marketing tactics. Market researchers are always keeping up to date on trends in the market and have even turned their attention to emoji analysis, which has allowed businesses to create strategies that utilize emojis in an intelligent tactical manner.
Emojis are more than just a bit of cute and colorful flair for your email headlines. Using emoticons in a professional setting can help to transform otherwise dry impersonal content into captivating material. With science to back it up, an emoji activates the part of our brain that responds to visual cues, which can add a more human element to your content. Today there’s steady increase of businesses who are now using emoji’s in their marketing campaigns, as they grant brands the ability to connect with consumers in a more meaningful and personal way.
