I personally know a few people obsessed with emoji marketing. Meaning they don’t release a single piece of social content without them. Usually multiples. Your traditional faces, flames, hearts, and thumbs up. We see it all over in texts, social media, and messaging apps. Gifs and emojis are just really, really popular. With that being said, is emoji marketing a good thing or a bad thing? I think it’s both. Here’s why.

Emoji Marketing

Let’s first take a look at the use of Emojis on social media. If you didn’t know they were popular, Facebook reports 5,000,000,000 are sent each day through Messenger alone. Yes, that’s 5 Billion little cartoons. Per day! What’s more shocking is that (nearly) everyone is using them. 92% of internet users have at least once. So although they’re most popular with people under 30, plenty of Baby Boomers have used them too. That stat blew my mind.

I’ll admit, I questioned the popularity of emojis. But it turns out there’s a website where you can view real-time emoji use. I kid you not. It will even display the daily average of emojis sent.

Pros

Common

Emojis are common and they are universal. You can speak any language but still, understand the meaning of a smiley face. People tend to know what they mean when they see it. So you can tell a story, or parts of it, with less written words.

Search Engine Compatible

Here are the results from Google Chrome just using the emoji for a hamburger, like so ?

I think most businesses don’t know that search engines ‘do’ this. They bring you back the content relevant to the icon you searched. Emoji marketing is very successful on search engines for restaurants. Even GMB listings will add to the query with the use of emojis.

Hashtag Compatible

In social media platforms, you can easily search for any emoji with a hashtag, like so #?. You’ll receive the relevant content and/or images that contain the emoji. Instagram is the best place for emoji marketing because of its heavy hashtag use. I won’t like, getting you this screenshot made me hungry!

How easy could your restaurant, food blog, bakery buns, butcher shop, or vendor service appear here? Social media is a good place for emoji marketing because you’re drawing in more inbound views for specific content.

Approachable

Emojis are just chill. They tend to make people feel safe to approach. They have a laid back feel. Uptight professionals who are hard to read don’t really tend to use emojis. So if you’re struggling to connect with your audience, emoji marketing could be an avenue for you to try.

Cons

Distracting

I cannot stand emoji marketing because I find it awfully distracting. Mainly because a lot of people who use them use so many. It’s like a comic strip and while cute, I’m simply a person who prefers words. So that’s just it. What does YOUR target market think of emojis? Like anything, moderation is key. So if you want to experiment with emoji marketing I think it’s a great idea. But don’t put 100 of them in one post.

Age Popularity

This easily piggybacks off of the last con. What is the age range of your target market? How do THEY use them and respond to them? If your target market is 25 y/o guys who read comic books, you can use emojis. If it’s 55-year-olds who play golf, probably wanna steer clear.

Professionalism

Over half of Instagram’s posts contain emojis since 2015. But how many do you see on LinkedIn? There’s a time and a place for everything. Emoji marketing will be viewed as unprofessional from a lot of sources. So again, this all goes back to your target market. The ? didn’t deliver any burger related results on LinkedIn, BTW. Which I’m sure doesn’t surprise you.

Double Meanings

If you are going to use emoji marketing in your business, please do the research on them. They don’t always mean what you think they mean. Like if you sell peaches, that ? hashtag is only used 7% of the time for actual fruit. It’s a popular emoji for referring to a butt. And the eggplant emoji, well…you’ll have to Google that yourself.

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So as you can see, I think the answer for emoji marketing is really dependant on your business and your customers. It’s a matter of preference but it shouldn’t be YOUR preference, it should be your audience’s preference. They are the ones the content is for, not you. I’d love to connect on Twitter but I don’t use much for emojis so I hope that won’t be a problem. In the meantime, Tweet me with your thoughts on emoji marketing. Do you have any success or horror stories with it?

If you need help strategizing this part of your business and want to chat, I’d love for you to reach out. As always, thanks for dropping by!