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    Sunday, June 17, 2018

    The Rise of the Emoji for Brand Marketing ...What Digital Marketers Can Learn

    Visual language is a part of our daily lives. That includes billboards plastered along highways, urban artwork all over the city, and, our personal favorite, the common emoji. According to PR Week, “Four in five 18 to 65 year olds use emojis on a regular basis, while 72% of 18 to 25 year olds find it easier to express emotion through emojis than written word.”

    What does this trend mean for the future of your digital marketing strategy?
    For years, brands have been chasing the coveted millennial market for their size, influence, growing incomes and their insatiable appetite for digital media.
    But now, the eldest millennials are in their mid-30s and we see marketers shifting their attention to Generation Z. Loosely defined as those born after the turn of the century, this cohort grew up in our social, mobile and digitally-connected world. They communicate with text messages and, increasingly, with emojis – single images that convey emotion such as a wink, a smile or a heart.

    Brands are using emojis to communicate with their target audience, to infiltrate their mobile phones, to demonstrate that they are on top of the latest communications trends, and also to convey messages in elegantly simple ways. In this example, Budweiser used emojis to celebrate the American 4th of July holiday.

    What are emojis?
    Emojis are images you can incorporate into text, email, twitter, Facebook and chat applications to convey a message or an emotion. It is a shorthand way to communicate.
    Emojis are different from emoticons such as this smile :-) this wink ;-) and this OMG :-O. Emojis use pictures that are governed by the Unicode Consortium – a non-profit group formed in the 1980s to promote standardised coding.

    They say a picture is worth a thousand words – and emoji are just the next evolution of communicating, sometimes even complex thoughts or emotions, with simple pictures. Plus, emojis can transcend even language barriers. A smiley face is universal, and now there are literally thousands of emojis that are gaining worldwide acceptance and allowing en entire generation to communicate across borders.

    In 2014, many brands started testing marketing with emojis. Oreo launched a mobile marketing campaign in China. The campaign allowed parents to take photos of themselves and their children and to paste them on to dancing emojis. In less then three months, the campaign generated nearly 100 million emojis. 10 million emojis were shared on chatting service WeChat and nearly 2 billion impressions were made across Weibo and WeChat.

    In March 2014, Peta also launched an emoji campaign aptly-named Beyond Words, aimed at increasing engagement with their target audience. Peta sent a text asking people to text back a heart emoji. Some amazing results came about.
    Respondents are automatically opted in to receive Peta mobile alerts, and are invited to retweet the campaign video on Twitter and to share campaign related posts.

    What Digital Marketers Can Learn From Emoji Marketing
     The above examples are simply a snapshot of another evolution in digital marketing. Language and communication shifts and a form of sentimental tracking will be vital in this new wave of communication. Here are a few takeaways about the digital side of branding-related strategies:

    -Break out behaviors of search and shopping habits by analyzing the generation
    Get to know your younger audience, especially Generation Z. Advertisers are falling behind with knowing how to connect with these vital groups.
    According to the US Chamber Foundation, the Millennial generation (ages 13-32) is “technically savvy, almost as if it has a digital sixth sense. A wired, connected world is all that Millennials have ever known.” And Generation Z is following closely behind.
    During your keyword research/persona mapping phase, start considering what generation your product or service is resonating with, and then break them down into further persona-based groups. Analyze how the majority of a generation communicates and searches online. Do they research more on social media, Amazon, or Google? Find the answers and build out from there.

    -Emoji intent = User intent
    Intent, intent, intent. Creating an organic campaign is no longer about selecting keywords, it’s about the intent of those keywords, and if they really home in on the audience. Emoji examples include:

    -Humanize your message through a personable and understandable user experience
    According to the Emoji Consumer Science Team, 92% of the online population uses emojis. Does that mean you need to barrage your audience with these symbols just because they use them? No. Emoji-stuffing comes across as unnatural, inauthentic, and like you have no idea what you’re doing because… well, you don’t.
    You should apply the same methodology to your website experience. Today’s Internet user has a symbiotic relationship with the web. We’re in an era where children can unlock their parents iPhones before they can even walk or talk. Users know when a website is deliberately trying too hard to resonate with them.  User experience ultimately ties into how a visitor will emotionally feel about your website.

    Takeaway for brands
    Here are the top things brands should consider when approaching marketing with emojis:

    1. Use the latest technology to reach your audience. 
    Whether it’s Snapchat, Instagram, or the next big platform, brands need to understand which platforms their audience is using to connect, consume and share.

    2. Brands should think “mobile first”.
    Mobile phones are more ubiquitous than even mobile internet coverage - and there are still a few more billion people on the planet who have yet to gain mobile access. Brands should start any marketing activity with a strategy that supports mobile access first.

    3. Tap into emotion to help drive brand messages.
    Studies have shown that emotion is more effective than promotion by a factor of two to one. Brands should think about what their audience cares about, crafting marketing messages that relate to them in a more human way.

    4. Make it simple to drive user engagement. The consumer journey must be as easy as possible. If the rise of emoji teaches us anything, it’s that we are looking for more effective ways to communicate more information, faster. The brands that win are the ones that will deliver amazingly simple customer experiences.

    5. Test everything. 
    Emoji are becoming engrained in our society and are not likely to go away anytime soon, but emoji marketing may not be for everyone. Start small, and test an approach that may work for your brand.

    Few Quick Questions to Ask When Evaluating Websites:
    - Does this website make me frustrated?
    - Do I feel sad/happy/angry/indifferent when visiting this website, and should I be feeling that way?
    - What about this website makes me feel this way (colors, imagery, etc.)?D
    - Did I find what I was looking for easily?

    The Next Evolution for Marketers is Language
    That annoying “texting teenager” of years past is now a consumer who spends very real money in this economy with a share that is growing rapidly. Finding ways to successfully connect with this generation, whether it’s through emojis or other methods, will ultimately start bringing a lot money to your pocket.

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