We talk a lot about the importance of using visual content to attract and engage an audience. And it’s especially important that you find a way to incorporate imagery into your marketing if you’re targeting Millennials. Did you know that 4 out of every 10 Millennials would prefer to engage with images rather than read?

For this reason, we’ve seen the emoji become a critical component of communication. These days it seems that all Millennials are peppering their texts, Facebook posts, and tweets with little yellow faces to express a variety of temperaments. Heck, I even recently saw someone’s 76-year-old aunt use emojis when she commented on a Facebook post.

It’s evident that people are on an emoji craze. But as a business promoting your brand, is it professional to incorporate emojis into your marketing efforts?

The answer really all depends on your industry and target audience. While some would consider the use of emojis in the business world to be childish and unprofessional, others would argue that the use of emojis show that your brand is “with the times” and modern.

Before you jump on the emoji bandwagon, think carefully about your buyer persona(s). Are you targeting a demographic that is open to the use of emojis? If your target audience is primarily made up of people that are past retirement age, you probably want to ditch the idea.

Understand the Etiquette of Using Emojis
If you do decide to give emojis a try, it’s important to know that there are occasions when emoji use is not appropriate. Here are a few examples:

• A customer has presented you with a serious complaint about your brand
• You’re unsure about the demographic details of the customer that you’re interacting with
• You’re communicating with a customer for the first time (especially if it’s via email)

As you can imagine, there are also some emojis that you should never use in a professional setting (we’ll let you browse through your own list of emojis to make this call).

Examples of Brands Successfully Incorporating Emojis Into Marketing
There are several brands that have already experienced huge success by incorporating emojis into their social media marketing strategies. Here are a few stand-out examples:

Bud Light
Bud Light expressed its patriotism in a unique way on the Fourth of July by tweeting an American flag consisting of emojis. The firework emoji was used in place of the Old Glory’s stars, and the stripes were made up of American flag and beer emojis. It was extremely clever of Bud Light and helped to connect the brand to the holiday. As a result, Bud Light earned more than 150,000 retweets of its emoji flag.

NASCAR
Believe it or not, there is now something called World Emoji Day (mark your calendars for July 17th). NASCAR embraced this holiday by tweeting photographic mosaics of famous race car drivers made up entirely of emojis. Time consuming to create? Yes. Viral potential? Absolutely.

In summary, emojis have definitely made their way into the business world. But are emojis right for your business? In the end, it really all comes down to knowing your target audience and how they would respond to emojis being use in your marketing strategy.