The Words We Don’t Have: How Non-Verbal Communication Boosts Content

Depending on your culture, age, education, geographical location, attitude but also intent; words can have a lot of interpretations. Traditionally they are accompanied by non-verbal cues such as tone of voice, body language, and facial expressions which help understand the meaning of the message we are receiving. With the increase of online interactions, most of these cues have been lost. Emojis, GIFs, stickers and memes have stepped in to fill that gap, to a point where they are now common in the workplace and in B2C communications. Is B2B next?

For B2B which is traditionally a more conservative realm than B2C, manipulating language is the first step infusing intent into a simple text: varied fonts (Awesome design), punctuation (Awesome design!!!) , capitalization (AWESOME DESIGN), and nonverbal vocalization (awesoooooome design) help express emotion, and are already widely accepted.

Icons are another effective and accepted way to convey complex concepts quickly and easily in marketing material. They often serve as visual metaphors that illustrate a concept without requiring any words or lengthy explanations. This makes them ideal for presentations because they help to keep people’s attention while making sure the message is clear and concise. Additionally, icons have been proven to increase engagement and comprehension by providing visual cues that aid in memory recall and recognition of key points.

But if fonts, animations and icons are great support to written communication, they hardly carry a message by themselves.

In an era where the average American checks their phone on average 344 times daily, there is a fierce competition to grab your attention with the most engaging content.  It is proven that non-verbal communications speak to your brain 60,000 times faster than words; overcome language barriers and create trust.

B2C marketers have embraced the meme era and leveraged humor conjugued to pop culture to keep their brands in the forefront of their customers. It is now common to see emojis in marketing campaigns, memes in advertising leveraging, and it works!  According to a 2018 Forbes article:  

• The click-through-rate (CTR) of a meme campaign is 14% higher than email marketing.

• Organic engagement of meme campaigns on Facebook and Instagram is 10 x higher.

If we undeniably get more engaged as individual consumers by humoristic content, what will it take for it to become acceptable in the professional realm? In a world where your personal and professional life are so intertwined, these techniques will likely be leveraged to engage B2B buyers in a near future.

Although content creators will likely agree that we are not there yet for B2B, the only question that remains is: when?