Target Marketing: Millennials
Tips for marketing to the younger generation
Let’s talk about millennials. How do you go about marketing to them? What’s the best approach? Well, lucky for you, I myself am a millennial. So, I’ll explain the best things you can do to engage the millennial crowd with your business.
The Millennial Influence
Millennials have often been blamed for the ‘death,’ of many things that used to be commonplace to the generations before us like, golf, dinner napkins, running, and the 9-5 work day (is that really such a bad thing though?). That’s not the only thing that Millennials have impacted, they also changed the norm of marketing. The traditional methods of pay-per-click digital ads, commercials, and even email campaigns have become less effective for engagement and customer retention.
The market is always changing, and businesses need to adapt to the flow of the economy and the dominant forces in the economy. Right now, the dominant force is millennials (ages 22-37), they represent over a third of the population. So, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, how do you engage this generation, what do they respond to best?
User-Generated Content
Millennials didn’t create the concept of user-generated content, but their generation shares more of their experiences on social media than any other generation. Millennials want to know that your business or brand is authentic and seeing your products/services being used by others solidifies your authenticity. In fact, 84% of millennials say that user-generated content matters when they’re researching a company or brand. So where do you start?
- Review sites. Of course, you’re going to say that you’re the best, so consumers trust other consumers more than they trust you. Create pages on review sites like Yelp, Facebook business page, or Urban Spoon that allow people to share their honest experience with your business. Since you cannot control the content posted on these sites, it’s important that you keep up good quality service. Get your review pages off the ground by offering a promotional offer to users who leave an honest review.
- Social Media. Encourage consumers to interact with your company via social media. Ask your customers to share pictures of themselves enjoying what your business provides, whether that be on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any other site. Take advantage of relevant topics to connect with more of your audience, create/use hashtags, share questions and jump into conversations. How you interact with your customers says a lot about your business.
Direct Mail
Wait, what? I thought the days of print were dead, this really works? Yes. A large percentage of millennials see mail as more official, more trusted and more safe/secure. The U.S. Postal service found that on average, millennials spent more than 9 minutes per day sorting through their mail. The average lifespan of an email is 2 seconds, meaning millennials would rather scan through their physical mail for useful information as opposed to their emails. Research shows that digitally engaged consumers, like millennials, suffer from digital fatigue. Nearly half ignore digital ads, such as pop-ups, banner ads, and even emails. Only 15% say they ignore direct mail. In fact, 54% said that local businesses needed to do a better job of using mail to keep them informed about events and specials.
Millennials receive hundreds of emails every week, but real mail comes less frequently, and they enjoy getting it. So, stand out. When designing your direct mail campaign using a different shape, vivid colors, provide bite-size pieces of information, attention-grabbing details to increase engagement and impact. Bridge the GAP (see what I did there?) between your direct mailers and digital marketing by including information about your website and social media pages to drive traffic.
What does this mean for you?
If your business isn’t on social media, or review sites – now is the time to change that. Employing the above methods into your current marketing campaigns should successfully capture a larger share of the millennial customer base. If you need help implementing these strategies, we would love to help you. Give our team a call!