The following is a guest contributed post from Scott Edidin, Vice President of Sales at Logomark.
Were you born between 1980 and 2000? If so, you’re an important part of Generation Y, or what is more commonly referred to as the millennial generation. Did you know that millennials are considered the most prominent generation in the history of the world? It’s a fact! And guess what? Marketers are becoming more aware of the untraditional way in which millennials are best reached.
Since research demonstrates that millennials will collectively spend approximately $10 trillion over the course of their lifetime, marketers must create distinctive campaigns that capture their attention and reel them in. To follow are some useful tips to help you better reach millennials with your marketing campaigns.
- Genuineness Empowers Millennials. Generation Y spends the equivalent of one full day online each week. But what are they doing? They are sifting through content-driven media. They’re browsing the Internet searching for websites, blogs and social media platforms because they are empowered by all of the fascinating content they’re discovering which they deem to be authentic. For businesses to be trustworthy they must be transparent. Without transparency, millennials will not trust your business or your brand. In short, you have to show millennials that you truly care about your product or service, and that it is truly beneficial and practical. Proving you’re concerned with providing something of value and making society better, or for that matter, the world, as opposed to making quick money is what millennials respect most.
- Retain Your Ingenuity and Relevance. Your business must be able to possess the wherewithal to create the impression that each millennial is special and that your product or service was geared towards them as opposed to a profit. It also helps to add value to the millennial experience with regards to your brand through such important items like loyalty rewards, recognition events, as well as special access to sales and other promotional events geared towards the millennial mindset. It’s no surprise that millennials love convenience, and creating a campaign that is innovative, unique in design, user-friendly and easy on the wallets is the embodiment of the millennial mindset.
- Change Your Marketing Approach. In order to reach the millennial, you’re going to have to change your marketing approach from outbound to inbound. Again, millennials are not impressed nor do they pay heed to banner ads, direct mail or even radio advertisements. They believe these approaches are mere ways to profit from them (which is true) and therefore are skeptical. Therefore, your brand should instead place an emphasis on shaping partnerships with online influencers that millennials already trust, such as highly popular bloggers/vloggers, podcasters, YouTube personalities, as well as Pinterest aficionados and Instagrammers. This is because millennials are geared towards being profoundly predisposed to the thoughts and sentiments of their peers as well as people they follow on various social media platforms. And most of all, keep in mind that millennials rely on word-of-mouth suggestions rather than conventional outbound marketing.
Millennials are geared towards genuine, content-driven, candid experiences that accommodate who they are as a generation and the voice they desire to share with others. Therefore, it’s imperative to keep that in mind when a business goes about creating a campaign to reel in this new majority. Not only should you be creative with your campaigns, but you should offer millennials practical products and services and furthermore connect with them at their level in order to successfully win them over and generate brand loyalty.