Short attention span, digital natives, browsers-not-buyers, multi-taskers and socially conscious — those are simply a few of the features that people associate with millennials. This generation, which has overtaken baby boomers as the most significant generation, is moving into their prime spending and functioning years; therefore, advertising to millennials should be an important consideration for your company.
Below are our 28 ideas on how to efficiently tap millennials.
Channels and Tools Programmers Should Use To Reach Millennials
1. Utilize Google advertising.
Marc Prosser, Fit Small Business
Ask any millennial where they’d go to search for something on the internet, and you are likely to receive a simple response:”I’d Google it” Do not squander the opportunity to make sure that your company is one of the first results they visit! Click here to read our entire guide about advertising on Google–we will even tell you how to get $200 in free advertising!
2. Retarget millennials on Facebook.
Maggie Aland, Fit Small Business
Retargeting advertisements are shown to result in anything from double to four times the click-through rate of a normal display ad.
Retargeting ads”stem” consumers with advertisements on Facebook for services or products they have viewed recently. If you’ve already looked at a commodity, you are probably considering it. This makes you a hot lead, and much more likely to convert than someone who’s never been to the website before.
Discover how to establish a retargeting effort on Facebook with our in-depth guide.
3. Explore using trending and new social media tools and stations.
Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC)
As soon as a new social networking or platform becomes popular with millennials, it’s important to look at adding it to your marketing strategy — but attentively research first if the channel or tool fits your business and message. Utilizing trending social media tools places you as an early adopter and innovator. Keep on top of new platforms through media or tech sites, and don’t hesitate to experiment once you combine a new site.
4. Stone your mobile advertising.
Sujan Patel, Co-founder, ContentMarketer.io
Marketing through mobile devices is very important in general, but given that 85 percent of millennials from the U.S. very own smartphones, it is essential when you’re targeting this generation.
To excel at cellular advertising, first consider the fundamentals. Are the landing pages optimized for cellular? Are they too graphics-intensive, which makes load times more with slower connections? Can be the call to action clear, even on a smaller screen?
Finding ways to integrate your advertisements natively into popular cellular programs and applications, especially if it’s styled as a benefit, is a great way to achieve millennials.
5. Listen, learn and speak their language.
Rustin Nethercott, Content Developer, ConstantContact
The greatest mistake you can make when marketing to millennials is forgetting to hear them. Hear what they’re saying and how they’re saying it.
Follow them on social websites to get knowledgeable about their patterns and the causes that matter to them. But do not attempt to pander using gimmicks or slang such as emojis unless you’re able to make it seem completely natural. 9 days out of 10 this seems horribly contrived, and the business ends up looking like a parent trying to act hip to connect with their teenage kid.
6. Optimize content to increase the possibility that individuals will share.
Emerson Spartz, CEO, Dose
Focus your advertising spend on reaching millennials via social programs. These push the most important traffic back to publishers and brands. Assessing the material is also crucial. We see the highest shares on short, captioned videos that pinpoint the first ten seconds of articles to hook the audience. Keep it short and do not presume millennials are waiting to see long videos with the audio on.
7. Ride on trending topics.
SEO Pressor
Pay attention to what’s currently trending and jump onto the bandwagon as soon as possible.
By creating social networking posts and advertising subtly referencing the subject, you’ll have a casual and enjoyable method of advertising your products which will interest millennials.
Nail your advertisements to sync with trending topics and you just might have a opportunity to go viral. Obviously, timing is crucial and you have to get it correctly. You won’t seem as cool in case the ad you roll out is a week too late or you are using the testimonials in the wrong context.
8. Give them significant videos to discuss.
Jennifer Schiff, President, Schiff & Schiff Communications
Millennials relate to product videos that tell tales of how other shoppers utilized products in real life. Millennials are 1.5 times more likely to watch videos while shopping online before they determine if a product is a good purchase. About a third purchases products directly as a result of seeing videos.
Millennials will also be more enthusiastic about consumer-made how-to videos compared to excessively stylized brand videos. So be proactive and also include this content to your product detail pages to inspire purchases and make the experience more realistic.
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9. Go reside on Facebook.
George Beall, University of Pennsylvania
Facebook Live is fast becoming a more and more popular option for manufacturers to broadcast their message. More to the point, it is a great way to reach an engaged audience. There is something special about going live that creates a more genuine medium for one to communicate with your audience. It’s also early in the live streaming game, therefore investing in this station early may pay off.
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10. Get creative with your own visuals.
Olivia Adams, Brand Manager, Come Recommended
Don’t hesitate to utilize creative visuals such as infographicsvideos, and photos to grab the attention of Millennials. It is shown that 40 percent of people respond better to visuals than plain text alone. In addition, 71% of individuals feel much better about a brand that incorporates visuals into their content.
11. Sell using GIFs.
William Harris, CEO & Growth Marketer, Elumynt, LLC
Visuals are hugely significant selling tools when interacting with the millennial audience. Along with video tales and abundant photography, GIFs are just another type of visual that you ought to be incorporating into your e commerce marketing strategy. GIFs are simple, animated documents that could be incorporated into emails, Facebook articles, product pages, landing pages, and much more.
GIFs are mostly used by millennials as humorous memes and pop culture references, however increasingly more savvy companies are beginning to recognize their value and use them to present goods in a format that is both familiar and entertaining to millennials.
12. They enjoy being able to interact with brands.
Cassi Manner, Marketing Manager, Pretty Girl Makeup
Millennials are about two-way communicating via social networking. I love to perform call to action campaigns in which societal media users, especially Instagram, have to re-post a photograph, label buddies, or comment their favourite tip or trick so as to be entered to win some prize.
Millennials also like social networking posts that bring some benefit to the dining table, if it be a how-to or do’s and performn’ts of a specific action. Basically, anything that engages the users and sets them in communication with the brand helps build a relationship and promote sales and increase.
What Millennials Look For in a Brand New
13. Millennials want mobile-friendly websites.
Jeremy Marsan, Fit Small Business
More people are currently searching for businesses on their telephones over desktops, so make certain that your website is optimized for cellular. This does not just mean that your site looks ok whenever someone pulls it up onto a mobile device. Ensure that your cellular site has larger fonts, clearer call to action buttons and an easy checkout procedure. The phone display is much smaller compared to a computer, so make sure you are optimizing the tiny space you have, and making it easy for individuals to obtain the information you need them to on your site.
14. They enjoy fast solutions from brands.
Jayson DeMers, Founder & CEO, AudienceBloom
Why are millennials impatient? Can they have a tendency to prefer immediate gratification, or do they create more impulsive decisions? The jury is still out on these qualities, but one thing is for sure: millennials have ubiquitous access to technology, and they understand how to locate information. And since they are often on cellular devices, searching for answers to immediately pressing issues, they want their information quickly. If you would like to be their go-to manufacturer, serving their content needs and earning their loyalty, then you need to present them with quick, thorough advice and solutions.
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15. Coupons and discounts provoke them.
Christina Baldassarre, Creator, Zebra Advertisement
66 percent of millennials follow a business or brand on Twitter together with the sole purpose of getting a voucher or discount. One thing which millennials have mastered is the best way to cut prices in this economically-driven time. That’s why this group is probably to share their location in their mobile devices in order for coupons from businesses which are close by. Odds are, if you promote a sale or give out free shipping coupons, the clientele will follow your social media accounts.
16. Validate your brand with internet reviews.
Aleh Barysevich, Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Link-Assistant. Com
Millennials are indigenous researchers when it comes to shopping — 80 percent, for instance, wouldn’t purchase a hairspray without reading 10 reviews online before deciding on the one for them. To make sure every step of customer’s study leads to the ultimate aim — buy — brands should demonstrate their trustworthiness and experience. You can achieve this by caring for your online reviews and inviting clients to share their expertise with your brand online.
You can also utilize a standing management applications, such as ReviewTrackers, to help you get reviews from your current clients and track existing testimonials from over 75 different review sites.
Read our guide to Instagram advertisements to find out more about the way to achieve millennials employing the social media platform.
18. Don’t be too salesy.
AJ Agrawal, Forbes
The hard market has become something of a slice of satire in the eyes of millennials. They don’t reply to the salesperson following them around crying about how good their products are. The hard sell is gone and you want to let millennials make purchasing decisions for themselves.
Millennials value credibility over everything else. They are more likely to hear a fellow customer, as opposed to a piece of promotional copy.
19. They encourage brands that do social good.
Kevin Donnelly, Content Creator, Shopify
Millennials are a socially aware creation with a strong desire to create a difference in the world. They have started turning to companies to help them make a larger impact. Worldwide, 69% of millennials want businesses to better facilitate customers getting involved in social problems which is a huge opportunity for companies to begin stepping in and helping out.
20. Economy through their buddies and influencers.
Lauren Friedman, Head of Global Social Business Enablement, Adobe
The fact is, people trust people. And people buy from people, not brands. One of the simplest ways to join with all the millennial audience is to entice among the peers to represent your product or service. Influencers have so much energy when it comes to marketing solutions. Whether they like something or not directly influences a consumer’s decision to buy. Speak to your consumers not through your brand but by using their buddies with trusted recommendations.
21. Appeal to their emotions.
Dana Mia Kim, Sleeknote
Emotion is among the ruling factors behind millennial’s engagement tendencies. Make them laugh, make them cry, give them something that is going to have an impact on their faith and their world.
A good example is Dove’s”Pick Beautiful” effort — the video of the effort became a viral hit after people saw girls make a decision between whether they are”Average” or”Beautiful.” Tons of people shared the video to share their opinions regarding the impact and importance of the effort on women empowerment.
22. Let them be your own star.
Colie Edison, VP of Marketing, Bowlmor AMF
We all know this group of customers likes to see in the media they consume and we carry that insight quite literally, focusing on user-generated content to help tell our brand narrative. On Instagram, our guests utilize our brand hashtag #strikeitup to submit videos and images of themselves in our bowling alleys, to get a opportunity to win gift cards in our ongoing consumer marketing. We’re then able to feature these assets in all our marketing channels. When your consumer can relate to your content in a real manner — in this case an honest look into the brand experience — your brand message goes a lot further.
23. They would like to buy purpose, not merchandise.
Michelle Jaelin, Marketing & Media Expert, Nutritionartist.com.
During a period when there is information saturation, providing a product or service that has a good cause or aids the world in some way is much more attractive to millennials. In my experience, millennials are more receptive to supporting products or services that care for a cause or gain humanity in some way. Whether it’s technology, health, food security or international development — firms that show transparency and reveal benefit to the planet in a positive manner are more likely to tap into the millennial sector.
Samples of Successful Efforts Targeted to Millennials
24. Carlsberg Beer Body Ready.
Nikki Gilliland, Writer, Econsultancy
With humour in the core of all its advertising, Carlsberg has found recent success with campaigns targeted to millennials by making up content that is relatable, witty and shareable on interpersonal networking.
Jumping on the fury caused by the’Are You Beach Body Ready’ campaign that was launched by means of a weight loss company, it cleverly placed ads requesting train commuters if they were’Beer Body Ready’ — stressing that consumers don’t need to look a specific physical way to enjoy summer.
The combination of timely significance and relatable humour made it one of their most motivated campaigns of the past couple of years.
The result? A customized and personal product, in addition to share-worthy content. Coca-Cola also produced a site wrapped about this effort that lets clients discover facts about their names, arrange customized bottles, and find out event dates to the Share a Coke tour.
26. Effective utilization of a plausible influencer in Under Armour’s’Rule Yourself’ effort.
Kit Smith, Marketing Expert
This advertisement focuses on its star rather than the brand. That’s easily done when you have Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time.
It’s beautifully shot, with only occasional flashes of the Under Armour logo as Phelps trains. It highlights the hard work and decision needed to become prosperous, with the implication being that if Under Armour is good enough for someone that puts that much effort into their training, it’s probably good enough for you.
However, it’s necessary to be aware that influencers do not always have to be literary and celebrities stars, you need to be able to find influencers in your market who come with a less expensive price tag.
27. Tackle opposing beliefs like Heineken’s’Social Experiment’
Alexandra Jardine, Creativity Online
Heineken brings together strangers with straight conflicting beliefs and points of view and also gets them to create a bar together in a”social experiment” designed to overcome barriers in an overly polarized world.
A recent Heineken video advertising features three-pair group up: a climate-change denier with an environmental activist, a transgender girl and a right-wing man who believes it is”wrong,” a feminist and an anti-feminist. They are challenged with constructing a few flat pack furniture and a pub, in addition to discussing one another’s personalities (but not beliefs specifically).
It is only after they’ve worked together are they shown a film of another individual discussing their beliefs. They’re then given the choice to walk away or sit down and have a beer with the other individual. Their reactions and expressions seem authentic — and in a world where we are told we’re all present in social media echo chambers, the video reveals the power of linking with people in person instead of trolling them on line.
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28. Give them an opportunity to pay it forward like Toms.
Colleen Irish, Sr.. Account Director, Tier One PR
Toms and Target teamed up one holiday season to offer you a limited-edition holiday set of Toms’ shoes, Toms for Goal, hoping to leverage Toms’ favorite”One for One” effort with Goal’s limited-edition experience. With the holiday campaign, Toms and Target go the excess mile with extra items priced under $50; and each buy causes a donation, such as blankets and meals, in addition to sneakers.
The Toms footwear manufacturer does an superb job of marketing to millennials by attractive to the creation’s social awareness and desire to create a difference. Toms’ business model relies on giving backwith each purchase of shoes, another pair is donated to those in need. Kudos to these brands for recognizing an opportunity to produce a good thought even better by joining forces and aligning missions in a focused way.
Over To You
We’d love to thank everybody who contributed thoughts on effectively marketing to millennials!
To the tiny companies on the market, we all hope that these tips will help you come up with innovative suggestions on the best way to tap into this young and enormous market — remember, they want credibility, transparency and mobility!
What is your favourite idea from this listing? Leave your comments below and let’s talk!
Need other marketing ideas for your small company? Read our article on top 25 small business marketing ideas from the professionals.
