7 Modern Tips for Marketing to Millennials

In the world of marketing, there is always something changing where new trends continue to manifest. However, innovation is happening faster than ever, making it more important than ever to pay attention to the trends that are happening in the marketplace. For instance, only 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion funnels. When the trend shifts, you will find your marketing strategy old and able to return the same ROI. However, if you are able to keep up ahead of the crowd, you will be one of the few who will benefit from the rapid change of today.

In this short post, I will cover some of the tips that I found to work with companies all across different industries. Full disclosure, I am a Millennial who helps companies understand the Millennial generation better, so for a few of these I am speaking from are anecdotal experience.

Tip #1: Get on the Right Platform

The truth is many platforms go out of style, but usually never become completely useless. For instance, billboards are considered a very old marketing method and are not used that much today, but still can help in a marketing campaign. It’s not the platform that is important. Its where are people’s eyeballs going, and how much is the platform worth.

Asking questions like: what is the day to day of the customer? In addition, what is the customer journey of your target demographic? Both are important questions to uncover where you should market.

Instead of getting married to one platform, you need to be polygamous and go with whatever platform is serving your target demographic. For instance, Facebook has recently dropped to the third most popular site visited, losing its spot to Youtube.

Here are some stats from 2018 to help with your platform decision:

• 12% of Millennials believe they will use Facebook more a year from now.
• 88% of Millennials current use Facebook
• 59% of Millennials use Instagram regularly
• 30% of Millennials use SnapChat regularly
• 80% of Twitter users are Millennials

Tip #2: Leverage Video

Videos are now a very easy, yet extremely powerful tool to use. Fortunately, through the power of Smartphone technology and the reduction in camera equipment, people can make high quality videos quicker than ever. That means putting videos on your about us page, recruiting page, or even your social media posts in a matter of minutes. Coincidentally, videos are highly effective marketing strategies to build trust with Millennials.

Here are some stats of why you should use videos:

• Using video on landing pages will increase conversions by 86%.
• By 2019, 80% of content will be consumed by video.
• Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.
• Video in email leads to a 200-300% increase in click-through rates.

How to make a quick content video:

Tip #3: Use Content to Build Trust

People spend more time today, researching a product before buying than ever before. Hubspot found that 50% of customers spend 75% of their time researching products before they buy. It is no longer the time to hide content from the end customer. Through doing a quick Google search, potential buyers will be able to uncover just about anything they want about a product. However, if they are not able to find something about a product, it’s often interpreted as ‘the company is hiding something.’

Here are four areas to focus on Content Marketing to build trust. If you want to learn more about this section, check out They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan.

• Pricing
• Problems
• Competitors
• Reviews

Tip #4: Collaborating With the Brand

Companies now are involving Millennials in the process of building products creating a unique relationship between brand and customer. This is more visible than ever on social media where companies now put out a poll and survey Millennial customers to find out critical information. Or other times, companies will send out surveys in email lists to prioritize features launches. Not only is this an excellent way to do market research, but it also provides a sense of engagement between the customer and the Millennial.

Place where companies can engage with Millennials:

• Twitter
• Anyplace that has a comments section
• LinkedIn
• Facebook Pages
• Email Newsletters

Tip #5: Focus on Engagement

As Gary Vaynerchuk, international renowned social media guru, often preaches, ‘jab, jab, jab, right hook’. Vaynerchuk often uses this boxing phrase to refer to how companies should produce content. Each ‘jab’, is a little drop of value- a funny tweet, infographic, or a white paper. The ‘right hook’ is a call to action, ‘buy this book’, ‘sign up for this webinar’, etc. Unfortunately, many companies just right hook, right hook, right hook, which ultimately leads to a drop of engagement in the followers of the brand. What companies should focus on, is providing customers valuable content, build a relationship, then ask them to take a call to action. Learning this technique is vitally important to building trust with Millennials through engagement.

Here are five free tools that you can use to create free content online:

• Hootsuite – social media post scheduling.
• Canva – free graphic design software.
• PiktoChart – infographics made easy.
• Tweepi – twitter follower tool.
• All-Hashtag – a hashtag generator.

Tip #6: Moderate Reviews

Do a little bit of research on a product, brand, or even local company and you will find reviews floating on random websites disclosing endless information to end users. As a business, its vitally important when marketing to Millennials, to engage on these platforms and own any criticism that people write on those platforms. If companies fail to do this, they come across as disengaged, and not very trustworthy. Unfortunately, a lot of companies that don’t actively monitor their online presence miss out building trust with their Millennial customers.

Below are five stats on why you should moderate your reviews online:

• 50% of adults under the fifty check online reviews before buying.
• 53% of 18-to-29-year-old consumers regularly read product or service reviews.
• 10% of Americans regularly share online reviews about a business or brand.
• 40% of American sharing their opinion frequently via social media.
• 40% of consumers make a purchase decision after reading 1-3 online reviews.

Tip #7: Digital Influencers Work Better Than Celebrities

It used to be that celebrities could sell products like hot cakes, but now that is all changing. According to 37% of Millennials surveyed in a study by Tubefiller state that they are more likely to trust a brand after seeing an influencer post about it. In addition “Over 44% said they tried a recommendation from a digital creator compared to 36% trying out a celebrity suggestion, while over 30% actually bought a product recommended by a digital creator vs. just over 20% who purchased something touted by a traditional star.” Interestingly enough, there is a trend taking place where Millennials are starting to trust people on social media platforms more than traditionally celebrities. Due to this shift, companies need to leverage this fact, before social media influencers start charging more than traditional celebrities.