Marketing for millennials is important, especially nowadays.
“30% of the retail market’s sales will come out of millennial pockets.” – Fortunly
If you’re looking to maximize your sales, you must target the right audience – that means not forgetting the millennials.
They’re the most lucrative buyers and account for 25% of the population.
They make impulsive purchases, spend lots of money on gifts and can be fiercely loyal if you get them what they want.
You’ll learn everything about marketing for millennials today AND 9 strategies you can use to attract them.
They’ll help you get more loyal customers and skyrocket your sales.
Who Are Millennials?
They’re lazy, egoistic and self-centred, but WAIT.
They’re also intelligent, driven and want to make a difference.
Millennials are those who are born from the 1980s to 2000. They make up for a quarter of today’s population and are technologically advanced.
They love trying out new things and actively changing the world for the better.
“37% of Millennials are willing to buy a product that supports a cause they believe in, even if it means paying extra.” – Better Marketing
They’re also open-minded and can be easily influenced by others.
“70% of millennial consumers are influenced by the recommendations of their peers in buying decisions.” – Buffer
If you’re looking to turn them into customers, you must start aligning your business with their needs.
What Is Marketing For Millennials?
Marketing for millennials is about using innovative marketing strategies.
You must always come up with new ways of marketing and always work on perfecting user experience.
The old-fashioned, boring approach to advertising won’t work on them. If you want the millenials to become loyal customers, you must be different.
What you need to do is understand their desires and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Why Is Marketing For Millennials Important?
Millennials represent the future.
They’re intelligent, sophisticated and always look for technological advancements and new things.
There are 2 great reasons to start targeting them today.
The millennials are more loyal
Most marketers’ biggest trouble with millennials is loyalty.
“Millennials’ lack of loyalty worries 40% of retail industry leaders.” – Accenture
However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t loyal.
Millennials have everything at their fingertips. If they want to learn something, they type it in Google and get the answer immediately.
If you fail to deliver what they expect, they’ll leave.
However, the opposite is also true…
If you deliver what they’re looking for, they’ll stay with you forever.
We’ll talk about strategies to use it to your advantage.
Millennials are easier to convert into a client
Millennials are highly influenced by their peers.
They want to be popular and make their friends happy, even if it means spending money.
“32.6% of millennials take money out of their savings to purchase holiday presents.” – 99firms
Selling to millennials isn’t difficult.
You just need to pick the right time – holidays.
“Millennials spend $576.39 on average to please friends and family during the season.”- 99firms
The other way they spend money is by impulsive purchases.
“Over 96% of millennials have made an impulse purchase spending $71 online and $82 in-store.” – Fortunly
They spend a lot and do it frequently…
“81% make at least one impulsive purchase a month in-store, while 69% make at least one online.” – Invest blue
You can leverage the seasons and use impulsive purchases to your advantage.
How To Plan For Marketing For Millennials
You’ve learnt about the importance of millennial marketing.
Now it’s time for strategies that will help you attract millennials. We’ll look at 9 strategies that will help you do that.
They’ll align your business with their desires and turn them into loyal customers.
Appeal To Their Values
You’re used to traditional buyers – those looking on for great products for a great price.
However, millennials think differently.
They’re determined to change the world and leave a mark behind. They tend to be fueled by a higher purpose behind every purchase.
If their purchase helps others or helps save the planet, they’ll be more likely to buy.
You can see an excellent example of this millennial marketing strategy by TOMS below.
That’s what millennials strive for.
After TOMS started using this tactic they saw a big conversion boost.
Strive to create a purpose for every transaction made with your business, contribute to a cause, and market it well. It’ll not only help your conversions but also others.
Create An Authentic Brand Image
Millennials are always looking for something new.
They don’t want to see the same old boring thing over and over again. Instead, they’re looking for brands that are unique and genuine that offer honesty and authenticity.
We’ll look at 3 ways to make your brand more authentic.
Be real
The easiest, yet most neglected way is staying real.
Share your passion, talk about your mission and build a purpose.
Stay true to yourself and don’t concentrate only on hard selling and sales numbers. Concentrate on your customers – what do they desire and how can you help them?
It’ll help you stay authentic and improve the quality of your products.
Be consistent
Your message should be loud and clear.
But most importantly, it should be consistent…
Giving mixed messages, being inconsistent and operating differently across the platforms can be a huge turn-off.
You risk making yourself look inauthentic and untrustworthy.
Be responsive
We live in an instant gratification era. We want everything and we want it now.
You must be responsive and always communicate with your customers.
Give them as many ways as you can to contact you. However, have a real person responding, not a machine or a bot.
It’ll show that you deliver on your promises and care about them.
It’ll go a long way in building authenticity and a rapport with your existing customers.
Focus On Social Media
Social media is where millennials spend theit time.
It’s the best place to meet your potential customers, bond with them and turn them into customers.
“75% of millennials’ purchase decisions are influenced by the brand’s social media presence.” – Animoto
We’ll look at 3 social media strategies for targeting millennials.
Create social media ads
The most popular social media platform is Facebook.
It’s also the easiest platform to create ads to promote your products. making it especially important when targeting millennials.
“57% of millennials make unplanned purchases based on social media advertisement.” – CNBC
Promote your posts by creating social media ads and increase your sales.
Reward them
Millennials do everything with a purpose.
Following you on social media platforms is no different.
Give your followers what they want and a reason to follow you.
The other way to leverage social media is by giving rewards for promotimg your content.
“Around 44% of millennials are willing to promote products or services through social media in exchange for rewards.” – WordStream
You can easily do that by making contests or giveaways.
Social media is the most important millennial marketing strategy.
Create social media ads, reward your customers for following you and increase your sales.
Leverage Influencer Marketing
Millennials love influencers and most importantly, they trust them.
We all know how valuable are referrals.
More often than not, having a referral is the last push we needed to make a purchase.
“49% of people rely on recommendations from influencers when making purchase decisions.” – DMI
However, not all influencers are suitable for your business. You must find those whose values are aligned with yours.
Thus their audience that can easily relate to your business.
The easiest way to find a suitable candidate is via influencer marketing platforms…
You can find the right influencer for your business in UpFluence.
Fear Of Missing Out
Millennials want to be cool and stay ahead.
That’s why they do everything in their power to keep up with their friends.
“Nearly 50% of millennials overspend to keep up with friends.” – Credit Karma
It can be a great opportunity if you can use it to your advantage.
You can add fear of missing out to your business with the 3 easy steps below.
Show stock levels
If something is about to run out, it’s more valuable.
You can boost sales by showing you’re running out of stock next to your products.
You can also send emails and create posts on social media updating your customers that the product is about to run out.
Make friends with urgency
Millennials are rational and intelligent.
They follow brands on social media to get coupons and discounts. They want the best deals.
You can make use of that by putting a countdown next to your products.
It’ll make millennials act fast and make an impulsive purchase.
Exit intent
Exit-intent is a feature which can detect when your visitors are about to leave. It’ll trigger a pop-up just before they do.
“Exit intent increased sales by 316% and subscriber count by 500%.”
Create a fear of missing out and make millennials purchase fast.
Be Accessible Across Multiple Platforms
Millennials are innovative, so should you…
They’re constantly looking for something new and better.
Which means you must keep up with trends if you want them to stay with your business. That aside, the most important thing you need is to be accessible.
You need to build your presence on multiple platforms and optimize the experience for your customers.
You can do that in 2 easy steps below.
Social media platforms
Millennials don’t use only one social media platform.
Instead, they use all of them…
Different platforms suit different needs. However, you should make sure you are on all of them.
That way your customers can find you on their preferred platforms, so you’re not losing out on any of them.
Devices
Millennials use a smartphone on a daily basis.
They access websites and businesses on their smartphones too. So it’s crucial to make your website mobile-friendly.
Especially to cater to any impulsive purchases.
If your website isn’t optimized, they’ll leave…
“40% of mobile consumers turned to a competitor’s website after an unsatisfactory mobile web experience.” – Front Burner Marketing
You should prevent that at all costs.
Be on all social media and make sure your website is optimized for all devices.
It’s an excellent millennial marketing strategy that will help you retain customers and drive more sales.
Be Transparent
We’re bombarded with ads everywhere.
“Digital marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day.” – Forbes
You must find a way to get through the clutter and shine.
The 3 ways below will help you with that.
Make everything easy
The millennials don’t have time for everything.
If something is confusing or isn’t clear enough, they will leave in a heartbeat.
Avoid that from happening by making everything clear and easy-to-understand.
Provide actionable steps
More often than not, when someone shops, they’re shopping for a solution.
They want to learn something new and use it in action.
That’s why you should provide actionable advice along with your product – let them know that what you’re offering is exactly what they need to solve whatever issue it is that they have.
Test what works
You can never know what works unless you test.
Perform A/B split tests. They’ll help you test 2 variants of ad or content simultaneously and see the in-depth stats about them.
You can then pick the winner and use it in your strategy.
Transparency is key nowadays.
Stay transparent and provide your customers with easy-to-digest content and actionable steps they can take immediately.
Create Informative Content & Use Inbound Marketing
Millennials are hungry for more information.
They don’t want to see products and service listings. Instead, they’re much more attracted by the means of inbound marketing – images, blogs,and videos.
“Millennials are 247% more likely to be influenced by blogs or social networking sites than other generations.” – Social Media Link
The key is creating excellent content regularly. You can do that by following the 2 steps below.
Perform keyword research
Give your customers what they’re looking for by performing keyword research.
Go to BiQ Cloud Keyword Intelligence and type in the topic you want to write about.
Hit enter and you’ll get a table of the related keywords.
Pick the ones that have the best value (competition-to-traffic) ratio and include them in your content.
However, it’s much better to filter them to see the best ones…
Learn more about filtering and keyword research.
Perfect your content
What you say is important, but how you say it is more important.
Your content must be easy-to-digest and clear. It should also be SEO-friendly to show in the Google results properly.
You can do that by improving your content with BiQ Cloud.
Go to BiQ Cloud Content Intelligence and enter the link to your content and your target keyword.
Hit enter and you’ll get an in-depth analysis of your content.
You can see all stats and areas you should fix on the right.
You should go through each of them and fix it.
Perfecting your content is an important millennial marketing strategy that will go a long way.
It’ll help get you more traffic and attract more millennials.
Be Fun & Creative
The easiest way to attract millennials is by being creative.
Brainstorm your ideas and come up with new ways you can apply to your business to make it unique.
You shouldn’t feel overwhelmed or stressed about new strategies.
Instead, make it fun and enjoy the whole process.
Write down everything on the paper, get around open-minded people and discover something new.
Conclusion
Millennial accounts for a third of all sales.
They’re smart, lazy, impatient, and care too much about what others think. You should use that to your advantage to turn them into loyal customers and boost sales.
You’ve learnt everything about marketing for millennials and discovered 9 strategies that will help you attract them.
They’ll help you appeal to millennials’ nature and use their buying habits to your advantage.
It’ll lead to more customers and increase in conversions.