8 Tips for Effective Digital Marketing to Millenials

Traditional marketing practices such as print have come under heavy pressure in recent times as they scramble to adjust and digitise to still compete in this vastly evolving digital revolution.

At the end of last year, Forbes indicated that by 2025 around 75 per cent of the global workforce will be millennials.

Modernisation surrounds us 360º and millennials unlike the last generation expect and demand innovations on a regular basis, continually updating both hardware and software.

With millennials driving the workforce in 2025 onwards businesses need to look to target them as their impact on strategic marketing campaigns will be significant. With digital marketing picking up the pace and showing no signs of slowing down, focusing brand awareness and marketing at them is the direction businesses should be looking to take.

If you look at them as a trendsetter in their own right, you will realise they are becoming more influential on how digital marketing needs to be conducted to be effective.

Here we look at some of the benefits and tips to help your thought process on how to target millennials through digital marketing. There are various strategies and angles to employ to enhance your brand and increase sales revenue.

Online sales and e-commerce are fast becoming the go-to way for consumers to do their business and shopping with a plethora of diverse merchandise now available to purchase. So it's a case of structuring your digital marketing plan to position yourself to pick up a percentage of this expanding platform.

1. High-Quality Content

The outside of the car may be the aspect that catches the eye, but the car goes no-where without the engine. Content-driven marketing is critical to any want-to-be successful digital marketing campaign. It MUST engage your readers. Never before have people had access to so much subject matter just at the click of a button, now it is essential to engage and educate them at the same time. Be sure your content is useful to the reader, give them ideas, solutions and suggestions so in-turn they pass it on to others with reviews and so on, also helping your link building strategy and rankings over the long term at the same time. Boring content in this era is NOT an option.
 

Suggestion:

Impact Headlines

Headlines are what draw people to click just as the older generation reacted to the front page of the newspaper headline. Be creative and informative but no need for sensationalism, this generation don't buy into that.

2. Social Media Presence

Unsurprisingly, selling products and services to millennials requires a very different approach than launching a generic social marketing campaign and waiting for results.

Two dynamics generally apply to this generation. Firstly they need to feel that the brand has a genuine interest in them (use your engaging content as mentioned before) before committing to you. Secondly, they bring a different dynamic to previous generations with much higher activity rates and are much more open to engagement and learning about innovations. So if you are marketing a niche product or area millennials are your target market.

3. Promotions

Millennials can be reactional, and opportunist, brand awareness in the long-term can be gained through committing yourself to slightly less profit margin during the growth cycle stage of the business with a long-term strategy in mind. Discounts and promotions work very effectively if you are using the right marketing strategy and drawing them to you in the first place. You'll find that they will be a loyal customer base whereby, you will not need to continually lower prices, but one or two well-marketed promotions per year will increase your outreach.

4. Visual Graphics

This generation is now constantly bombarded with higher resolution marketing. With the current rise of the digital signage industry, the world of marketing is becoming more visual by the day. Be sure to spend time on this aspect of your campaign before going live. Well-chosen vivid imagery combined with what we spoke about earlier 'engaging headlines and content' will put you firmly in the forefront of the millennial mindset. Look to set aside a budget for a creative designer to work side-by-side your marketing strategist, get creative, don't just stay with the times, push the envelope, and remember the keyword here is engagement, in reality, on all levels.

5. Transparency, there is no hiding from it

From food labelling to car makers claims about emissions and performance, if you are not transparent about your brand whatever sector or product you will lose your customer base very quickly, there are plenty other options out there at the click of a button.

The new generation is more aware of sales and marketing tactics more than than their predecessors and appreciate a more straightforward, genuine approach. Remember everyone is socially linked today so a negative rumour can quickly go into a full-scale viral nightmare for your brand in 24 hours.

6. Millennial Consultancy

It may sound obvious, and then you think, but they are too young. Some of the world's smartest designers and developers are teenagers, and they know exactly what the younger generation react to. Do not be cautious to hire someone even on a consultancy basis due to age; you should be more careful to hire someone with an inflated CV who is out of touch with what the new generation is looking for. They understand behavioural patterns and have the same mindset. There is a lot of young talent out there, embrace it.

7. The Growing Trend of Philanthropy

Millennials are paying attention to philanthropy in far more numbers than the previous generation and look favourably on companies that purchasing through them in some way benefits a sector of society. If your business is involved in philanthropy, don't just advertise it, be sure to inform your readers how active your business is in the cause. Millennials are exceptionally socially aware, so positive promotion of what you are involved in will have a domino effect in improving client relations are increasing your reach.

8. Keep it Simple

A trap businesses fall into is not finding the right balance between engaging, useful content and information overload. Too much material can quickly be deemed irrelevant and likely to divert your potential customer to an alternative brand. Millennials want simplicity and less pushy sales pitches. An easy way to simplify your message is to have it behind a click barrier; you promote yourself but without forcing the issue.

Conclusion

Some sound advice is once you have decided on a digital marketing strategy test it on small controlled pockets of millennials before going on full-scale outreach. Remember this generation are not your traditional target market so NEVER act on assumptions, act on current informed feedback. Not only will this save you money at the start, it will tell you where you are going wrong, but be positive, it will also inform you of what you are doing right, tweak, adjust, be flexible and prepared for change and you'll succeed with your goals. Good luck.