5 Articles to Help You Understand and Marketing to Millennials
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of our Data Points series hosted by Zach!
This week, we are going to talk about a thorny group of customers — millennials.
More and more businesses, ranging from Hilton Worldwide to small e-tailers, have begun to understand the importance of capturing the millennial audience.
However, only a few are truly successful in doing so (Dollar Shave Club is a good success example).
As millennials ourselves, we feel that we are in unique position to curate and choose articles that most accurately describe our generation and purchasing behavior.
In this week’s curation, we have articles by the millennial marketer Neil Patel, along with research done by some of the most prestigious universities.
All of these are geared towards providing you with a well-rounded understanding of our generation.
We hope this week’s articles and discussions will help you become successful in capturing the heart of this unique generation!
The Ultimate Guide to Millennial Marketing
8 Modern Tips for Marketing to Millennials
Can Social Media Cultivate Long-Term Loyalty?
Transcript
Zach: Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Data Points 2.0. Our topic for this week is Millennials. You love ’em, you hate ’em, you hate to love ’em. We’re gonna talk about it and see what we think.
Article 1: The Ultimate Guide to Millennial Marketing by Neil Patel
Zach: Our first article today is from Neil Patel and it is the “Ultimate Guide to Millennial Marketing.” The title is pretty self-explanatory. It will give you a pretty general rundown, a definition of millennials, however you’d like to define them.
Bill: Neil Patel, he self-defines as a millennial.
He is also one of the few digital marketers out there that are actually in our generation.
If you look at his entire rise to fame, he utilized technology, personal sharing, all the things that millennials use when communicating with other people.
So when you’re reading this article, don’t only pay attention to what he says, but also the way he says it.
This is because his target audience is mostly millennials, and he is enormously successful in reaching that audience with his content.
Zach: One part of his article that is interesting to me is the emphasis he puts on doing social good.
He says that millennials really care a lot more that the company they’re doing business with is contributing to the welfare of the planet as whole and not just money making, capitalist machines.
What’s your take on that? How big of an impact do you think that has on the companies millennials decide to do business with?
Bill: It has an enormous amount of impact.
Actually, in my first consulting engagement with Hilton Worldwide, marketing to millennials was the topic we were discussing with their executives.
To summarize all of the research I did on that topic, I would say that doing some sort of social good is enormously important for millennials.
Companies Like GoPro and Warby Parker are successful because of it. Patagonia is another very good example.
Millennials loves companies that aren’t only doing it for the money. They love companies that are doing it for the cause and doing it in a slick manner.
For example, for Patagonia, they have their employees go surfing every single day if there’s a wave outside, and they do a lot of things to intentionally limit the amount of money they make to protect customer value.
So, yeah, definitely pay attention to this point when you are crafting your marketing message and branding for this generation.
Article 2: What Defines Millennials — And how can marketers reach them by Wharton Business School
Zach: Our second article for the week comes to us from Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. And the title is “What Defines Millennials: How Marketers Can Reach Them.”
This article touches on the key characteristics of millennials.
A few important facts about millennials include the fact that they came out when the economy wasn’t doing so well, and also their strong willingness to trust data.
I have a question about this article that I think Bill can help enlighten us a little bit. Why are millennials more willing to trust data and how do you think that’s going to affect marketers?
Bill: I am going to back up a little on your question and go slightly off topic.
Millennials trust data not because they just intrinsically think facts are good, It’s because millennials were born in an age that politically, economically, socially, anything as such, has little that they can trust.
Think about the 2016 election and the Facebook scandal, think about Russian meddling.
It makes millennials, or even the entire society, extremely distrustful of anything that’s not factual because we start to see that corporations and political parties are doing this sort of psychological truth manipulation.
Zach: So are you saying that we’re defaulting to data because nothing else is worth our trust?
Bill: Yeah. Precisely.
Think about the internet, why would you trust someone over the internet?
You’re often talking to a person that you’ve never met face to face.
Even in this case, we are hosting a show and you don’t even see our face. But you’re still listening to us because this is how we get information nowadays.
Therefore, unless you think what I am telling you today are facts, you’re not going to trust me.
And that accurately defines the millennial mindset.
Via the internet, you can access a much broader world, but we can’t even see the person we’re talking to anymore. So obviously there’s not going to be trust. It’s just as simple as that.
This is the same for online businesses. Right now you’re listening to millennials on the internet. You don’t have a sales representative that is talking to them face to face anymore.
Obviously there’s not going to be a trust element, but the personal human elements there. So you better have something that’s, A) good, so I know that you’re not trying to take advantage of me. B) something that’s true because I don’t know if you’re lying or not — I cannot see visual cues or anything as such when I’m interacting with you online.
Zach: This is kind of an exciting time because our willingness, or millennials’ willingness to trust data is a marked change from the previous generation and that combined with emerging technologies is really going to open a lot of doors.
Uber, Lyft, all kinds of companies kind of take advantage of this collection of circumstances.
Article 3: 8 Modern Tips for Marketing to Millennials by Hubspot
Zach: Moving onto our third article of the day, we have “8 Modern Tips for Marketing to Millennials” coming to us from HubSpot.
This article runs down generally some of the best strategies for marketing to millennials, anything from authentic content, to outbound marketing, and content marketing.
This is a great overview and maybe you can take some inspiration from some of these strategies.
One thing I want to focus on here and ask Bill what he thinks about is that the article touches on the desire of millennials to live rather than buy and I’m unsure of how marketing companies should kind of approach that mindset of millennials. Is that something that maybe content marketing could come into play on?
Bill: Yes. Content marketing is definitely at play here because for millennials you’re selling an experience, you’re not selling ownership.
So when you are selling a car for example, you’re selling actually ownership of the car, right?
Now if you look at the advertising for cars from all the major companies, instead of selling the physical ownership of the car, they’re selling the experience of driving.
One good example is Tesla, Tesla’s not selling the physical car, the physical car of Tesla actually looks extremely ugly. It looks like a sedan, like just a very regular, normal sedan. But what’s makes Tesla such a desirable car is that the experience of driving it is amazing.
And to understand millennials, you have to understand this new way of thinking. Tesla is extremely cool, not because the car’s exterior looks very good, but because the experience of driving is very good.
And I’m more than happy to rent or share a Tesla with other people in this case because it gives me an experience component to it. And to create this experience, you have to use content, use articles, you have to use sometimes product development to make all these coherent user experiences happen for millennials.
And only with the offer of a unique experience are millennials going to buy your car. They’re not going to buy a car just because it’s an Audi or it’s a BMW or it’s anything else. There are a lot more important things to that.
Zach: Right. So you think content marketing is kind of able to get across the special experience a product can offer better than some of the old strategies for marketing.
Bill: Yeah. Precisely. Content and inbound marketing. Content marketing is part of inbound marketing so that includes social media, blog, public PR, anything like that.
Just build a coherent personal brand through all facets millennials are exposed to. Particularly their friends because sharing is very important.
Zach: Great. You heard it here first, or third, or fifth. But now you know content marketing. All the rage. Sell the experience.
Article 4: How Millennials are Defining the Sharing Economy by Entrepreneur
Zach: Our fourth article of the day comes to us from Entrepreneur titled “How Millennials are Defining the Sharing Economy.”
This article goes a little bit more in depth about why sharing works so well for millennials and kind of the future that will likely bear out.
One question I have regarding this topic is the fact that millennials are very clearly consuming in a manner different from their fore bearers and from anyone else we’ve seen before honestly.
So if they are consuming a different way, should they be sold to in a different way as well?
Bill: Yeah. For sure.
They should be sold through the online medium primarily.
Online mediums such as ecommerce and social media.
You see that a lot of new and successful businesses are coming out in this channel just because millennials are becoming a bigger and bigger part of the purchasing power of society now.
Personal story, I was in China as many of you know, a couple of months ago. I didn’t step out the door of my home for the entire week because I could just buy groceries online. I bought food online, ordered delivery online, and I talk with my team online.
So all of my behaviors take place online. If you have a physical store, we are not going to see it. So you need to have online exposure for any product or service you’re trying to sell to expose your brand to millennials because the internet is always the first channel of exposure for millennials.
If I can see it through online advertising that’s great. If I can see if through someone sharing it with me, that’s even better.
Another personal example, I was asking you (Zach) for a book recommendation, and you (he) told me “The Name of the Wind” was a great book. Now I’m listening to it.
I bought like the entire series without any exposure from advertising. And that’s the way millennials purchase- through their friends and from their peers so definitely pay attention to selling through that channel because right now not a lot of businesses are doing very well in that realm.
Zach: Great. I think that’s a really good point and actually something you probably don’t think about or at least I know I didn’t.
If we’re staying in our house whether we’re watching TV or reading a book, we’re also likely on or phones to some extent.
So no matter what we’re doing, the internet is the way to reach us. So marketers should really take advantage of that and learn how to exploit the online sphere. It’s their greatest advantage.
Article 5: Can Social Media Cultivate Long Term Loyalty by MIT Solan
Zach: Our last article of the day comes to us from MIT Sloan and it is called “Can Social Media Cultivate Long Term Loyalty?”
This article really touches on one core concept, that of the aspirational customer.
You can read for a little bit more of a detailed explanation, but essentially aspirational customer are following your brand, but haven’t made the jump yet to purchasing them.
What’s your view on aspirational customers, Bill?
Bill: So in a traditional sense, an aspirational customer doesn’t exist in a lot of traditional businesses.
If you think about a physical store, many people that walk into stores are more likely than not to buy.
But in a digital space when we’re talking about an online store, a large portion of your potential customers are going to come into your store, place items into the cart, not buy anything, and just leave.
Most businesses do not pay attention to these customers. They think they are not the correct audience. But in fact they are.
You’ll see this a lot in research conducted by MIT Sloan. Those customers actually want to buy, but they might not want to right now.
Also, they might not have the budget to do it, but they might have the budget and need to do it very, very soon.
So what you need to do here is you need to keep engaging them until they actually make the decision to purchase.
And this is actually the major source of online revenue for most eCommerce stores and eCommerce businesses.
So more practically what this means is that impressions are important. Exposure is important. More important than actually converting your customers in fact.
The more people you can expose your product to, the more people you sell it to as aspirational customers, the more likely you will have a very large funnel for customers to trickle through and eventually purchase.
It’s just something to think about. if you come from a traditional marketing background, there might not be a huge audience that you’re considering. I would encourage you to consider this a lot more because this is a core audience for conversion and marketing through the digital medium and through the online medium.
Zach: Yeah. That’s an interesting take. It sounds like what you’re describing is a little bit of a perversion of the attention economy. So rather than advertising for eyeballs … Actually, no. It’s exactly attention economy. You’re advertising for eyeballs so people are aware of your brand. Even if they don’t make the conversion right then and there.
Bill: Yeah. Previously, I would say that for a brand … you probably had 60–70% of customers who purchased your product and 30% who did not. But in the online economy, you have 90% of people who have not purchased your product and 10% who have. And since this audience is so big, you need to continue to engage this 90% because they are going to become the 10% eventually.
Conclusion
That was our last article for today. So we’re going to go ahead and wrap up now.
Thank you for listening.
If you have any comments or questions, please go ahead and leave them below. We’re looking to improve this series every week so we’d love to hear some feedback you have.
We’ve also attached the transcription of this talk as well as some links, so go ahead and access these articles through there.
Thanks again for listening. Have a great week! And we will talk to you next week.
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