According to Pew Research Center, millennials will outnumber the baby boomer generation by 2019.
Every generation is different. It makes sense to shift your marketing tactics to target your next generation of buyers.
But targeting millennial audiences requires businesses to unlearn traditional marketing practices. Instead, marketing directors have to adopt new marketing strategies altogether.
This can be challenging and often leads to marketing directors making common mistakes. To help you make the generation shift, here are some common millennial marketing mistakes to avoid.
Targeting Millennials En Masse
There are approximately 80 million millennials. To target the entire generation is to say an 18-year-old (the youngest millennial) is the same as a 35-year-old (the oldest millennial).
Choose a smaller niche within the millennial generation to market to. This will not only make it easier to come up with productive strategies, but it will also make your audience more likely to respond.
Using Memes To Reach Your Audience
Memes are incredibly popular on social media. They also come and go incredibly fast. Think of them as inside jokes. When used too many times, they lose their humor and another joke is quickly made to replace it.
Unfortunately, many companies try to use memes to their advantage. But by the time they share one on social media, it’s too old. The result? A cringing audience.
Focusing On Emojis
Despite popular belief, words aren’t dead. Millennials use emojis to convey feelings, reactions, and to provide dual meaning. For instance, the ‘eyes’ emoji is akin to giving a suspicious look instead of outright meaning “eyes.”
Emojis, like memes, have their own kind of language to them. And marketing techniques that try to use them to reach their audience can end up saying something else.
How To Really Reach Millennial Audiences
It makes sense to want to reach out to your audience through social media trends. But many millennials use social media to actively avoid businesses and marketing attempts.
Instead, try reaching out to your millennial audience in a way that will get them to reach back. For instance, 61% of marketers said they were prioritizing SEO in 2017. SEO can help millennials find your business easier on their computers and phones.
Focus on solving problems millennials experience and establish stronger relationships on social media in a way that’s natural and not forced.
Whether you need assistance with content visibility, video marketing, PPC, or social media marketing, Connected Culture can help. For more information on our digital marketing services for marketing directors, contact Connected Culture today.
