Marketing to Millennials

The Candidate recently sponsored the CIM ‘Marketing to Millennial’s’ event which was held at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Guest speakers included Chris Sheard, Head of Customer Acquisition at currentbody.com, Joe Kelly, Digital Strategist at Prodo and Mike Harris, Senior UX Executive at JD Sports. Together they were able to offer the audience insight into the tools and techniques that are available to use to enable successful millennial marketing.

What makes a millennial?

Before you can begin to create a marketing campaign that will appeal to the millennial generation, it’s vital to understand their thoughts, feelings and overall mindset. If there’s one thing that millennials care about, it’s value. As a generation who struggle with student debt, it’s no surprise that they are looking for the best deals and promotions because they feel the need to evaluate their purchases more.

Social Media is another strong element of the millennial mindset, with over 62% of millennials engaging with their favourite brands on various social media platforms. Millennials thrive off authentic content such as recommendations and customer reviews with 33% claiming this type of content heavily influences their purchasing decision. They are quick to have an opinion and voice it which could ultimately build or break a brand! On the other hand, they are not easily influenced by advertising and to put it into perspective, according to Chris Sheard, millennials are more likely to be bitten by a shark than click on a display ad!

Tech is a major contributor to the psyche of a millennial as 88% have multiple devices in order to stay connected to their favourite brands 24/7. Also, this generation genuinely cares about narratives and brand loyalty, and would rather spend their money on experiences as opposed to products but they are the generation that wants it all now; millennial’s demand a seamless and personal experience at the drop of a hat! 

So, how can you influence millennials?

Brand’s need to find a way to cut through the noise in order to be able to speak to their target audience.  Knowing the best techniques and tools to do this is vital for any company. According to Chris Sheard, there are 6 applications that can be used to help achieve this:

Application 1 - The first important step is to learn about your audience. Use analytics to find out about what channels your audience is using, and find out what value they bring to the marketing mix.

Application 2 – Work out how your target audience wants to be communicated to. Use your data to figure out the age group of the audience, and tailor your content to how your audience wants to use it.

Application 3 – Prove that you have authority. Millennials want value, so it is important to own your space and speak with authority to make them want to visit your website.

Application 4 – Add value to your brand by bringing it to life. Millennials don’t want to buy from organisations; they want to buy from relatable establishments.

Application 5 – Make your brand feel personalised to millennials. As millennials are not easily influenced by generic advertisements, it is important that they feel they are being marketed to.

Application 6 – Prepare for change. Technology, social media, trends, and people’s minds change all the time. To keep up with millennials you have to keep up with changing circumstances.

Joe Kelly and Mike Harris also highlighted the importance of personas over segmentations when business’ are aiming to know their customers better because millennials are such a wide scale of people from the end of 80’s to 2000, therefore a persona will be more specific.

Overall the event provided guests with advice and information which could heavily influence their future marketing strategy.  If there’s one thing we learnt from the lecture, it’s that millennials are not only a much bigger age range than anticipated but they are potentially the most loyal type of consumer.