Marketing toward Millennials can be a confusing and challenging process. Making up over 21% of the US population, they are a crucial population to pay attention to when marketing your business. So ignoring them is not an option.
Action Steps for Optimizing Your Growth Marketing Strategy
Read on to see how to optimize your growth marketing strategy to target Millennials.
1. Be Multi-Device
55% of Millennials watch videos on multiple devices, and the same percentage regularly buy stuff online. 62% of Millennials say their ability to engage with a brand is vital to earning customer loyalty. Growth marketing strategy is about creating a customer experience that draws in your target customers. And to attract Millennials, you have to be where they are.
If you’re Gen X or even an early 80’s Millennial (there’s no hard line), you may be surprised how quickly this group switches from one site to the next, one device to another.
They even view multiple devices at once — smart tv, computer, and phone, for example. Millennials lead the way in device ownership with 81% having a desktop computer or laptop, 79% having a smartphone, and 59% a tablet. Only Gen Z beats them in smartphone ownership.
What this means is that a single target customer is likely to have and use multiple devices to engage with you. Just optimizing your website for one device isn’t an option anymore. You need more than a website that adjusts to fit multiple devices. But what does being a multi-device experience really look like?
It Has Simplified Navigation
Be selective. You may not be able to include every category on your mobile site. Think about how Millennials use smartphones. Keep what’s important. Create a more direct mobile path to where you want them to go.
Streamline Checkout
Similar to navigation, checkout should be a no-brainer. Employ analytics to identify any places you’re losing people on mobile. Iron it all out, and make it as easy as possible to spend their money with you.
Encourage Feedback
Millennials want to be heard. Ask for feedback everywhere. Find a marketing mentor that has a background with millennials and can help you engage them in the best ways. Having someone in your corner that can give you feedback is vital to evolving your messaging to engage a younger audience.
Generate Hybrid In-Store-Online Opportunities
Buying in-store and online are no longer two different things. When you see a Millennial on their phone in your physical store, chances are they’re not on Instagram. They’re looking up where a specific aisle is, checking product reviews, and exploring their options. They may be checking to see when something will be in stock or even starting a virtual chat with an associate instead of approaching one.
The more you encourage and integrate this experience into your physical store, the more Millennials will buy.
2. Create a Multi-Platform Experience
This isn’t the same as being on multiple devices. Businesses that invest in omnichannel marketing have 80% higher rate of customer visits, according to Google.
Omnichannel can vary somewhat depending on your target audience. But generally, it will include:
- Multiple social media sites
- Your search-engine-optimized website
- An app (optional)
- Ads, including remarketing and customized suggestions
But why does omnichannel deliver higher customer visits? Millennials spend time around the Internet. But they don’t stay in one place. Having this omnichannel experience allows you to be where a customer is at that moment.
With all that said, omnichannel can certainly sound intimidating. How does any business have the time or money to be in multiple places at once? Growth marketing is all about efficiency, so here is how a business creates this experience with less.
Automation
Those who are building omnichannel experiences are turning the work of one person into 5 with marketing automation. These tools aren’t cheap. But when used to even half of full potential, automation pays for itself.
It helps you engage millennials consistently and continually. And it’s all based on their timing preferences — not when you have a chance to post something. Automation can guide a lead more seamlessly through the customer journey.
Your team gets to focus on creating, monitoring, testing, and other more stimulating activities. Compare that to the usual, where you’re getting bogged down with repetitive tasks that don’t deliver results.
Analytics
How does automation achieve this? Advanced automation tools deploy analytics. They understand where the lead is in the journey and their customer experience. Because of this, the tool can achieve the perfect message at the perfect time. Naturally, they take the next step.
A/B Testing
By A/B testing landing pages, calls to action, and other elements, you can continually improve how you connect with Millennials. But you can also cut waste. Keep on improving how efficiently your plan, create and promote content to do more with less.
Focus on Helpful Content
33% of millennials rate blogs as their top choice for reliable information when making a purchase. This may sound like a small number. But it represents one of the largest single types of media millennials trust. Put your energy into being helpful, not promotional, to win over Millennials.
3. Personalize It
An astounding 85% of Millennials are more likely to buy when you personalize their experience. You already explored above how automation can personalize customers’ experience. It’s time to take a deeper dive into what the actual personalized customer experience looks like.
Give Them Options
Sure, Millennials love visual content. But what they don’t love is when those visuals are eating up their data or impacting the user experience. Provide millennials with options to improve their own user experience.
Avoid the Hard Sell
Boomers accepted it. Gen X tolerated it. But Millennials downright reject it. They leave as soon as you sound like you’re trying to sell something. Instead, personalizing an experience for Millennials means delivering helpful content when they need it.
Align that content message with where they are in the journey. Selling language is a little more tolerable when a person is already ready to buy. It’s also somewhat tolerable if they’re already a customer. Moderation, please.
But hard selling when they’ve just found you online? That’s an immediate swipe left and on to exploring other things.
Make the Research Available
Millennials are not as impulsive as some of the other generations might think. They will read and view a lot of content before making a buying decision. Use analytics to understand what kinds of content and messages work at different stages of the journey. Create that content.
And remember: content is an asset. You can use, edit it, reuse it, repurpose it, and share it across multiple channels. This allows you to give Millennials the personalized experience they want without overextending your resources.
Optimize Growth Marketing for Millennials
To target Millennials, you must be where they are on multiple devices and in multiple places. They’re everywhere and will engage with you in many places. Millennials want and increasingly expect a personalized experience. So shape that experience around helpful research content and customizable experiences.
Image credit: Buro Millennial; Pexels
