Marketing to Millennials

Investopedia defines marketing as “the activities of the company associated with buying and selling of a product or service” and then there are thousand other ways of defining the term. So even I decided to develop my own definition of marketing, I define it as “a science of transforming ideas into a product or a service and art of pricing, distributing and promoting product”.

Each generation of consumer has their Generational characteristics and these characteristics have substantial effect on market. Millennials is the termed coined to refer to the generation which will form half of the consumer base of the world over next ten years. Generally generation of people born between early 1980 to early 2000 are referred as ‘Millennials’, also known as ‘Gen Y’. According to research conducted by Boston Consulting Group, Millennials engage with brands far more extensively than the any previous generation. Technology and social media allows this generation to interact with brands and each other in entirely different way than that of ‘Boomer’ and ‘Gen-Xers’.

Millennials are expected to have direct annual spending capacity of around $1.3 trillion, which suggest brands must focus on them. They are highly engaged in digital world and social media, hence can influence purchasing decisions of others. This makes it must for marketers to develop millennial-focused marketing strategy. Like other generations, Millennials too have unique generational characteristics which can be utilized to target them more effectively.

Me being millennial myself, here is my advice for effective marketing to Millennials:

Effective use of social media

Millennials are considered as social media addict and digital generation. They have embraced the concept of liking and sharing. Hence social media platform is considered as safe bet to market your product in today’s scenario. But more insightful research on Millennials social media behavior suggests that they tend to ignore ads that they encounter while using social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. According to one of the research conducted by SocialChorus, an American media agency, only 6% people trust the online ads that they encounter on social media platform. Then the questions arises how to utilize this platform for marketers advantage. Unfortunately many of the brands around the world are still struggling to utilize this platform for effective and efficient marketing.

While using social media platform for marketing one must keep in mind that this generation desires privacy and they do like to share their experiences. Marketer must not do anything which will interfere with consumer’s privacy at the same time must utilize their habit of sharing by giving them the best possible experience with your products and services so that they would share their stories about the product with the world. A post about your company’s product or service can inspire user’s friends to give a try to your product or services. This is really important aspect of marketing these days as there is no better marketing than word of mouth.

Engage your customers

Having their own Facebook pages, Twitter accounts is must for brands these days. Also it is necessary that companies have market specific social media platform pages to target specific market at specific time. These accounts plays important role in engaging consumers. Successful brands don’t just focus on bottom lines but they intend to build relationship with their consumers and social media platform helps them build relationship effortlessly.

Millennials wants to have their say right from product development stage, till how it is delivered to them and how they want to get serviced. This is the unique trait which is been seen in the Millennials around the world. If you engage them in the product development stage this will generate affection towards your product and help you get that extra attention and free publicity. The successful brands are those who listen to their consumers hence listening to your consumer right from the development stage will surely give companies an edge over the competitors.   

Reviews, feed-backs and prompt action on issues

Millennials trust personal recommendation more over any exciting advertisement or great marketing campaign. They tend to believe more in review written on social media sites or e-commerce sites where purchase is made. This provides great opportunity for companies to utilize this trait of millennial by encouraging customers to share product purchase and product reviews on social media. Make sure you address their queries promptly or they will use same platform to scrutinize you and it may damage brand image.

In today’s scenario brands must seek inputs from the customers and as it makes them feel valued. Companies must provide platform to customers to share their product purchase and reviews, integrate such platforms with social media to make the process of receiving feed-backs and reviews user friendly and effortless. The brand which manages to engage with customers frequently, can transform them into effective brand ambassadors.

Be a brand Millennials love to associate with

Research has shown that Millennials are typically socially conscious generation and they are philanthropic in nature. Basically they love and appreciate the idea of giving back to society and seek to associate with people or brands that shares the same views or values. They care for environment and social issues and look for opportunities to involve in such activities. So if brands is involved in social activities and projecting similar image, then there is a good chance that Millennials will love to engage with your brand and support it. This activity is going to affect the bottom line of the company in long term.

Be Transparent

Trust is the key for any successful relationship, same principle applies to business and customer relationship. Millennials are not just expecting you to deliver them what they want but they expect transparency in the entire product life-cycle. Company trying to be secretive about their activities would find it difficult to gain trust of Millennials. Companies must engage them on social media and share companies news, company values with the customers. This create good brand image and sense of trust among the customers towards the organization. So to gain their confidence companies must engage with them on directly.

Viral marketing content

Create viral and intriguing content that consumer can relate to and utilize that social sharing urge of Millennials to spread it. This is the most cost effective way of marketing. This generates curiosity about your brand among masses.

Be creative

Millennials are being judged on their creativity so they will judge the others on the same line. Companies need to be more creative to be relevant in the market. Creativity is something which each generation is expecting from the brands, but Millennials needs creativity on regular basis, even if innovations are frugal that’s fine but has to be there or within short span of time, your brand may become irrelevant. It is basically “be innovative or be ignored”.

Hence to thrive and grow as the next generation of consumers comes of age, marketers must harness social media, create and project a positive brand image and catch their attention. Marketers must make efforts to turn next generation of consumers into their brand ambassadors.

Customer Service – a tool to build a sustainable brand

Jeff Bezos referred to as ‘The Everything Man’ of Amazon has famously said that” your brand is what other people say about you when you are not in a room”. This is the most lucid way to define “Brand”. Markets today are extremely competitive, customers have thousands of offering in same product category, and it is hard to differentiate a product among several others. Then how customers decide on, what to choose among hundreds of products, how to reduce the problem of plenty, that is where concept of “Brand” comes into the picture. Brand helps companies to stand out among competitors.

There is a misconception that branding or stigmatization is result of extensive and excellent marketing, but it isn’t. Marketing is one facet which helps you create a brand but to build an aura around your brand and to sustain it all that is required is a good quality product. The real brand has its heart and soul in quality product if you spend too much on marketing of a not so up to the mark product it won’t yield you desired result. Hence a right product, at right price at right place is necessary for creation of a brand.

Consumer behavior has modified dramatically over past pair of decades, Consumers have become more demanding & exacting and are making well researched buying decisions. To adapt to present modifications in market, corporations must spend strategically on advertisement of the product and concentrate more on product itself. In today’s scenario creating a great product can help you minimize your advertisement cost. This is the era of social media, where ‘word of mouth’ is best way to market your product. Customers don’t simply expect nice product from corporations however they expect nice pre-sales and post sales service from the businesses. It’s not just a great product but all these factors like how you service your customers, how you value them, creates a protracted brand image. Customer service has always been integral part of brand building.

Over last one decade this generation has experienced a wave of digitization. Social media has become integral part of life of current generation. Research has shown that this generation has a unique trait of sharing most of their life events on social media and this trait presents a great opportunity to marketers. Rise of Social media has been instrumental in providing platform for everyone to be a broadcaster. Everyone today has internet connection, mobile and social media account. A person can broadcast any event that he or she is experiencing in flick of a second, and it can be viewed by all of his social media followers, posted- reposted on other social platforms and may go viral. This is why quality product and excellent customer service holds the key for success in current market.

While writing about this article, I just happen to google about the greatest of customer service examples or how customer service can affect the image of the brand and there I found one very fascinating story about “Morton’s- The Steak House”. This story is about the amazing experience of an American author/ blogger Peter Shankman, which he posted on his official website shankman.com. As a regular day in his life, Mr. Peter Shankman has had terribly busy day, he was scheduled to travel during dinner time and was feeling damn hungry so while plane was about to take off, he jokingly twitted “Hey @Morton’s can you meet me airport with porterhouse when I land in two hours? K, thanks. J”. But to his surprise when he landed at Newark airport, a man from Morton’s dressed in tuxedos was awaiting Mr. Shankman with porterhouse that Mr. Shankman had just wished for. This was so thrilling experience for the Peter, that he went on to share his experience on his official website and end up receiving thousands of replies on his twitter. Mr. Shankman was Morton’s fairly regular customer, and he had more than 10K followers on twitter. May be Morton’s did it deliberately knowing about the influence that Mr. Shankman had on social media or maybe they just did it because they care for their customers whatever may be the reason, but at the end of the day Morton’s managed to gain on life time customer and more importantly an influential brand ambassador. When Mr. Shankman shared his story with the world, in the comment section of the same post there were many others who shared their experiences regarding Morton’s. One can imagine what kind of efforts Morton’s might have put forward to cater to the need of their customer, it definitely involves great efforts of Morton’s alert & energetic social media team and complex logistics.

Now after reading this, if you happen to visit United States of America, there are good chances that out of curiosity you might love to check out Morton’s steak house. This is what a great customer service can do for a brand. Morton’s twitter activeness and customer service went viral and generated large amount of name substance. Morton’s is a great example how social media or viral content can build up a brand in short time. However same social media tools can knock down any brand in even shorter time. Social media combined with ‘experience sharing’ traits of this generation can act as a double edge sword for any brand.

The very successful businesses acquire customers ‘organically’ without much advertising. In this digital era, Quality product and word of mouth drives the sales at all the best businesses around the world. Businesses concentrating more on advertising are losing the edge these days. Customer service has become essential part of all the businesses around the world and it must be treated as core competence in every business. It is cumbersome and costly affair to acquire new customer but relatively easy to maintain existing customer and in the process of retaining the existing customer if you manage to satisfy them efficiently there are bright chances that, existing customer might refer your brand to someone and bring in new customers to you. Actually good customer service is an art of making your customer feel valued and who on earth don’t love being valued. So it is always advisable to have outstanding customer service to stay in the competition as it simply makes transition from good company to a great one a lot smoother.