How Millennials Influence Marketing
Within our ever-changing society, we need to be at the top of our game with our marketing techniques. Millennials as a generation experiment with new technologies and products more than any other, meaning it is important to keep up with these trends to be able to market to them effectively.
According to millennial marketing.com, the influence that Millenials have on brands is phenomenal and is particularly apparent in the fashion industry. They exert great influence over the way brands portray themselves and their messaging, forcing them to move further away from more established tactics and finding new ways to engage.
As mentioned before, brands are moving away from more traditional tools of engagement such as celebrity endorsements which are becoming less popular with brands of an older audience. The millennials generation is using less and less celebrity endorsement due to the fact that this is not as effective amongst this age range. People of this age range are more effectively targeted by what the product can offer rather than who is promoting it. According to kissmetrics 89% of millennials trust recommendations from friends and family more than claims by the brand.
This is supported by a claim from hubspot which suggests that millennials are 44% more likely to trust experts who they don’t know also known as brand evangelists (opinion leaders) and 247% more likely to be influenced by blogs or social networks rather than adverts.
A point of action that brands should use is offering incentives to its customers such a voucher e.g. for a friend or a future purchase. This is due to the fact that they are not shy about sharing their experiences with friends of the products they have bought. If an incentive is involved it is likely to give them more of a reason to mention to a friend and increase the word of mouth of a product. The banking industry often uses monetary incentives to customers to encourage switching accounts.
Millennials like to be part of the brand experience and conversation surrounding the products they buy, at least according to Hootsuite. For this reason, it is important to engage with this generation of customers through the social media channels that conversations take place on.
This is important for brands as this generation don’t like brands to claim about their product and would rather hear claims from their peers and be part of the social circle by buying that product. A way in which companies can do this is by having reviews on their site, by doing this it will avoid customers looking elsewhere and leaving your site. By doing this it will also help to show that the claims the brand make are true to the customer’s usage.
Due to the fact that this generation is directly experiencing seismic changes in technology and are typically early adopters of these, it is important for brands to be innovative with their advertising to grab the attention and use their time effectively through these channels and devices.
