❯❯ The group is lazy and entitled: Millennials are quite the opposite of lazy. In fact, many Millennials work more than one job to pay bills and debts. What marketers miss is that on-demand services provide access and convenience, not laziness or self-entitlement. Millennials don’t want to interrupt their work to run errands; they can have things like food delivered to them. This change signals a shift in consumer norms rather than providing evidence of a negative trait.
❯❯ Millennials are antisocial and self-absorbed. Self-absorption is actually a byproduct of shifting communications practices. Millennials receive a constant stream of personalized messages. Marketers know that personalized messages are more likely to catch a Millennial’s attention, so they become the norm. Therefore, Millennials aren’t so much self-absorbed as they’re used to responding to messages that specifically cater to their needs.
When you apply certain false assumptions to the strategy behind a campaign, the results can be underwhelming. To avoid getting disappointing results, don’t make these common marketing mistakes:
❯❯ Providing generalized, umbrella content with no specific target audience: You need to analyze your audience segments and develop tailored, personalized content to deliver to specific targeted groups. Sending generic content without the customization that Millennials look for leads to failed campaigns.
❯❯ Targeting Millennials by age and age alone: Millennials are more than an age range; they’re the new generation of consumers. When you think about Millennials as a mindset as opposed to a group of consumers restricted by an age range, you expand your potential audience and position yourself for long-term success.
❯❯ Duplicating content across all media: All consumers varies their use of media, so you can’t apply the same strategy to each of them and hope to be successful. You need to understand your audience on each of the platforms you frequent (see Chapters 6, 7, and 8). Then you can develop effective strategies for each audience and media type.
❯❯ Making assumptions without analyzing data to back it up: Data needs to be at the core of everything you do. So much of it is readily available to fuel your success, so make sure that you use it. (For more about the analysis and applications of data, see Chapter 4.)
The mistakes listed in the previous section are common for one reason: They generally come from the same four roots. These roots are
❯❯ Inattention to data: Data needs to be the driving force behind your decisions. If you’re developing strategies that don’t rely on data, you’ll likely be disappointed with the results. You have no reason to rely on gut instinct. Data insights are simply too accessible.
❯❯ Broad generalizations applied to your audience: With so much information about Millennials, it doesn’t make sense to run on assumptions alone. Take some time to analyze and get to know your audience so that you can develop content and campaigns that really resonate with them.
❯❯ A lack of testing: Everything you do should be tested. One of the greatest powers of new media is the ability to test, analyze, optimize, and implement all in a matter of hours. The ability to react in real-time is powerful and should not be ignored.
❯❯ Refusing to adapt to changing audiences: The audience you’ve cultivated and analyzed for today’s campaign may not be the same audience you’ll find when you’re ready to run your next initiative. Auditing and analyzing your audience can be a tedious process, but it’s an important one if you want to maintain relationships and find long-term success. (Running an audit on your audience and strategies is covered in Chapter 11.)
The Millennial Mindset
If you think about your Millennial audience without the constraints of age, you begin to understand that in some ways the term Millennial is becoming synonymous with consumer. The traits exhibited by Millennials, the largest and most influential demographic of consumers in the United States, are traits that marketers can apply to individuals across a multitude of demographics. Understanding and adapting to a new age of consumer habits and traits will set you up for long-term success.
If you look beyond the scope of age, how would you define Millennial consumers? Giving them a singular definition would be dangerous because it significantly limits the audience. You need two definitions when discussing Millennials so that you can properly analyze them:
❯❯ Age: The first definition of Millennial consumers has to do with age range. Use this definition when discussing data about the consumers. Demographers, sociologists, social anthropologists, and marketers use age to conduct studies and collect data. (Most hard data collected applies age restrictions to this group.)
❯❯ Interests and behaviors: The second definition for the Millennial consumer is much more broad. Instead of focusing on age range data, you need to turn your attention to interests and behaviors. In these audience segments, the definition of Millennial extends far beyond age restrictions. Here, you look at like-minded consumers that fit a series of behavioral criteria. You can broadly define this category of Millennials as being tech-savvy, price-sensitive consumers who place their trust in peers and experts over brands. They digest information at a rapid rate and look for tailored, personalized brand experiences. Brand familiarity is less important to these consumers than relationships. When they form these relationships, they’re fiercely loyal.
When compared to a generation ago, you can have a presence on an endless array of media. Ideally, having such a vast presence also means you have a strategy and a budget. To maximize your budget, you need to find and target the specific platforms your audience uses. Here are some points to keep in mind, when you begin to identify your audience’s preferred media:
❯❯ Start with Facebook. The majority of online Millennials say they are active on Facebook. This means that you’re almost certain to find some of your Millennial audience on Facebook. Despite what marketers and news outlets have said, Facebook is far from being irrelevant to Millennials. In fact, Facebook and its products have become so commonplace that Millennials don’t even realize how inextricably linked to it they are. Facebook is a great place to begin the process of analyzing your audience.
❯❯ Match email lists before building strategies. Before you begin building a strategy for a particular channel, you should either run an email match audience analysis or extract data using an ad platform. This step will help you determine whether a channel is worth investing in for the purpose of acquiring and retaining Millennial consumers.