Member Article

How to promote your brand to Millennials

Millennials are tired of your marketing messages. Advertisers and marketers spend more on those born between 1984 and 2004 than any other social demographic. Older generations have more buying power, but that doesn’t matter to marketers determined to win the future.

Although Millennials (also known as Generation Y) have only 21% of discretionary buying power, advertisers spend 500% more on them than other age groups, combined.

No wonder they’re turned off by marketing and advertising. It’s worse when brands try and “speak their language.” As one annoyed millennial-aged marketer put it, brands shouldn’t be trying to figure this out “as if organisations today are dealing with a species from outer space.”

Attempting to speak in emojis, for adverts, for example, just looks embarrassing.

There is a better way.

Send a genuine, clear, authentic message

AT&T turned to Tumblr, to promote a clear message that was designed to speak to anyone in a relationship. The copy (in a sponsored post) read, “when you know what you want call me.” Genuine. Simple. Authentic. It earned them high-levels of engagement and a return on their investment, without weakening their brand image.

L’Oréal is another brand that has put the work in to create genuinely engaging online content designed to speak directly to Generation Y. In this case, the aim is to increase their talent pipeline. When they reached 300,000 followers on LinkedIn they asked fans, “Are you IN?”

A landing page took potential candidates to a page where they could pick their “IN” factor (INternational, INnovative, INvolved - were just some of the choices), then share across their networks. Not only did that help create more fans in the process, but it gave L’Oréal thousands of new candidates in the pipeline. They also published 7o videos on YouTube, showing people a wide range of career choices and professions within L’Oréal.

In both cases, the message was genuine and clear. Social media was used the right way, to drive traffic and engage with the audience. There was no tricks, gimmicks or cringeworthy attempts to speak down to millennials. Marketing to this and other younger demographics needn’t be difficult: just think twice before using emojis.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by MBJ London .