Marketing to Millennials: 3 Goals to Make

The high speed activity of digital marketing is a sign of the times. The Generation X era was personified by slacker indifference, grunge bands droning into mics. Today’s Millennials are a livelier crew, more dynamic and in closer communication with their peers than any other time in our history. We live just as much in the online world as we do IRL, and a major part of our lives now is sharing content from the internet with each other.

It’s imperative then, whatever business and industry you’re in, you have to develop your company’s presence online. Go where the millennials are. If not, you risk missing out on a major growing population of buyers.

Why Businesses Struggle OnlineThe reason companies fail in digital marketing 99% of the time is they never bother to clarify their actual goals. Your website, your major landing pages, the way you go about your business on social media, all these plans need to coordinate. Companies that have not written down their approach may have a general sense of what they want to do online and what their tactics are, but are unlikely to have properly defined some of the essential elements. Here are some 3 important goals for your SEO campaign that you must clearly define to stay ahead of the times.

Goal #1 - Impeccable Site DesignWhen it comes to graphics and images on your site, bigger is better. You want your visuals to pop out at your audience, no one wants to strain to see anything, it’s best not to test patience when it comes to user experience. Cinematic and artistic images go over best, you want your site to look clean and well-produced, not sloppy and mismanaged. Anybody can put together a website, but if it looks like a lot of thought, effort and creativity went into the design, people will notice and appreciate it more.

Some websites have a feature where you click a link and it brings you to a different part of the page. Scrolling is a better option for a visitor's usability because instead of clicking from one page to another to get all of the information, you have it all on one page. The content should be displayed in an order that makes sense for the visitor. Another advantage of click-scrolling is if someone is looking for information they saw previously on you site, there’s no need for multiple pages to load to get the content you are looking for, so it’s much easier to find again.

As with any website you want to make sure you have all the important optimization tactics in place; headers, title tags, Meta description, be sure they are done in a way that will make it easier for Google to crawl your site.

Goal #2 - Write Engaging ContentNow that your site looks good, your next goal should be to smarten it up with intelligent, original, topical content. Despite what you may think, writing content for millennials shouldn’t have an ‘all about me’

perspective. Sure they may take selfies like they’re going out of style (which they actually may someday), but today the most important question facing a reader is ‘Does this deserve to be shared?’ Your content should make them at least think about the question. Content that is worth sharing has a newsworthy quality to it, so don’t be afraid to make it somewhat controversial or to go against the conventional conversation. The challenge is standing out amidst the flurry of pieces of content each person goes through a day.

The reason why millennials are such great targets when it comes to content marketing is because their generation is reading more than any other previously. They’re just doing it mostly online and with different reading habits than other times. They are generally reading for information, so they read with purpose and are very good ‘scanners. So get to the point, get in and get out, don’t waste time trying to be flowery with your words.

Goal #3 - Be the Life of the Social Media PartyEngaging on social media is your chance to show off your identity and personality. Like every other generation millennials want to be cool and follow cool people. So – be cool guy. Comment and update in a lively way, always be positive, generous and outgoing. Have contests and encourage user contributors to draw more people to your profile pages. When it comes to millennials, they want to be more involved with how products get created. Companies that enable them to be part of the product development process will be more successful.

A recent study found millennials say they’re willing to trade personal information or data for relevant ads/content but only with trusted or known brands. Social media is by far the dominant way the respondents learned about things online. Search engines are ranked near the top but fall below Facebook and Twitter for content discovery.

Another study found that 77 percent of college students use Snapchat on a daily basis. Those users were also much more willing to interact with brands that were using the advertising capabilities of the app. Nearly half of the college age Snapchatters said they would open a Snap from a brand they’d never heard of, and 73 percent said they would open one from a known brand. 70 percent said they’d add a brand as a friend if they also followed them on a separate social network, such as Facebook or Twitter. This is a good example of finding a hot new trend and tapping into its potential.

Millennials are poised to take over as a dominant economic influence in our culture in the near future. The more you learn about this demographic the more targeted you can make all aspects of your marketing plan, from keyword research to analytics that define the goals you decide to put in place. Don’t put it off any longer, make it a goal today to discuss a strategy that puts your company in a position to evolve and grow with the changing times.