Building a Marketing Strategy for Millennials
Millennials are an important demographic to consider when laying out your digital marketing strategy. These 21st century young adults are a niche crowd who grew up on social media, and won’t always engage with more traditional marketing tactics. To ensure you’re targeting the millennial market effectively, it’s important to use a well thought out combination of search engine optimization, email and social media marketing.
Inbound marketing
Before you go all in on a digital media strategy, identify what your goals are. If you’re aiming for growth, begin by beefing up your online presence and and the channels that lead to it.
Digital marketing runs contrary to traditional outbound marketing practices, like ads on TV, radio and in print. Digital media strategies are inbound techniques designed to align with the 21st century generation’s attention. Most digital marketing is permission-based and done via social media, subscription emails, blogs, or webinars. This active form of engagement with your brand makes your users more likely to be converted into leads as they’ve already opted-in to receiving your marketing messages.
Digital marketing strategies
Before deciding on the digital media strategy you want to prioritize, have a clear idea about your product, business and demographics. Digital media success depends on the tools and tactics employed to gain customer attention. Topping the list is SEO - Search Engine Optimization.
If you haven’t verified that your website’s host is secure and your website is HTTP, you might want to switch to HTTPS. HTTP is more likely to be tagged as unsafe by Google, which means that you lose substantial ranking on search engines. HTTPS is a more secure connection and will generate better visibility.
To drive traffic to your website, use keywords and links to your website on popular blogs and press releases. Higher traffic gets directed to your website by effectively engaging the audience with content they already like. Millennials who are actively engaging with that content will logically navigate to your website when they come across interesting posts and videos.
Posting blogs to social media is an effective way to redirect traffic to your website. When writing a blog, it’s important to engage your target audience with answers to their questions. Identify the questions millennials may ask and provide content that satisfies them. Embed your content with links to your business platform. Intersperse your content with relevant keywords that navigate to your website.
Consider video marketing. Create a video related to your product or service. For example, a makeup tutorial is a great way to promote your cosmetics brand.
Social media marketing is about catering to a specific audience with content that they want to engage with. Grab the attention of millennials with interesting, humorous, or shocking content that connects emotionally and is easily shareable. Formulate short videos that tell a story or present text in an easily digestible format. On Facebook, you should focus on creating videos that are unique and light-hearted. If on Twitter, keep your posts crisp and concise.
You can also create newsletters for email marketing. By offering content upgrades (a PDF with more content) or a lead magnet (a free course for a limited time), you can tempt users to subscribe to your newsletter. Your subscribed customers will be kept engaged if you provide valuable and genuine content they look forward to interacting with.
Marketing automation
It’s important to incorporate marketing automation into your digital marketing processes across all media channels as many people say it is their favorite way to engage with a brand. A well set up marketing automation workflow will automatically send emails, messages, or posts to your selected audience based on pre-determined behaviors creating an entirely personalized experience for each person. This does a lot of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to everyday customer engagement.
Many marketing automation platforms can help you manage your entire digital marketing strategy in one platform. All marketing tasks - from email notifications to data analysis - can be done using the same interface. This helps you gain an understanding of your customers so you can create your content accordingly. A smooth marketing automation setup will lead your users through the most relevant content at various stages in their life-cycle.
Increasing traffic inflow with branded content
Genuine and authentic brand content with a strong voice is the best way to entice millennials to interact with your business. Your brand voice should have a strong and consistent point of view. Millennials browse media channels primarily for entertainment. In order to get them actively engaged with your product, make sure your content is both relevant and interesting.
Creating a strong marketing funnel to guide a customer’s journey from being a passing visitor to a reliable lead is a great way to incorporate your branded content. Facilitate a user’s movement within the funnel by incorporating lead magnets, offers, and calls to action (CTAs). CTAs prompt customers to take action, like subscribing to a newsletter, participating in a webinar or viewing a demo. Your CTAs should be in line with your brand’s voice and move to create awareness, arouse interest, and prompt action in potential customers.
Influencer marketing tips
Influencer marketing utilizes social media celebrities and bloggers to promote your product on social media. You can cast a wide net and choose an influencer with a broad following, or opt for a micro-influencer who caters to more specific interests and a smaller audience depending on what your campaign goals are. Millennials are more likely to trust the claims of a brand when they are echoed by an influencer who mirrors their values and interests.
A vital influencer marketing tip is defining the target audience. Once you have gathered data about the target audience such as age, interests, location, and so on, you can identify the right influencer to appeal to them.
Do a thorough investigation of your chosen influencer before campaigning. Examine their social media profiles, list of followers, and post responses to decide their credibility.
Compelling content is essential for digital media success with millennials. Remember to keep a strong and clear brand voice in all of your digital marketing. The more creative and original you can be with your content, the more likely millennials will want to engage with it.