“Building Community for Leaders”

What You Must Know About Marketing to and Engaging with Millenials

Guest Millenials: Karissa Bodnar, Marketing, Julep; Carol Ann Andrufski, Marketing, Washington Energy; Scott Nellesen, SPU, . Jacob Olsby, SPU

From a marketing perspective, Millennials are much less accepting of traditional marketing methods than  their baby boomer parents, thus presenting a challenge to us as marketers. Technology has importantly shaped this new generation of new consumers. They are rapid fire multi-tasking, technologically savvy, entrepreneurial and it is exceedingly difficult to get their attention. They are the most highly educated generation of our lifetime, and it is expected that by 2015 Millennials annual spending will amount to approximately $2.45 trillion and eclipsing baby boomers by 2018 in terms of spending power. This all raises important questions around how this generation operates within our respective markets and how they respond to traditional marketing, how we can turn our social media presence into two-way conversations, engage with them in meaningful ways and make sure we are not being guided in our strategies by mistaken stereotypes.

This session will have three segments. We will start out by discussing amongst ourselves how important we think this generation is for us from a marketing perspective, what we think we know about them and how we have already adapted, or plan to adapt, our marketing strategies to be more effective with them? This segment will be followed by a panel discussion with three savvy Millenials across the demographic, including singles and young married. We will have an opportunity to engage around a myriad of questions such as:

1. What are some of the misconceptions we (baby boomers and other generations) have about Millenials?
2. How would you describe your generation? What are you thinking about? What is important to you?  For example, speed, individuality, freebies, not being sold to, trust, being authentic?
3.  How do you shop and make purchasing decisions, evaluate options to make a major purchase? What role does word of mouth have? Traditional marketing/advertising?
4.  Where do we find you? What is your space? Where do you live digitally?
5. How are you responding to/circumventing traditional marketing? What would be more effective ways for us to engage with and market our products and services to you? What role does images, info graphics, games, videos play for you? How much do you influence purchasing decisions your mom and dad make? And how much do you get advice from them when you make purchasing decisions?
6. How can we make our web sites more effective? What does a good web site look like to you?
7. How do we get you to care about our brand?
8. How important is company reputation for you, for example environment and doing the right thing?
9. How can we get  engaged with you in qualitative research?
10. How would having a Millenials as your prospect or client change your approach to marketing or sales?  That would be one  but I’ll bet they can come up with more
11. What are your thoughts on mobile marketing?
12. Are you open to companies contacting you via text message, push message, etc. on your mobile device?
13. How often do you make purchases using your mobile device?

Lastly, we will an opportunity to debrief amongst ourselves. What did we learn? What surprised us? What is our greatest challenge in marketing to Millennials?
Greatest opportunities? Low-hanging fruit? How can we translate some of our insights into actionable items at our companies right now, for example?

• Adapt our traditional marketing strategies?
• Revise our web sites?
• Change our social media strategy?
• Modify our qualitative research tactics to engage better?
• Do a better job of engaging with, integrating and leveraging the skills of Millennials in our workplaces?

Finally, if you express interest to me (e-mail will do), our group of guest Millennials will take a look at your web site and other aspects of yoru marketing strategy and share what lands, what doesn’t land as well with them. Oppportunity for feedback!!

Check out my MarketingYak Magazine for some trending articles on this topic.