Tips for Marketing to Millennials

Depending on your intended audience and product, you may want to target millennial customers. Do you find yourself baffled by where to start reaching out to younger consumers? Learn the finer points of the marketing art so you don't waste time, and so you improve your chances of experiencing favorable results. 

Make Your Content Social 

Millennials embrace new technology that allows them to connect with other people. From a marketing standpoint, that means you want to make your content quick and easy to share on multiple social media platforms. Not only is this how you appeal to younger consumers, but it's also a great way to let your target consumers handle marketing and advertising for you. This helps you save money and time. 

Concentrate on Word of Mouth 

While true of consumers of all ages, millennials are especially apt to let people know just how much they enjoy (or dislike) a specific product. To make it easier for millennials to sing praises of your product or service, offer a free trial. Such offers make it easy for shoppers to give your brand a try, as there's one less hurdle for them to clear. Marketing professionals like Eyal Gutentag would surely recommend that you encourage those who take you up on your trial offer to share their thoughts with their friends and family if they enjoyed your service or product. 

Offer Rapid Responses 

The world has never been so connected, and communication has never been so instantaneous. From a business standpoint, that means your shoppers and potential customers want a quick answer to their inquiries, especially younger consumers. Set up your customer service so that shoppers always receive a quick and thorough response to their question, no matter if it's early in the morning or late at night. Take too long to respond and you may send a potential long-time customer into the arms of your competitors. 

Know Their Values 

When you want to either market to or manage millennial's, you've got to appeal to their values. That means learning which causes millennials care most about and see how your company can support those causes. This could mean supporting a charity, a specific organization, or just doing what you can to support your local community. Even if you aren't targeting younger consumers, supporting charities is good for your company's public profile. 

Remain Transparent 

Millennials shop with a fair degree of skepticism, and who can blame them? No consumer wants to feel taken advantage of or become a victim. That means you need to operate with complete transparency about how you do business, what ingredients or components you use in your product or service, and how you use customer information. Remember, it's easy for modern shoppers to do a bit of research on their own to see whether companies are as reputable and honest as they claim to be. Make it easy for younger consumers to understand where you're coming from. 

Once you gain the attention of Millennial shoppers, take steps to keep it. Once you have their loyalty, it could be easier than you think to keep them coming back to your company again and again.

Optimizing Your Social Media with Promo Models

By: Tori Lutz

Learning the ins and outs of social media marketing is an unavoidable part of running a modern brand. With nearly half of the global population using social networks every month, the social media user base has become one of the most lucrative and researchable demographics the business world has ever seen.

Given the over-saturation of brands on social platforms, vying for user attention at every turn, how is a digitally adept business supposed to stand out and be heard? In this article, we’ll talk about an often-overlooked facet of social marketing: promotional models.

Promo Models: What and Why

 You may know promotional talent primarily from smiling and waving at the crowd from floats, or trade show models greeting attendees and getting them to view a particular booth. However, promo models can be the perfect fit for social media, due to several reasons.

First, social media is, as the name implies, primarily social. Its function is to connect people to other people. While there are many design and photography enthusiasts on Instagram, a majority of the site’s usage is seeing what other people in your network are doing, wearing, or thinking. This is why Instagram posts get 30% greater engagement when they include faces. 

Second, humans rely most heavily on sight, which makes the visual appeal of promo models in a visual medium such as Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest well suited to the task. So how do you best use promotional talent in your social media strategy? 

Single Posts and Ad Campaigns

The most common and direct way to integrate promo models on social media is via a photo or video shoot that can be used for posts and ad campaigns.

 Since your brand’s social media presence falls into two main categories: advertisements and your page itself, it makes sense to include promo models in both. The next time you consider posting about a product or service or creating an advertisement, make sure it contains a relatable human element in the form of promotional talent.

The most impactful way to go about this is fortunately also the most cost-effective method. Hire your promo models for a day or two of shoots, and acquire a bunch of content that you can tailor to various campaigns, audiences, and messages. 

Then, spread out that media over the course of a long ad campaign or regular, weekly posts on your page. This both saves you money by only needing to hire technicians, camera crew, venues, and promo talent for one or two days, but also works better as a marketing strategy. Users recognize patterns and enjoy consistency, so a longer campaign featuring the same promo models will draw more attention than sporadic, unrelated banner ads.

 Influencers

 Influencers are a category of promo models that already have a large social media fanbase. These social media giants will cost you much more to hire than a traditional promo model would, but the payoff can also be much more rewarding.

Influencer marketing relies on the celebrity endorsement principle in which a recommendation or endorsement by a respected or admired individual causes people to trust and use that brand more frequently.

Sure, influencers may not be as globally famous as real celebrities, but they often enjoy closer relationships with their followers than famous athletes or actors would. This means that, if you can afford it, a post by an influencer supporting your product can lead to a massive increase in both exposure and sales. 

Brand Ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are the little sibling to influencers. Brand ambassador marketing is somewhat more of a two-way street; both the brand ambassador and the company itself benefit more, making this a much more affordable option for most companies.

Ambassador programs typically involve the supplying of products or services to the ambassador in exchange for them handing out samples, being active on social media about the company, and being vocal to their own personal networks. This is an excellent way to reach people in the non-digital world, who may otherwise never find your brand.

Promo models make great brand ambassadors as well, given their innate charm and dynamism. Most agencies that hire out traditional promo models are also good for brand ambassador hiring, as they tend to have a large database of qualified individuals and their requisite social media stats.

In Summary 

While social media savviness is an inescapable aspect of the modern marketing landscape, it doesn’t have to be boring or impersonal. In fact, adding some excitement and a charismatic human element to your social media presence is a surefire way to get more engagement. 

Promo models can fit into your brand’s social media in a multitude of ways. A single hefty photoshoot with promotional talent can go a long way, providing engaging and more relatable content for a long-term ad campaign or simply for page posts. Influencers can make a huge impact in increasing brand following, and brand ambassadorships are a cost-effective way to reach more people both on and off social media. 

We hope this gave you something new and useful to apply to your social media strategy. For more insightful and unique ways to optimize your marketing, check out the other articles on our blog.

TOP FOUR MARKETING SKILLS ALL ENTREPRENEURS MUST HAVE TO COMPETE

When it comes to being a successful brand or business today, it's critical you have basic online marketing skills. But with so many tools and platforms available, how do you know what skills will be most helpful? Here are the four top skills you should have to make your business a success.

1). Facebook Advertising - Having a branded Facebook.com page is no longer enough. If you'd like to generate interest, traffic, and even sales to your website, you should know how to create an ad, refine your target audience, and how to run split tests to determine which ad generates the best response.

As someone who uses Facebook.com advertising regularly for my own businesses as well as my clients' businesses, I can tell which ad/offer will perform the best after about 200 clicks (or $150.00 ad spend). This is a great marketing tactic for brands that are on a low budget.

2). Social Media Marketing - If you don't understand social media marketing and don't have a strategy in place for your brand or business, then it's going to be difficult for you to build your name. Instagram.com, Pinterest.com, and Facebook.com accounts are must-haves for any visual business. Not only are they free to join, they're great ways to connect with prospective and existing customers, approach influencers, and increase search engine visibility.

3). Email Marketing - Although many marketing experts say email marketing is "dead", it's not. This strategy is an effective and low-cost way to generate additional revenue.

Running new promotions or product announcements is also a great way to stay in touch with your customers. You might also want to consider adding a "top tips" or editorial-like section to your emails. Check out the BobbiBrownCosmetics.com and Gilt.com email newsletters for ideas. Also, make sure your emails are optimized for smartphone and tablets.

4). Video - Video marketing has become a huge part of the digital space today. Brands such as Gucci.com and Chanel.com have mastered video marketing and you should too.

However, if you're a startup, then your brand most likely doesn't have the resources to allocate to commercial video production. Luckily, Instagram.com Stories, SnapChat.com and Periscope.com allow you to create real videos from your smartphone. These platforms are perfect for behind-the-scenes runway shows and photo shoots.