It can be challenging for some marketers to reach out to millennials, leading to mixed messages in advertising.
Fortunately, there’s a right way, as detailed at a recent eMarketer Attention! event.
Speaking on the panel, Kathryn Minshew, founder of TheMuse (a career resource company), noted, “Millennials don’t follow the rules of marketing.” She then went into further detail talking about how the site effectively reached out to these audience, using unique methods for job marketing to younger people. This includes requirements such as job advertisers having professional photo and video taken at their offices, so that job seekers could see what kind of work atmosphere they have.
Hilary DuPont, social strategist for Chobani Greek Yogurt, suggested creating real-world experiences that would appeal to them. Instagram is a key way of doing this, but it helps to find an experience that’s tangible to them, before they go about sharing them.
Fatherly (a website for parents) co-founder Simon Isaacs added that a lot of millennials are entering a key market: parenthood. With that, marketers need to shift their efforts, going from first catering to the mothers to shifting towards how household chores and activities are being shared with younger kin.
The report also pointed out how many millennials tend to use ad-blockers, indicating that a change is necessary for advertising to be more effective with them. 63 percent of those polled stated that they use some form of ad-blocking, while 33 percent don’t. That’s a contrast difference, indicating there’s still a hefty audience to reach out to.
eMarketer also broke down Instagram user penetration by age group over the next few years. Older audiences didn’t fare as well as the 25-34 market, which sat at 48.1 percent in 2014, and could grow as high as 66.4 percent by 2019. However, the 12-17 age audience shows the biggest numbers, going from 87.4 percent this past year, and set to rise to 91.7 percent in just a few years’ time.
It’s a key time for marketers to find a program that fits millennials’ needs, without pandering to them to the point of turn-off.