Mediaboss Marketing

What changes, not just technological, have most affected the younger generation, profoundly influencing the way they communicate with brands? How has the way younger consumers enjoy content changed? And what forms is the customer experience of Millennials and Gen Z taking? To answer these questions, we will adopt the perspective of generational marketing, an approach that leverages the specifics of individual generations to develop targeted initiatives, create profiled content, and calibrate different business propositions. After briefly describing the key characteristics of Millennials and Gen Z, we will focus on an essential dimension of a marketing strategy: content marketing. Finally, we will take all the ideas discussed and see how the customer experience designed by brands changes as the communication preferences of the new generations change.

According to Wikipedia, a generation identifies a set of people who lived at the same time and were exposed to particular events that influenced them. The term generation denotes a distinct entity as opposed to cohort, which is instead an eminently statistical concept. Unlike the latter, members of a generation are characterized by adherence to the same value system and adoption of a common perspective on the future. Thus, a generation is also defined culturally.

What are the new generations whose communication practices and behaviors we want to investigate? According to marketing there are basically two: Generation Y or Millennials (1981-1996) and Generation Z, Gen Z, or Centennials (1997-2012).

Due to age and demographic issues, both Millennials and Gen Z are now firmly at the center of companies marketing and communication strategies. In both cases, we are talking about people who, although considered young, have financial resources to spend independently and participate fully in the purchasing and consumption system of contemporary society. If we combine the two population groups, we obtain an extremely significant global market share that is characterized by growing spending (for example: in the United States, the per capita spending of Millennials is set to increase by more than 10% by 2025).

This explains companies interest in Millennials and Gen Z. This also explains their increasingly numerous, increasingly tenacious attempts to capitalize on the differences between the different groups and to identify marketing obstacles and opportunities for each generation. This is precisely the basic assumption of generational marketing, which seeks to exploit the specifics of different generations to segment them more accurately, with the goal of building even more centered business propositions. Lets explore this further.

According to Marketing Insider Group, The term generational marketing is coined to segment and target markets based on age rather than other demographics such as gender, location or income.

A generational marketing approach involves first understanding the urgencies, problems, and habits of each generation and then, based on the information gathered about each segment, developing specific content. Not all people within a generation share a single mindset, obviously, but they probably face common challenges or experience similar desires. In this sense, taking on the collective experience of each generation by focusing on common behaviors is a good starting point, to be followed by even more refined segmentation, achieved by introducing additional discriminating demographic elements.

Generational marketing can produce knowledge that is extremely operationally useful: it can extract insights that can be immediately used both to broaden the target audience for the companys messages and to articulate communications by reaching profiled audiences with messages that are best suited to them. As we will see later when we talk about content marketing, this is the point: different generations tend to consume different types of content online and spend their time on different platforms. That is why its important to reach them in the virtual places where they prefer to be found, offering content that is relevant to them.

Now, lets shift the focus to Millennials and Generation Z and discover their key characteristics.

The Millennial generation refers to people born toward the end of the millennium and is the most populous age group in modern history. In general, Millennials were born into a technological world and came of age in the new millennium. They are also old enough to have experienced and understood 9/11. They have witnessed the early developments of digital transformation. Worldwide there are 1.8 billion Millennials, or 23% of the worlds population, and among all generations they are the most educated ever (among other things, for the first time womens education levels exceed mens, at least in the richest countries) and currently among the most influential.

Generation Z, born after Millennials, are now entering adulthood and are just starting their careers (or will be shortly). They are the true digital natives: they have never lived in a world without powerful mobile devices or internet access. Although 50% spend 10 hours a day connected online and 70% watch YouTube for two or more hours a day, Gen Z seems to prefer face-to-face interactions (e.g., in the workplace).

These are some of the main distinguishing traits of Millennials and Gen Z. How do they affect the tactics used by marketers?

From political and social events to cultural movements, from economic trends to technological evolution, to the forms taken by the collective imagination: generational marketing is developed from the investigation of events that have shaped the personal and professional lives of consumers, not taken individually, but grouped by generation. And they use the results of this investigation to set up initiatives that tend toward increasing personalization. If the view of the world varies from generation to generation, so do buying preferences and communication habits. In practical terms, this means that each generation requires different content marketing strategies.

Although the average consumers attention span does not last for more than a few seconds, Millennials show a propensity to learn that does not wane as time passes. That is why the content that is most likely to establish and maintain contact is that which offers insights: long form such as articles and white papers, podcasts and videos.

These are just a few examples of different types of content that can be used to build a relationship with Millennials. Lets take a look at those favored by Generation Z.

Gen Z is online almost constantly. Gen Zers consume most of their content via streaming: for this reason, videos must be of a decidedly limited length. This is the generationraised on smartphones and social mediaon which traditional marketing simply does not work, so much so that the most effective form of marketing is not even directly created by the brand, but by influencers. Building a relationship of trust is, again, crucial.

Of course, there is no single perfect content marketing formula that combines the same mix of formats, tactics, and channels that will be equally effective for all Millennials or all Gen Z.

Identifying common socio-cultural traits that can form the basis for later profiling, however, provides brands with the knowledge they need to build generational customer experiences, approaching the mythical frontier of one-to-one marketing.

If there is one trend we can identify in the way Millennials and Gen Z experience products and services, its the need to incorporate their ethical convictions into everyday consumption, the desire to witness a belonging with their purchasing choices that we might call ideological. Ideal tensions of this kind translate into precise expectations about the expected (indeed, increasingly, demanded) customer journey: about how the service is to be provided, the quality of the product, and the cost of the goods and services offered. To provide them with the best possible customer experience, companies will need to develop their communication system along three main lines.

If 93% of internet users are on social media on a daily basis, it is from here that a company must build a strong online presence. The risk, otherwise, is not so much of not being remembered or recognized than of not being seen at all. Maximizing all social media features becomes crucial to reach a wider audience, respond in a timely manner, increase brand awareness, and strengthen customer relationships.

Companies must use every possible opportunity to interact with the younger generation, offering spaces and tools to establish a true dialog. When Millennials and Gen Z contact the help desk, they expect support that is flexible, dynamically responsive, timely, professional, and receptive to criticism. Reviews and feedback are decisive for a young audience that increasingly demands the assurance of social proof, and these should be integrated immediately into a careful brand social engagement management strategy. Chatbots and machine learning programs are excellent resources: incorporating live chat tools and artificial intelligence applications into messaging channels can simplify the transfer of information and speed up problem-solving processes.

Customer service must adapt to their specific needs, which is why Millennials and Gen Z are also willing to divulge sensitive data to gain access to personalized service. Companies must optimize their customer care platforms to gather information on buying habits and browsing patterns. A personalized customer experience tailored to the needs of the new generations is inevitably data-driven, multichannel, and mobile-first.

In conclusion, the goal we should strive for when we talk about customer experience for the younger generation is to build a smooth and frictionless experience that they can access on each of their target channels.

Millennials and Gen Z, unexpectedly, are resisting labels and proving to be much freer and more aware than they are often portrayed: being able to respond to the changes that will occur in the way they communicate is certainly a challenge but also a great, unfailing opportunity for growth.

Originally posted here:
The new generation: how companies change their communication - Doxee