Marketing to Generation Y and Generation X

Marketing is the activity and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers and clients. (Definition of Marketing).

Traditional marketing has broadly relied upon these channels:

• Word-of-mouth
• Fliers, brochures and other printed support materials
• Print ads in newspapers, magazines and trade publications
• Radio and Television commercials
• Billboards
• And much more

However, undercutting all the traditional marketing channels that might potentially carry a message, would be the words of the actual message itself.

• What concepts would inspire a recipient of such a message to seek out more information?

• More specifically, what message would move a person to make a purchase?

By virtue of the myriad experiences that each and every individual already possesses, it could appear to be a complex process to understand the needs and desires of so many unique persons.

As an example, would an individual fresh out of college respond to the same message about purchasing a health book as a middle-aged parent who is seeking to improve their physical fitness?

Heck, do the terms “health” and “physical fitness” even mean the same thing to disparate age groups?

MARKETING MESSAGES

Although crafting messages that generate purposeful response can be complex, the art and science of marketing is founded upon a rudimentary concept of seeking to understand similar characteristics of smaller groups, which can then be analyzed to ascertain similar buying behaviors and characteristics. Such segmentation can be by age, gender, geography, interests, and by many other criteria.

Understanding what messages are the most effective at generating interest in any product or service are gained through market research, including surveys and market testing. A common form of market testing is the process of comparing different marketing messages and advertisements, side-by-side, to analyze which generates the best response. Such results are then used to further refine a message to maximize the response of the presentation.

As an example, let’s suppose you happened to be interested in increasing your personal fitness level and you observed two separate advertisements in your local newspaper, which said:

• “Get healthier and feel better now, call 123-456-7890”

• “Increase your personal health and fitness by calling 123-456-0987”

Which might pique your interest the most?

The answer won’t be the same for every person, but one of those messages may be more effective for a majority of individuals at driving responses.

“Health” products and services are potentially appealing to a large swath of individuals in modern societies. Since that’s a pretty broad category of buyers to understand, more useful insights can be gained by looking at similarities associated with a marketing subgroup, characterized by age.

Advertising to different age groups is more sophisticated than simply having young actors in a TV commercial drinking a certain brand’s health drink to promote that product to that group, and/or depicting a mature couple on a beach sipping the same health drink to appeal to older consumers. (Even though effective use of imagery to demonstrate different age groups would be a minimal requisite).

GENERATIONAL CATEGORIES

Marketing as an art and science to generate more potential customers is akin to the way you and I and everyone else in our world relates to each other: we find it easier to understand and trust others that already have similar ideas and views. Understanding the ideas and views of different age groups simply makes it easier to present products and services to subsegments of society in a way that is more likely to be appealing.

Joe Marconi, in his book, Future Marketing, details characteristic pertaining to several age groups, including those briefly summated as follows:

A) Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964): Image-conscious, yet sensitive and nostalgic

B) Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980): Cynical, yet ideological

C) Generation Y (born between 1981 and 2000): Independent, enigmatic

Additional characteristics identified with these age groups have been detailed this way:

A) Baby Boomers are noted as achievement-oriented, confident, career-focused and responsible. They are said to welcome exciting and challenging projects and further desire to make a difference with their lives.

B) Generation X values freedom and responsibility. This generation is typified as being technologically adept and representing a casual resistance to authority and structured work hours, and particularly, a dislike of being micro-managed. Generation Xers are said to work to live rather than live to work.

C) Generation Y represents the youngest age group of talent in the work force. Generation Yers are said to desire attention in the forms of feedback and guidance and wish to be kept in the broader communication loop. More so than any other age group, Generation Y has grown up being plugged-in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is the most technologically savvy of these age groups.

More to the point, how does one use such information to communicate to potential new customers?

Although the best answer to that question would be resolved through surveys and market testing, there is available research that can be readily leveraged for greater promotional effectiveness.

SIMPLIFYING THE “AGES” FOR MARKETERS

Much of the point of this article is simplified by Lisa Johnson in her book Mind Your X’s and Y’s: Satisfying the 10 Cravings of a New Generation of Consumers. Johnson categorizes the combined Generation X and Generation Y as the “Connected Generation.” She examines the buying behaviors of 18- to 40-year-olds and depicts these “multitasking, constantly upgrading customers who grew up in the Internet era” to base their decisions upon ten “consumer cravings.”

Johnson identifies such cravings by using terms such as:

1) “Extreme personalization”
2) “Adventure”
3) “Loose connections” by way of social networks
4) “Intuitive design”
5) Helping to “sift through the clutter” by way of interpersonal editors and filters
6) “The rejection of push advertising and the rising influence of peer-to-peer networks”
7) “Connected citizens explore their creative power and influence change”
8) Delivering “a dramatic sense of theater”
9) Finding common ground through “Spiritual hunger and modern media”
10) And finally, by giving back through “volunteerism and the meaning of contribution”

Although a separate series of articles could be devoted to the myriad ways all ten of these “cravings” can be extrapolated to better market health products – or any products and services – what is immediately pertinent is the channel that most engages the “Connected Generation”: the Internet, and especially social media.

In other words, although market surveys and testing would yield more responsive messages to engender more clients, customers and patrons, by simply leveraging social media services such as blogs, YouTube, Facebook and many other related platforms, businesses that are seeking to sell to Generation X and Generation Y would be engaging them via media that is already more intuitive to them in terms of making purchases.

CONCLUSION

The takeaway for this article is that the marketing messages that have been effective at bringing in new business for your company, may or may not be working as effectively as they used to, simply because a large chunk of the buying public has moved their buying research and decision-making to the Internet and to social media.

Although the potential for increasing new sales for your business could be increased via more specific messaging, facilitated by surveys and market testing, easier marketing gains (more sales) may be achieved by conveying your existing messages more effectively via media that is more engaging to both Generation X and particularly Y: The Internet. And more specifically, by way of channels that facilitate user engagement, such as blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and many other types of Social Media.

George Alger is the Principal of Skyworks Marketing, a digital advertising agency specializing in leveraging technology and social media to efficiently generate more leads and sales for increased profits. Contact George, via http://SkyworksMarketing.com/contact/

The Age of Facebook

Like it or not, Facebook has mushroomed into the rarefied heights of the few largest and most visited websites in the world.  Whether one may view Facebook as a cancer propagating the trivialzation of privacy and personal data; an efficient way to maintain connections among friends and family; a 21st century social media phenomena; or a fad; one thing that is not debatable is that Facebook is popular.  And more vitally, it is still growing.

Michael Arrington at Techcrunch posted “The Age of Facebook” today and, among other things noted “The fact is that Facebook is permeating the Web.”

More vital to marketers is how Facebook can help connect businesses to potential customers and clients.  Facebook has more demographic information available to advertisers than, for example, Google’s AdWords.

Facebook provides rich demographic data about their users, which is a goldmine for marketers, such as:

• Likes and Interests
• Geography
• Age
• Gender
• Single or Married
• Education Level

Furthermore, you can pay-per-click, to get your message out, or you can pay-per-impression to place your products and services in front of the prospects most likely to be interested in your offerings.

Of course there is the whole social media marketing aspect available, as well, which Facebook is much more widely known for.  (See Social Media Chocolate Strategy for integrating Facebook with other social media platforms.)

The point for marketers is simple: If you haven’t tested the Facebook advertising platform yet, the earlier you do so, the less it will cost, because we can be sure that advertising costs for Facebook will go the same route as Adwords, which has resulted in rocketing ad rates, compared to the Adwords rates of several years ago.  And it’s worth emphasizing that I’m referring to “Facebook Ads” and not Facebook as a marketing channel via their social media platform, which, although is effective for some businesses, is not universally as effective and as measurable as direct advertising.

Whether you utilize Facebook as a personal social media platform, or not, it is certainly an advertising platform that is worthy of your testing.

Measuring Social Media Marketing

From a business perspective, one of the most compelling arguments against investing resources into social media marketing is the lack of quantifiable performance metrics. Especially, since for most small and medium-sized businesses, they just don’t have the time, money and personnel to take advantage of some of the more advanced ways to track social media performance.

Furthermore, social media, as a marketing channel, is quite different than running advertisements, sending out direct mail, or producing radio or TV spots, or for that matter, any traditional type of marketing media.

By it’s very nature, social media is about engaging audiences in communication, not just sending out one-way promotional messages.

Regardless, the most fundamental ways to measure the results of social media efforts are the same for any type marketing.

Marketing Metrics

♦ How much does it cost? Just like with any business investment, the concept of how much it costs is fundamental to its benefits. And just because a significant amount of social media activity can be generated for no cost, or low cost, does not make it cost-effective. There’s labor involved in writing blog posts; creating/uploading videos to YouTube; keeping Facebook and Linkedin pages updated (in addition to making them engaging); and using Twitter. In this regard, a simple approach to controlling the labor cost of social media marketing is to simply limit the time investment to whatever is workable for your business.

♦ Feedback. The first responses you are likely to receive from your social media efforts will not be sales. It will be comments (good and bad) about your products, services and even the value and quality of your social media communications. This needs to be monitored and quantified in terms of how much overall feedback is generated, as well as how much is positive and negative, and even how engaged your audience is. For example, if your audience is communicating very thoughtfully and/or passionately about what you are saying, that’s an indication that your social media efforts are connecting with your audience.

♦ Prospects and customers. This is where the rubber meets the road: but at best, it’s wet and slippery. Does your social media activity actually generate more leads and customers? Unfortunately, this isn’t always clear. Sure, if you put up a special discount on a Facebook page, the resulting business can be attributed to social media. But other than such very specific examples, what about customers who are introduced to your website or business by way of Facebook or Twitter who then become prospects or customers? Although there are some advanced ways to measure this, they are typically beyond the scope of what a small or medium-sized business wants to be concerned about. For the purposes of this article, it’s useful to at least be able to determine if ANY prospects or customers are being generated via social media. Having said that, generating more traffic by way of social media is a contributing factor to more sales, even if such sales do not result with a first visit.

♦ Revenues. Of course the most important point of any marketing is measured at the bottom line of business finances: Have sales gone up? And if so, how much? And even though all the revenues from social media may not be attributed as such, can ANY revenue at all be quantified as resulting from social media?

Social Media Marketing Conclusion

This article is not intended as an argument against utilizing social media to expand business. But it is intended to lay bare that there are costs to using social media – even if only in labor – and that the results are not as readily quantifiable as other marketing media, such as paid advertising.

It’s also important to be aware that social media efforts may not yield immediate results in the same way as paid advertising. In fact, social media efforts should be contemplated and measured over a longer period of time. If your business is going to test the waters of social media by attempting to engage an audience for, let’s say, 30 days, “to see what happens,” the reality is that not much will likely occur and your activity will be apparently for naught.

To utilize social media effectively for marketing purposes, a longer time commitment is necessary to yield workable results.

And if you really want to use social media effectively, thinking in terms of an overall strategic implementation of a variety of social media channels to support your business goals would be an ideal. And in that regard, getting some professional help would be the best way to customize such an approach to maximize the benefits for your specific business.

How Much Time Should Your Business Devote to Social Media?

Social media can be used to generate more traffic and engagement with your prospects and customers. But how much time should you devote to it, from a business perspective?

That’s an especially important question if your social media efforts are not generating any quantifiable revenue. Particularly when there are many other strategies that will, and already are, producing traffic and sales for you.

Hence, the simple answer to the question above would be to focus MORE on income producing activities than social media.

Of course, revenue aside, one important advantage that social media has is that if your customers are talking about you via Twitter, Facebook and other such channels, then your business is missing out on the party by NOT being involved in such conversations.

In other words, minimally, social media is a way to listen to your customers. By listening to customer feedback (even if it’s complaints), they are helping you to succeed, by telling you what they want. Which means your job is simply to give your customers what they are asking for.

What should you be doing instead of social media?

You should be doing the usual marketing actions: Generating leads, converting leads to customers, as well as cross-selling and upselling more products and services to existing customers.

Further, any marketing efforts that can be focused on bolstering those activities, including new product development, would be more worthy of your time than social media.

Although social media engagement can be quite impressive, and even seductive, very few businesses would be able to survive without ensuring that the majority of their time is spent on critical revenue generating functions.

The solution? Balance.

Social Media Marketing Guide

Social Media platforms and channels represent a rapidly evolving landscape. SEOmoz has compiled an update for their Social Media Guide, which lists the most popular social media sites for marketing your business.

After you click on the following link and scroll down to the guide itself, you’ll see two large tabs to explore: “Top 25 Social Media Sites” and a list of “101 Social Media Sites.”

Social Media Marketing Guide

Additionally, to better appreciate all the rankings referenced for marketers, you’ll want to check out this page for a description of some of the ranking criteria:

Linkscape’s Metrics

Social Media Metrics

The metrics for social media marketing may not be inspiring or compelling to any bottom-line focused marketing executive. Especially compared to the measurability of direct response marketing. Nevertheless, social media is a platform that does provide another opportunity to get your business name in front of more people, in relatively inexpensive ways.

Here is a simple list of social media metrics, outlined by Liana Evans at Search Engine Watch, which, although intuitive to any social media marketer, merits review, since it does encompass the primary social media metrics that are common currency in today’s social media ecosystem.

Facebook/MySpace (social networking sites in general):

• Number of fans/friends
• Number of comments per day/week/month
• Number of discussions started by fans

Twitter:

• Number of qualified followers (qualified meaning actually people, not bots)
• Number of retweets

Blogging:

• Number of comments
• Number of subscribers
• Number of links posts get
• Number of retweets

Forums/Message Boards:

• Number of new members
• Number of posts per day
• Number of topics started per week
• Number of active members per month

Videos/Photos:

• Number of views
• Number of comments
• Ratings
• Number of subscribers/friends

Brand Lift/Sentiment:

• More mentions of brands/products/services
• Increase positive sentiment
• Decrease negative sentiment

Click here to read the full article by Liana Evans, What Is Your ‘R’ for ROI in Social Media?

The Future of New Media vs. Old Media

Where is new media headed, in comparison to what old media has accomplished?  Especially in terms of revenue generation? Vin Crosbie at ClickZ posted his perspective, New Media Predictions, Part 1 (link below).

“In almost all cases, new media’s operating revenues, when discounted for inflation, will never equal those that used to be generated by traditional media companies.”

Crosbie writes about the scarcity of old media, meaning the limited places to publish ads in newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, etc., as compared to the seemingly infinite opportunities to publish advertising in the realm of new media – particularly as associated with the Internet. Contemplating a supply and demand equation, more supply equals lower costs.

He further notes:

“In traditional media the media companies were the middlemen between consumers and content or between consumers and advertisers. The Internet tends, more often than not, to eliminate middlemen. Advertisers can now reach consumers directly.”

“The affiliate structure of America’s radio and television industries is about to implode due to broadband new media.”

“We’ll see bloodbaths and major restructuring in the U.S. television industry in the coming decade now that broadband Internet access is making the traditional affiliate business model obsolete.”

Click here to read the full article: New Media Predictions, Part 1.