GenZ and Millennials. These words have been circulating around the world so much so that it has become one of the trendiest topics we’ve seen emerging in the last 2-3 years. But it was fine until the trending part. The fact that piqued our interest was how the world become so engrossed by these two words that they became overly focussed on fitting these two words into the boxes to the point where they created a unanimous global divide between people of different ages
So what do these terms refer to? According to Pew’s research center, anyone born in or after the year 1997 is considered to be GenZ while Millennials are people born between the years 1981-1995.
Now that we know what both terms mean, let’s dive deeper into why they created such a stir amidst people across the globe. The answer lies in the fact that these two terms not only classify the different generations of people, but have also become the mascots of the very different cultural and lifestyle habits that these different generations of people follow.
Marketers are trained to reach out to different audiences through different means and channels; but since they have been targeting the older generation for quite a while, it may seem like a daunting task to change their core strategies to reach out to a younger generation of audience. The question, which GenZ marketing strategies work best arises.
So to help digital marketers break out of their habits, let us dig into the topic of what makes GenZ so different from Millennials and how the best digital marketing agencies can use these tips to get cracking at the younger generation.
What Is GenZ- Into The Mind Of The Next Generation
Learning about the subject matter is essential before taking a test and reading about tips to ace said test. The same goes about marketing to a different audience. Knowing your customer (KYC) is a key element that will help you create the proper marketing strategy for them. GenZ marketing tips rely on understanding GenZ trends.
To understand the psyche of GenZ, you need to observe and analyze their behavioral patterns. Gaining a better perspective about their cultural ideology can help you assess the best ways in which you can gain their attention and successfully market your product.
GenZ are the true digital natives as they were born in a world that was well on its way to digitization. While the 90’s kids of the millennial generation saw the transition from landlines to mobile phones, the GenZ kids hardly know of a world without Google and smartphones.
Accustomed to having the best education and unlimited free information, the GenZ kids pose quite a different challenge to marketers. The challenge of something new, something quick, and something unique.
Being chronically online has made GenZ more aware of all what goes around the world. But that knowledge is a double edged sword. Being online all the time has drastically affected their concentration levels as they can hardly spare their attention to anything for more than 1.3 secs.
They are harder to fool and harder to market to. So let’s take a quick look at some of the main differences between Millennials and GenZ.
Millennials VS GenZ: A World Apart
- While Millennials had to adapt to digitization and the internet, GenZ was born into it.
- GenZ have a shorter attention span than Millennials.
- Millennials are more Aspirational in nature VS GenZ being more realistic and authentic.
- Millennials were raised to be independent and created the Hustle culture, while GenZ are more relaxed, born to dual income families and believe in enjoying life as it comes.
- GenZ are renowned for their retro fashion choices while Millennials are more into sustainability over fast fashion.
- Millennials are more open to live social interactions VS GenZ who primarily prefer social media sessions over face to face interactions.
- GenZ takes seamless education and learning quite at face-value, open to learning skills from online sources such as Youtube and Tik-tok, rather than investing time in doing full-time onsite courses like Millennials.
- GenZ are more open, aware, and sensitive to social issues such as racism, sexism, and gender-identity norms while millennials are adapting to it.
- Millennials are more likely to consume online content while GenZ likes to actively participate in creating content and having open dialogue with audiences.
Reading through these differences in behavior and lifestyle, I bet you must have related to one side more than the other. The stark difference in the nature of these two powerhouses of consumer spending demographic, with GenZ making up 40% of global consumer count, the marketers have a lot to think about for their next marketing campaigns.
How To Make GenZ Stop and Shop
While it has always been tricky to market to younger audiences, I hope that the above insights on the minds of GenZ and their variances from Millennials have helped you think more creatively about your marketing prospects.
As we live in a society and mingle with different people from all walks of life we unconsciously start noticing their behaviors and either becoming mindful of them or adapting to them. Keeping this in mind the below marketing hacks to capture the attention of GenZ might seem familiar to you as you keep reading because most brands have already adopted these GenZ marketing strategies for success.
1. A Fiesta For The Eyes - Make Visual Content
GenZ lives online. They spend a majority of their daily time online, browsing on different social networking sites or online video sharing platforms. With their eyes and minds constantly on screens, the best way for you to reach them is through a smartphone’s screen as well.
It is no secret that video content is the most popular form of content that everyone is consuming right now, especially instagram reels. With AI algorithms working on social media apps to personalize viewer content, ads have gained the advantage of targeting the most appropriate customers.
Just think about it, how many times have you yourself visited the social media page of a product advertised on your feed while scrolling through? Quite often right! So get in the know and market smarter, think mobile first and video friendly in your advertising pursuit!
(Source: McDonald's and Klair's IG page)
2. Rock Your Online Presence - Put up Medium Specific Content
As a brand it is important to be present and active on all different and popular social media platforms to gain higher visibility. So hurry and create your account on Instagram, Tik-tok, and Twitter!
A rookie mistake that brands and marketers often make is sharing the same marketing advertisement on different social media platforms instead of creating channel specific content. Repeating the same content on different channels will make the audience question the creativity and authenticity of your brand.
You cannot share the advertisement you created for instagram on linkedin since the audience profile doesn’t match. Hence, creating channel specific content is important. Remember you are dealing with digital natives who are quick to dismiss brands that can’t keep up with trends.
GenZ marketing and advertisement isn't all that difficult to understand, just requires fresh perspective and content!
(Instagram reels ad for Pepsi and New Balance sports shoes ad on Twitter)
3. Make Inclusivity and Transparency your BFF- Promote Responsibly
Gone are the days when marketers and salesmen used to get away with exaggerating the value of their products. The GenZ community lives online and they are quick to call out and cancel brands that don’t uphold their promises.
You need to be transparent in your activities and take responsibility for your actions and the promises you make to them as customers otherwise your brand will be gone from the market before you can say sorry.
Another pro tip is to promote inclusivity through your products and services as GenZ are the ‘woke crowd’ and prefer gender neutral and inclusive products and brands over problematic or non-adaptive ones.
Any top digital marketing agency in countries like UK, can provide you with a good consultation on the best marketing practices to represent a socially aware brand image. You can’t just throw an ad and be done with it, there needs to be an active campaign that supports the promoted ideology as well.
A good example of this practice is the rise in popularity of organic and cruelty free products and brands. These GenZ advertisements are the best way to understand their outlook.
(Inclusive ad by Fenty Beauty, Beauty For All)
4. Endorse With Influencers - Influencer Marketing Is IN
Influencers are getting more popular than celebrities nowadays. The younger generation is all about podcasts and online video streams where they see the influencers actually using the product and get live reviews.
Many ‘normal’ people have gone out there and earned a name for themselves through their authentic and fresh content; gained a following of over 10k followers, making them nano-influencers and starting their influencer journey. The younger generation follows them due to their authenticity and relatability over big name celebs. Hence, GenZ marketing tips are incomplete without influencer marketing.
As previously mentioned, GenZ is all about keeping it real, so they need to see the product work before buying it and there are many influencers who will do it for their audience to get new content for their channel as well as higher view counts.
Hiring influencers on different platforms counts as omnichannel marketing. The pro about collaborating with influencers is that they charge lesser fees than signing big-shot celebrities and their content is fresh.
Another advantage of endorsing through influencers is gaining more customers since viewers/followers tend to find them more believable than celebrities who are known to do ads for money instead of authenticity of the product.
5. Create Interactive Marketing Campaigns - #MarketingChallenge
You can create short and fun challenges to make your marketing campaign more interactive since GenZ actively likes to participate. User generated content is the best form of marketing that your brand can achieve. It is authentic, free and more engaging than just a one-sided communication from the brand to the customers.
You must have seen the trend of tik-tok challenges and how many brands hitched on that trend train to generate higher customer engagement. These tricks only work if the content and challenge is actually fun and not just done for the sake of following the trend.
(Coke's #TryItYourself Challenge)
6. GenZ Knows GenZ Best - Hire GenZ Team Members
While this may seem like an odd advice, but thinking logically, the person most in touch with what works best for their demographic would be someone from that group itself.
Hiring GenZ marketers or taking GenZ advice on marketing tactics may keep your marketing campaign up to date with all the reigning methods to grasp the attention of that demographic. Someone who speaks GenZ and is authentic to that mindset may prove to be just the breath of fresh air that your marketing campaign needed. After all, who better to talk about GenZ marketing than GenZ!
Another good alternative can be outsourcing your SEO activities to digital marketing and SEO agencies. Optimizing your content to accommodate the tags that GenZ frequents will help you gain higher visibility.
7. Give You Audience What They Want - Follow The Trends But Ethically
Put in the right hashtags, hire the most popular influencers, and create the most trending content.
Give your audience the content they want to see and you have to be quick about it because trends these days are breezing in and out quite quickly. If your update is late then you might seem out of style and old and not the right fit for them.
GenZ or Zoomers have quite the adventurous and living life undefined by boundaries style, so show them that your brand is right on that track. Show them that you are fun and adventurous too. Become their friend by joining in the causes and activities that they care and follow.
This generation gives a lot of thought to cause and social sentiment, so if your brand is associated with any morally debatable or despicable activity then they will be the first ones to call it quits with you. Cancel culture is real. So show them how your brand creates value in society, be it by inclusivity or being environmentally friendly.
8. Keep It Short
The last but the most important point to remember while creating a marketing campaign targeting GenZ is to keep it short.
Almost all forms of popular content consumed today are short-form video content. The data speaks for itself. GenZ has the attention span of a toddler so they refrain from watching things that can’t drive the message across in 8 seconds or less.
This is exactly what I mean when I say tailor content based on the most popular means of communication preferred by GenZ, which happens to be Tik-Tok, Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts.
The keywords to focus here should be short, visually appealing, trendy, and video. Keep true to these and you will have a successful advertisement for GenZ on your hands!
(Instagram ad, short, unique, and encouraging user-generated content.)
9. Don’t Miss Out On Omnichannel Marketing
Although social media is all the rage for GenZ, as marketers you should not miss out on promoting on other mediums and channels for just-in-case scenarios. The more visible your brand is, the better right?
So don’t completely abandon your offline advertising campaigns. As much as GenZ likes staying online, they also like going outside; so there is a really good chance to capture your future loyal customers through old-school billboards or radio ads.
Infact GenZ is more likely to hear about your brand online, then visit the offline store and promote the brand on social media as user generated content to review your products and get traffic for their account while promoting yours. GenZ marketing is all about supporting local brands.
A good blend of offline and online marketing channels will cover all your communication medium with your target audience. Better safe than getting your customers snatched by a rival brand right?
10. Build Your Brand’s Personality - Highlight Your Cause
Another thing that GenZ absolutely loves is a cause. Promoting your brand with your values and your origin story can help you gain a strong stream of genZ followers if done right.
You can let go of aesthetic driven brand image stories and bring to surface cause related issues that highlight the solution your brand offers. A loud, bold, unapologetic voice will be heard and appreciated by the younger generation as compared to aspirational promises. GenZ advertising really banks on the "woke culture".
For example Billie, a company that sells razors and other feminine care products, started Project Body Hair. The campaign aimed to start a discussion about the ridiculous female body beauty standards, their target being ads that never showed body hair on female models even though they exist.
Another cause for their campaign was abolishing the pink tax. The brand promoters then started hashtags to keep the conversation going and promote their brand at the same time.
(Ad by brand Billie: #ProjectBodyHair)
Final Thoughts
Kelly Hendrickson, HubSpot’s Senior Manager of Social Media, said “The data shows that generally each of these channels skews towards a younger audience base. While that may seem less opportunistic if your audience is older, just remember, your audience of tomorrow may be on these platforms”
This quote quite aptly surmises what this blog aims to discuss about marketing to the next generation. Marketers need to grow and evolve together with their customers so that they can capture their hearts tomorrow.
Additionally, marketers will do well to remember that despite the different marketing tactics required for different demographics, the core principles of marketing still hold high value. Content is still the King, and higher visibility is still the key to making a place in your target audience’s mind, just the methods have evolved with time and technology.
So continue learning and evolving with time and creating rocking marketing campaigns!
