5 Marketing Essentials for Your Business to Appeal to Millennials

With $200 billion in direct purchasing power and over $500 billion in indirect, targeting the millennials could be the right move to capture more market for your business. Away from the often misrepresented generation, the millennials are now being recognized as the consumers that will drive business growth for marketers. 

This shift in realization means marketers who have always targeted their products and services towards the older generation now have to adopt a new set of strategies to win this younger one. To target the millennials right, you need to connect with them on almost every level. That means understanding what they want.

The following strategies will help you capture an active millennials market.

1. Make mobile the priority.

Millennials are attached to their smartphones more than any generation today. Nearly 90 percent of millennials say their phone never leaves their side, and 78 percent say the first thing they do after waking up is reach out for their phone.

To win the heart of millennials, you might as well start from their mobile phones. Targeting millennials with mobile-themed content that engages them is crucial.

The first step to successful mobile marketing is to create content millennials want to consume on their phone. A study conducted by Mitek, which surveyed 1,019 people between the ages of 18 to 34, found that most millennials prefer selfies. Almost 90 percent take selfies daily or weekly.

2. Know what tickles them.

A story in the Los Angeles Times revealed that millennials prefer to spend on experiences than on material things. Unlike their parents who prefer a fancy watch or car, millennials would rather show off impressive travel, laced with selfies taken at high-end restaurants, including pictures of their meals.

This makes it important for a marketer who is interested in winning over the millennial consumers to adapt to the shifting consumer economics. Now, your focus should be on marketing to a target audience who prefers experience over material things. Adoptingmarketing strategies like selfies and prioritizing on experiences could endear your business to millennials.

3. Adopt newer payment platforms.

As new technologies afford it, millennials prefer doing things with ease and flexibility. This means your regular traditional means of settling fees may not be well suited to the millennial workforce, most of whom prefer to work as freelancers.

The growth of the millennial workforce means businesses must adapt their system to suit how millennials prefer to work. TransferWise, a payment service provider targeting the new generation of freelancers (mostly millennials) is a good example. The company recently secured a $26 million in funding from Baillie Gifford.

4. Engage millennials through influencer marketing.

The reason influencer marketing works well for millennials may be connected to the fact that most influencers on social media come from this age group. Snapchat personalities and Instagram celebs have the heart of millennials.

Being able to connect with these influencers and have them project your brand positively to their eager audience will bring you closer to your target audience. Twenty-eight percent of younger millennials and 23 percent of older ones say they most likely won't use a brand their family and friends or a stranger disapprove of.

5. Keep it real.

Millennials value genuine and authentic marketing. This is the generation that celebrates genuine, non-airbrushed images of regular people promoting products they like. Marketing with adulterated content could set millennials off and make them dislike your brand, instead of liking it. This might be due to social media, which has made people more receptive to accepting people for who they are, rather than what they are expected to be like.

A great strategy to connect with millennials is through storytelling. This marketing approach has been proven to build brand trust and customer loyalty -- it'll help you win over Generation Y.