Marketing to young people

Marketing to young peopleAside: looking back, can’t believe i wrote this post. I do not subscribe to ‘generational marketing.’

Aside: looking back, can’t believe i wrote this post. I do not subscribe to ‘generational marketing.’

Step aside millennials, a new generation is entering the spotlight. The experts call them generation z, or the “cohort of people born after 1995.”

Whether or not you realize it yet, this group is and will continue to become very very important. Especially if you work at all in the consumer space.

Quickly, 3 reasons why you should care about them:

1. They have a lot of power: “These folks, born in 1995 or later, make up 25.9% of the United States’ population, contribute $44 billion to the American economy.” — Mashable
2. They are the most connected generation we have ever seen and spend 5+ hours a day on their devices.
3. They are very different from previous groups of people and traditional marketing tactics will not work.

So how to reach the cool kids?

Well the first thing you need to do is understand how they think. Understand the incredible amount of information that the average person in this new generation consumes per day. Per week. Per month. Per year!?! It literally comes down to hundreds of thousands of tid bits of information. How do you expect your message to stand out and come across loud and clear?

First thing you can do is email me 🙂 jordangonen 1 at gmail dot com. I love helping people reach consumers.

The next thing you should do is understand the singular key to understanding Generation Z.

Whatever you do, you must deliver value quickly.

Generation Z has an extremely low attention span. There is a bombardment of places that they can pour their attention into — what makes you think yours will be honored?

So what you have to do is convince them very quickly that your message/product/content/whatever is worth your while.

Whether that is in the first 5 seconds of your video, or the top of your infographic, or the first 10 words of your blog post. Understand that if you do not hook them in, you will lose your viewer. Reminder, you are delivering value — not bullshit.

That last sentence is key. I’ll even capitalize the message for you:

CLICK-BAIT IS UNSUSTAINABLE . IT WILL NOT WORK LONG TERM.

The problem with click-bait and valueless hooks is that they do not lead to any sort of brand loyalty. And that is really what you want if you are building a sustainable company. Right? Because the truth is that consumer tastes and preferences, 5, 10, 15 years from now -> people will like and want different things. Sustainable brands are strong, even when consumer preferences change.

It’s a balance between the hook + value.

Anyways, marketing to gen z can be a pain. It can be hard. They (we) have weird tastes. But it is possible!

Let me know what you think 🙂

I’d really appreciate if you clicked that green heart 🙂

you should email me jordangonen1 at gmail dot com

or ping me with a tweet

By jordangonen on September 15, 2016.

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Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.