Marketing to Millennials: What You Need to Know

Millennials are often viewed as a very unique generational cohort—they were the first generation to grow up with the internet, they prefer saving money to starting families, and they spend money on priorities that prior cohorts don’t really understand.

In order to best market to these tech-savvy and financially adept consumers, it’s important to familiarize yourself with their spending habits and common behaviors.

What’s important to the millennial spender?

While details such as product quality and social responsibility are important considerations for certain shoppers in every generational cohort, millennials are the first generation to popularize purchases with these specific intents, among others. When deciding how to best market to millennials, here are some critical factors to keep in mind.

• Environmental impact. Remember to emphasize the positive societal impact that your products have in your advertising. It’s common for millennials to choose the eco-friendly or ethical alternative even if it’s a bit more expensive.
• Don’t tell them what to do. Rather than using direct selling methods through bottom-funnel marketing efforts, it’s a good idea to be more informational and let millennial shoppers come to you.
• Offer subscriptions. Millennials are more likely to favor subscription-based business models where they can opt-out of a product or service at any time.
• Utilize the internet. With the majority of millennials preferring online shopping to in-person shopping (even for groceries), you’ll want to cater much of your marketing efforts to online formats. In order to engage your audience, it’s a good idea to diversify the ways you reach them through blog posts, video content, and social media content.

Before increasing spending on marketing efforts, it’s important to know your audience. Marketing to millennials doesn’t have to be tricky, as long as you remember the trends that make them the unique cohort they are.