Voice of the Youths: Millennial Marketing & How to Win Them Over

Millennials now make up the largest adult cohort worldwide, about 23% of the global population. This totals to about 1.8 billion people. That’s a lot of purchasing power. 

Almost half of the millennials say they won’t purchase a product that doesn’t have reviews. They also shop online more than the older generations, with 85.9% of millennials declaring that they shop online. 

This is where the voice of the customer (VoC) (or shall we say the voice of the millennial) comes in. It’s critical for your brand to really hear out this influential generation by considering what they think about when it comes to your brand image, products, and competitors.   

Read on to learn three top ways to market specifically to millennials, including leveraging their feedback.

Millennials, also known as Gen Y or Generation Y, are people born between the 1980s and the late 1990s, aged between 26 to 41 in 2022. They make up 21% of the population of North America, 20% of Europe, and a whopping 24% of Asia. 

Found to be the most educated generation in history, millennials are 2.5 times more likely than previous generations to be early adopters of new technology. 56% of millennials claim that they are frequently one of the first members of their social group to try and purchase new technologies.

Millennials are the first to have grown up in a world where the internet was commonplace. As a result, it should come as no surprise that this is the generation most inclined to conduct their shopping online. According to the graph below, 85.9% of millennials purchased goods and services online in 2020, compared to 78% of Generation Xers and 60.9% of Baby Boomers, respectively. 

On average, the annual spending for millennials is around $52,000. They spend more money on clothing and personal care than previous generations. They also spend 5% of their disposable income on clothing, personal care items, and personal care services, compared to 4% for Gen Xers and 4% for baby boomers. 2018 saw millennials shell out an average of $2,600 in these categories.

Therefore, they’re quite a powerful or influential consumer group to target and market to. However, since their mentality and behaviors differ from other generations, modern marketers should understand some key tactics to get their attention.

The majority of millennials distrust, and even dislike, traditional forms of advertising. They’re more inclined to rely on word-of-mouth recommendations, such as consulting social media, friends or families, and customer reviews, to determine whether a product is worth buying. 

Why? Mainly because it comes from real people who have used the products. Many feel that the feedback from friends and family is more accurate or trustworthy.

Not to mention, 90% of consumers generally agree ‌that online reviews play a significant role in their purchasing decisions. This generation is less likely to be persuaded by traditional advertising methods than earlier generations, which has left marketers in a bind.

If marketers want to take advantage of the tremendous purchasing power of millennials, they must understand what motivates this digital generation.

Millennials prefer to pay for access to an item when they need it rather than owning it outright. These consumers prefer to rent, share, and trade instead of purchasing.

Spotify, Airbnb, and fashion websites like Rent the Runway and Relapse Clothing have taken advantage of this new “sharing economy.” Even in the automotive business, where leasing has become the norm, this is a relatively new purchasing trend. 

Capitalize on this by making it possible for your millennial customers to try things out at least before they buy or provide them with more innovative solutions to acquire your product. 

Millennials spend nearly 4 hours a day online. Most are constantly shifting through blogs, forums, and social media and forwarding, tweeting, pinning, and commenting on all of their finds ‌to spread this sense of empowerment throughout the internet.

Millennials are more trusting of content they see as authentic. A user-centric experience ‌keeps them interested, as 90% of millennials value authenticity when making purchasing decisions. Young people’s shopping habits and opinions are heavily influenced by peers and people they’ve met online or in person. These “advisors” are always with millennials, thanks to their smartphones. 

They rely on the opinions of people who have used the product in question. Millennials feel that user-generated material is 35% more memorable than mainstream media. A customer-centric relationship is built when you provide your target audience with content they can proudly share with their friends and family.

Millennials are unimpressed by traditional forms of outbound marketing, such as magazine ads, direct mail, and radio commercials. The target audience perceives these advertisements as impersonal and company-focused, with a slew of logos but little substance.

Personalization and user-centric marketing are becoming increasingly important in today’s world. Just 1% of millennials believe that a well-crafted advertisement may inspire confidence in the product.

Because of this, many internet users conduct their research via blogs, product reviews on Amazon and like, social forums, and video tutorials on sites like YouTube. It’s unlikely that an obtrusive commercial will sway their decision.

When it comes to making online decisions, millennials feel empowered and inspired by content shared by real, everyday people. So leverage your customer feedback and your celebrity endorsers by highlighting on the positive testimonials in your campaigns. 

As we’ve learned, millennials can be stereotyped as a ‘social bunch.’ This consumer group mainly values their friends, families, and favorite influencers’ opinions. Most rarely purchase without reading online reviews as well. 

To tap into this endless stream of consciousness and uncover what millennials want and need, leveraging VoC analytics is the way to go. 

Wonderflow’s AI-driven text analytics enables your brand to analyze the voice of all your customers, including helping you:

• Access the world’s largest data lake of indexed consumer reviews.
• Aggregate feedback from different sources.
• Combine all feedback sources into a single system to get a comprehensive analysis.
• Automate text analysis to uncover customer sentiment, key trends, and topics.
• Find out what product characteristics are most relevant to your customers. 
• Suggest the most impactful actions to take to increase your star rating. 

Understand your target audience more and in a smarter way today by booking a free demo with us!