Corey Padveen

Article / Updated 07-09-2019

Here, you will find some simple but effective tips to help keep you on the right track when crafting a campaign or acquisition strategy for Millennials. Start with data Data should drive everything you do. Data will prevent you from operating in the dark and basing your decisions on unfounded assumptions. Data can help you determine which decisions to make when you’re first building your strategy, and it can help you improve your operations at various points in your audit. Ultimately, using data will result in more effective programs, greater results, and shorter goal completion timelines. It will also help you maintain relevance with an evolving audience over time, which leads to stronger relationships and significant long-term growth. Remember the psychographics The Millennial mindset needs to be the focal point of any initiative, campaign, program, or analysis. Simply thinking about your audience in superficial constructs, such as age or location, can cause you to completely miss what makes this audience so unique. The designation as a Millennial originally defined people in a specific age bracket. However, this term is quickly becoming one definition of a modern consumer. For this reason, you need to get to know these customers on a much more personal level. Evaluate additional age brackets Don’t limit yourself to a year range when you market to Millennials. You wouldn’t limit your targeting and audience segmentation to age alone, so you shouldn’t exclude audiences from different age demographics that fit particular interest and behavior targets. Consumers in every demographic are evolving and adapting. Along with that evolution is a transcendence from one demographic to another. As you realize this and expand your targeting over time, you will build your business to greater heights. Establish demographic-specific objectives As you build various audience segments and clusters, you need to clearly state the objectives. You need to clearly state a process for long-term objectives as well. For example, ask yourself, “What do you hope to achieve with the cluster that is made up of professionals over 35 versus the cluster that is only now completing their college years?” You need to consider this question because not every cluster will necessarily be suited for the same objective. Choose your causes wisely Cause marketing has the potential to be a tremendous asset, but you need to be very careful so as not to appear opportunistic. Brands that seem to be taking advantage of a particular cause or trend for personal gain will lose the respect, trust, and business of a socially conscious Millennial. Choose a cause that you care about, that makes sense for your business, and that your audience can relate to. That approach will benefit you much more than simply jumping on the bandwagon without giving thought as to how that cause may be perceived. Identify the foundation of your relationships As you determine how to connect with Millennials, you need to clearly identify what the root of your brand’s relationship is going to be with each of your clusters. To make the experience as personal as possible, identify a foundation and build out from that foundation with content, campaigns, and conversation. Focus on the experience Millennials want more than a simple transaction. When you observe their habits, you realize that the experience is crucial to the buying decision. The weight Millennials place on the experience also relates closely to the Millennial pursuit of value. Millennials may not be willing to spend quickly and are sensitive to price. However, they may be ready to pay a little bit more and become brand advocates when they perceive value in a greater brand experience. Regularly audit your performance New media is in constant motion; it evolves, and consumers adapt. As a result, your audience will shift in real time, and you need to change with them. Audit your performance regularly to identify opportunities, optimize campaigns, or revise program structure. If you forget to move with the times, your audience may leave you behind. Keep your voice genuine Authenticity is key to the success of so many initiatives with Millennials and a key component in the development of relationships with Millennials. When developing content to appeal to their tastes and preferences, you want to ensure that you’re genuine. Your audience should feel as though you’re interested in building a relationship and not focused solely on the next sale. Create an authentic, tailored voice in your marketing materials to get this point across. Go mobile first Millennials live on their mobile devices. If you want to reach them where they are, you need to think mobile first. Thinking mobile doesn’t preclude you from focusing on other platforms. Plenty of other media may work better on a desktop than on a mobile device, like individual components of a membership backend. The thing to remember is that mobile will be a key element in any Millennial’s day-to-day life. If you want to build that relationship, consider mobile as a fundamental pillar of your overall marketing strategy.

Article / Updated 09-27-2017

You may find yourself nodding your head each time you see a particular mistake. That’s because the majority of marketers have either made or might make these missteps when building out a Millennial marketing strategy. Assuming laziness Baby Boomers often have the opinion and perception that Millennials are spoiled, entitled, and lazy. That last trait is the result of the growth of the demand economy among Millennial consumers. Millennials want access to goods and services at a moment’s notice, and they don’t want to have to go very far to get them. For a generation that didn’t grow up with this kind of accessibility, behaviors like these and the sense that access should be made easy translates into laziness — a major misconception. A study by the professional services firm Ernst & Young found that Millennial managers voluntarily add hours to their workweek at a faster rate than the two generations that preceded them. Another study by Project: Time Off, which promotes and advocates for vacation time, found that half of all Millennials in the workforce strive to be considered work martyrs, which are employees that forego personal time, early work days, and paid time off in exchange for additional work hours. Framing your communications around the idea of making life easier as opposed to ignoring the demographic that finds the demand economy appealing will allow you to cater to an even broader range of consumers. Assuming selfishness Millennials are driven and, like any consumer, consider a degree of self-interest in their decision-making processes, but that doesn’t mean that Millennials are particularly selfish in their pursuits. They do have a degree of entitlement that comes from an upbringing during an economic boom, a high-level of education — the highest ratio of educated consumers of any generation in history — and from coming into buyer maturity during the Great Recession. However, to simply think of Millennials as selfish ignores a much greater, pertinent characteristic: They care about social good. Cause marketing is a field that has seen explosive growth over the last few years. Between 2000 and 2016, the funds raised from cause marketing initiatives have grown from $700 million to nearly $2 billion. This increase has been driven in large part thanks to Millennials. The Barkley American Millennials Report noted that more than 40 percent of Millennials prefer to give to a cause they care about through a business, rather than donating directly, and a study from the MSLGROUP found that nearly 70 percent of Millennials want businesses to work toward addressing social issues instead of focusing solely on profit maximization. Millennials care about society, and a brand’s involvement in a cause is more than a kind gesture; it’s a viable business tactic. Millennials will choose to buy from a brand that they feel does good as opposed to only buying from the brand that has a recognizable or impressive logo. Aligning yourself with a cause or leveraging cause marketing when you have an opportunity to do so will help you avoid making the mistake of assuming that Millennials don’t care and can actually lead to the development of new business from socially conscious Millennial consumers. Assuming vanity It’s all too easy to assume that Millennials are obsessed with vain. When you scroll through the Instagram feed of the average Millennial user or observe the selfie-obsessed habits of a Millennial on Snapchat, it seems almost safe to make the assumption that vanity plays a major role in the day-to-day lives of Millennial consumers. Millennials care about the experience, and they care about sharing that experience. While Millennial consumers may be a fairly price-sensitive generation, they’re willing to spend when the transaction isn’t the only part of the deal. Millennials spend on experience. Think about the brand or transactional experience when crafting a campaign designed to appeal to Millennials. Millennial consumers don’t want the story to end at the point of conversion or payment. Do you have an opportunity to integrate an Instagrammable moment? Can you carry over the experience onto social channels? How can you garner additional value or utility from the transaction? These are things that Millennials weigh — consciously or not — when making a purchasing decision. Assuming frugality With Millennials coming into their consumer maturation years during the Great Recession, it’s easy to see why the assumption about Millennial frugality is made. A study by DunnhumbyUSA, which handles loyalty programs in the United States, found that Millennial consumers are far more price-sensitive deal seekers than average consumers and will use coupons on a far more regular basis. The total of purchases for Millennial deal seekers, however, will be consistently higher than the average full-price customer, and they will return to a specific brand’s store more loyally than the average customer. Instead of simply assuming that Millennials are frugal and unwilling to spend, consider the fact that Millennials are often after more than just the product; they’re after value. Value-seeking consumers, which includes those in pursuit of an experience on top of a transaction, will spend more and remain more loyal when you can provide that value to them. It can be in the form of deals, discounts, bonuses, giveaways, or other value-added components included in a transaction. Assuming ignorance If you think traditional sales tropes will be the deciding factor in a Millennial’s buying decision, think again. When you, as a brand, make first contact with a Millennial prospect, he has already progressed through a significant portion of the buying cycle. You’re one of the last stops on the tour, so if you assume that the prospect is unfamiliar with your product, your quality, or your other customers’ experiences, you’re making a dangerous mistake. When engaging directly with a Millennial prospect — either online or in person — your approach should be one that allows the customer to share what she already knows, has researched, or would like to know. Comparison and peer review is a major part of the Millennial buying process, and there is a distinct possibility that by the time a prospect is contacting you, she has gone through several of those steps. While you also shouldn’t assume that the prospect has all the information on hand when she first reaches out, the approach you may want to take is one of learning a little bit about where she is in the buying process before moving into the sales pitch. The assumption that you’re dealing with an ignorant prospect that will respond to a one-way pitch will almost certainly end without a conversion. Focusing on age Assuming that all Millennials are alike because they fall into the age parameters that statistically denote a Millennial is no different than assuming that a wealthy 50-something-year-old professional living in Manhattan and a 15-year-old high school student living in Missouri are alike because they both live in the United States. Consumers are all unique, and to lump a group together based on something as superficial as age and market to them all in the same way will yield subpar results and leave the majority of Millennial consumers with little to no impression of your brand. While age may come into play when building an audience, you’re going to want to take the time to develop hypertargeted audience segments that focus more on interests and behaviors as opposed to looking at only age or location. Ignoring the mindset Age, or birth date range, is a relevant criteria when looking purely at statistics or sector studies. However, when it comes to marketing, the focus on a range of years as the enclosing parameters of a target audience is a practice that many marketers adopt without realizing how much missed opportunity they’re leaving to a competitor as a result. Millennials may possess certain traits and habits when it comes to their buying behavior, but they’re not alone in possessing these traits. The Millennial mindset is one that has largely transcended generations, particularly as the adoption of mobile technology and integration of social media into the day-to-day lives of consumers from other generations has come to pass. When you develop a hypertargeted audience around tastes and preferences and launch a campaign, you’ll want to consider expanding that campaign’s target audience over time to include consumers of other ages that fit the same interest and behavior criteria that you’ve outlined. Focusing only on the campaign One element that Millennials are looking for when evaluating whether to buy from or work with a particular brand is how well the experience with the brand flows. This experience also contributes significantly to loyalty and assists greatly in the process of building relationships with your target Millennial audience. When you develop a campaign, you need to think about it in terms of how it will fit in with all the active elements that currently exist around your brand. This thought process will not only assist in improving brand awareness with target Millennials because of the continuity from the campaign to your day-to-day content marketing, but it will also create secondary benefits, such as audience growth or relationship nurturing, that extend beyond the original scope of the campaign. Aggressively selling The pushy sales pitch was one that yielded some results in the early days of paid online advertising and affiliate marketing, but today, and particularly with Millennial consumers, the aggressive sales pitch is one that results in zero engagement. In fact, this strategy is one that has more potential to damage your brand’s reputation and your relationship with prospects than lead to conversions. The soft sell may take a little bit more time, but during that time, you’re cultivating a relationship with your Millennial prospects, which leads to loyalty. Ignoring the relationship When you ignore the importance of the relationship with Millennial consumers, you ignore the future of your business. Millennials may take a little bit longer to convert and may take a more convoluted buying journey that needs attention, but relationships mean loyalty, brand advocacy, and growth.

Article / Updated 09-27-2017

Relationships drive Millennial buying decisions and inspire loyalty. The price may have a lot to do with the timing of the buying cycle, but ultimately a relationship can be the deciding factor. When you tie in the importance that Millennials place on cause affiliation, you can say with certainty that cause marketing can push your relationships with Millennial consumers forward. You can leverage your cause in your communications strategies to build your relationships with Millennial consumers: Integrating the cause message on your website: Consider calling attention to the cause from a stand-alone section on the website that your audience can access from the main menu or from embedded links in your home page content. You also want to feature your involvement with the cause wherever you can on your site content. If you have a scrolling home page banner, you can dedicate one of the slides to the cause you’re working with. Adding donation options across multiple channels: You can place donation options on your website in email forms using a tool like Constant Contact or on social channels, such as Facebook. The more you showcase the option to donate, the clearer you make it to your audience that you’re invested in the cause and aren’t being opportunistic. Developing a cause-specific content strategy: While you may have ongoing elements, such as donation buttons, running across various media to call attention to your selected cause, a content strategy that pushes the cause is a useful way to move your cause marketing efforts forward. This content needs to be the ultimate in soft-selling strategies. Participating in trending movements or events that call attention to a cause: When you participate in a trend, it humanizes your brand. When you determine that your brand’s participation would be acceptable and welcomed, you can bolster your relationship with other participating Millennials by showcasing that you’re more than a profit-centric organization.

Article / Updated 09-27-2017

After you determine the cause that Millennials will associate with your brand, you’re ready to start developing the materials that will work with your cause marketing. Remember that cause marketing can be something that is associated with your brand in perpetuity, or it can be something that your brand is participating in while it’s relevant to the community. Regardless of the approach, you need to put together a strategy that aligns your brand with the selected cause. Establishing objectives associated with your brand and the cause The cause marketing strategy you develop can have both short- and long-term objectives. These objectives may vary from one campaign or cause to the next. For example, a primary objective in participating in a viral cause, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge, may be entirely altruistic. You may simply want to raise awareness and money for a good cause, so your objective is to participate in the campaign to do exactly that. This motivation is the kind you need to have for any cause marketing initiative in which you participate if you want it to have an impact from a business standpoint. The primary objective of any cause-related campaign is to benefit the cause. The short- and long-term business goals should be secondary to the greater good. This primary objective should be obvious to your Millennial audience. Considering your business goals regarding cause alignment is also important. Brand awareness Cause marketing provides you with an entirely new theme around which to create content that you know interests your audience. Creating this kind of relatable content bolsters your brand’s exposure in key Millennial markets. It also has the potential to significantly increase brand awareness among audience members participating in that conversation. Relationship nurturing If you’ve already cultivated a Millennial audience and you want to build on key relationships, then cause marketing may help you achieve that goal. According to a study by PR firm Cone Communications entitled “Cause Evolution,” 85 percent of consumers think more highly of a brand that supports a cause that matters to them. By showcasing your support for a particular cause, you’ll nurture relationships with your key demographic. Decreased conversion time One of the strategies that online auction and retail giant eBay has implemented to prevent cart abandonment (when potential shoppers fill a cart online with goods and then leave the website before completing the purchase.) is the integration of donation options at checkout. According to the eBay study entitled “Integrating Cause and Commerce,” when buyers are given the opportunity to donate during checkout, they’re more likely to complete their transactions. In fact, these sellers see a 29 percent increase in sales in the same period as those without the option to donate to a cause. Shortening the buying cycle by introducing a cause is a particularly valuable tactic to use in both the short and long term. This technique can be particularly useful to brands that have long buyer journeys. Growth of customer loyalty In the eBay study entitled “Integrating Cause and Commerce,” the organization found that sellers saw a 50 percent decrease in churn rate. This reduction represents people who left from one transactional period to the next when a cause was integrated into the buying journey. Churn rate is the rate at which customers stop buying from a brand or terminate their subscription. It is an important metric of customer loyalty and value. As you know, Millennials in particular prefer to associate with brands that align themselves with important causes. Doing so not only means that your brand is helping a particular initiative that matters to you, but it also benefits you in the long run by improving customer loyalty. Leveraging cause marketing for brand growth Building your brand around association with a cause can be a useful strategy, but it can mean inextricably linking your brand to the cause. Some of the largest companies in the world build their brands without associating directly with a cause. Global retailers like Gap and Nike approach cause marketing from the perspective of associating with a cause only in some key areas as opposed to making it the focal point of the organization. For example, Gap owns several brands, including Banana Republic and Old Navy, and isn’t necessarily associated only with cause marketing efforts. The majority of Gap customers, however, are familiar with the brand’s association with the Product (Red) initiative, which aims to help eradicate AIDS in Africa. Several brands, including Nike, American Express, Converse, and others have licensed the Product (Red) theme and linked their brands to the cause. The strategy of associating your brand with a cause greater than your industry, as those big, public companies have done, is a good way to achieve a few objectives related to brand growth: You enter into a group with big players. When it comes to a cause, big organizations like Gap or American Express may be participating, as well as smaller ones, like the entrepreneur’s small business association. The size of the players may change, but the league in which they’re playing remains the same. Leveraging a cause that is nationally or even globally recognized means increased exposure, and that exposure is certainly useful when it comes to building your company’s presence. Your product line or service offering expands. In the case of Livestrong or other causes that have a product or service that you can sell, it allows you to expand your offerings. While this expansion not be a primary source of revenue, you can be assured that the potential for discoverability by a target audience is improved. You reach new markets that may have otherwise been unreachable. With so much online marketing noise, traditional marketing campaigns may understandably not reach a lot of prospects. So much is going on that a brand can easily be ignored, even if the prospect is a perfect fit. Aligning yourself with a cause can rescue lost prospects by appealing to them from a different angle.

Article / Updated 09-27-2017

One of the fundamental differences between a traditional objective-oriented campaign and a brand experience campaign for Millennials is the seamlessness with which a brand experience campaign is executed. Users can move from one piece of content to another and from one channel to the next without becoming confused about the path designed for the process. While elements of your brand experience strategy may factor into your standard objective campaigns, the focus of the brand experience campaign is on the immersion of the audience in the story you’re telling across various media. As with any campaign, you need to start by developing either a single or a series of objectives that you’d like to achieve by building out a brand experience for your Millennial prospects. Objectives, such as your KPIs, can be both tangible and intangible. You can collect tangible customer data, which is concrete and measurable, by having customers fill out a form or submit their information. Alternatively, you can try to build loyalty, which can often be an intangible objective as it’s not necessarily measured by a concrete statistic but rather a concept that relies much more on observation. When it comes to the brand experience, some of the most common objectives you should consider when building your campaigns include Increasing brand engagement Driving up brand awareness Building a new segmented audience Selling more product Garnering customer loyalty Fostering relationships Launching a well-rounded campaign Increasing brand engagement Continuous engagement helps build your brand awareness. A brand experience campaign is about building that engagement across multiple media. By creating an experience in which your prospects and target Millennial audience can participate, you’re driving increased interactions with a broad variety of users on several digital channels. Considering that this increased engagement is going to be an essential component of any brand experience initiative, you need to decide whether engagement is a primary or secondary objective of your campaign. Your primary objective is the one that you’re most interested in achieving. All the work you do and everything you include in your strategy is going to aim to achieve this primary goal. A secondary objective is one that may be less of a focus or even just a byproduct of your primary objective. While you may track this objective and even implement a few components that work toward its success, it won’t be your primary focus during the campaign. Driving up brand awareness Although brand awareness isn’t a tangible objective in the traditional sense. it’s an objective that you can work toward through the strategic use of a brand experience campaign. As you drive up engagement with your target audience, the conversation around your brand will increase. As that conversation increases, the discoverability of your brand by your target prospects and by new prospects who come across this public discussion will rise. While there may not be a concrete way to determine brand awareness, one measurement that may be helpful is share of voice. Share of voice measures how much industry conversation pertains to your brand as compared to your competitors. As share of voice increases, so does your brand awareness. Creating a brand experience that focuses on intrigue can help you garner the attention of new audiences and users. An intrigue-focused campaign may have something to do with a series of clues or references that participants need to follow in order to reach the incentive-fueled end — perhaps a discount or special offer. This kind of campaign is a useful way to drive up brand awareness. Building a new, segmented audience One of the benefits of brand experience campaigns is that they can entice new fans. These viewers make it clear that they’re willing to engage with brands that provide them with valuable content. Selling more product Of course, one of the goals that you’ll work toward is increasing sales. Just remember that when it comes to brand experience, the sales cycle may be a bit longer than what you’re used to because the timeline isn’t necessarily fixed and the majority of the audience will be focused on getting the most from the experience presented. You most likely will want to consider increased sales as a secondary objective in your brand experience campaigns. Unlike some of your more sales-oriented objectives, such as an ad campaign with a clear goal at its core, the brand experience is primarily about building relationships. You may find that over time, these relationships lead to conversions, but the concept of building your brand experience means that you want to encourage the organic growth of a relationship with your prospects. A conversion may take place at any point in the process after the prospect in question feels comfortable enough to buy. Increasing sales, however, is still a viable objective worth monitoring. Garnering customer loyalty One of the most valuable byproducts of an experience-oriented campaign is the garnering of audience loyalty. Creating a noteworthy experience for your audience shows that you care about them. This attention goes a long way in building loyalty among your existing or newly converted audiences. Fostering relationships Brand experience campaigns are reliable tools to use when you’re trying to deepen the relationships you created with your audience. Though the growth of relationships isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to measure, it’s a worthwhile objective to monitor. Launching a well-rounded campaign To get the most from your campaign, you should follow a series of steps leading up to your launch. The following steps can help ensure that your narrative is clear, your tracking is established, and that you’re working toward achieving exactly what you set out to do: Build out a slightly generalized Millennial audience. To encourage the discovery of new audiences, keep your target audience a little bit more general than usual to expose the brand experience campaign to new prospects. Establish your objectives. Determine exactly what it is you’re trying to achieve by creating a brand experience initiative for your audience and selecting objectives that measure their interest. Construct a narrative. The narrative is the driving force behind the entire brand experience, so it’s a critical stage. Spend time outlining the ideal path you’d like users to take and then consider all the variations that you might present. Determine tracking methods and KPIs. Before launching, identify exactly how you plan to track your progress and pick the key indicators you’ll use to measure your success. Set initial benchmarks. Your benchmarks may change after your brand experience program gets underway, but start with a few benchmarks that you’d like to improve. Develop your content. Create content that helps your audience move from one stage of the story to the next. Also, consider how the content will help you build a closer ongoing relationship with your audience. Launch your campaign. Measure your results to see whether your audience is following the linear path that you created for them. You may need to make some changes to guide them along the path you constructed. Make some changes. Be proactive and make necessary changes right away.

Article / Updated 09-27-2017

After you make the initial introduction of your brand to your target Millennial audience, you can begin to develop the brand relationship. In this stage of the experience, you can use some sales-oriented content to encourage users to take the next step. Engaging users with conversational content At the relationship-building stage, it’s important not to solely focus on selling to your Millennial prospects. One of the qualities that Millennials seek is value in the content brands share. They’re looking for content that gives them a reason to engage. This content can be in the form of a conversation. Ask questions or conduct pools, surveys, or ongoing industry discussions. When something relevant to your industry is being discussed, it’s appropriate for your brand to participate in the conversation. For example, suppose that you sell a particular tech gadget, and Apple announces a shift in the way some aspect of their devices work. This announcement gives you an opportunity to share your opinion either on your owned channels or on a public forum where a conversation is already taking place. Sharing useful information that highlights your expertise By sharing tips and insights that demonstrate your expertise in the industry, you’re providing value. You’re also highlighting why you’re the best of all the options on the market. Offering first-time customers specials, freebies, or deals You want to ease the potentially awkward scenario of overtly selling a product or service on a medium like a social network, which is intended to be conversational. One strategy you can apply in the hopes of avoiding that awkward situation is to offer users a special discount or a deal to first-time customers. Special deals create an incentive for the customer to convert and help you decrease the conversion time. Building trust by sharing third-party content with Millennials that mentions your brand When you find that third parties, like influential bloggers, discuss your product, you want to make sure that your audience sees it. This content will further cement your status as an industry leader and keep your brand top of mind when your prospect is ready to make a purchase. After a user becomes a customer, the brand content should shift from pursuit to relationship growth. This stage is where ongoing, personalized communication becomes your most valuable asset for long-run expansion and survival in the market. To get the most from the touchpoints in this stage of the consumer cycle, you should consider using one-on-one communication, either in real-time in a messaging application or via email. You also should consider incorporating the following elements into these communications. Personalization: It may seem like a small detail, but personalization goes a long way with Millennials. When you can add their name to correspondence — for example, in an email subject or body text — you increase the likelihood that they’ll engage with the content. Appreciation: Little things go a long way. That is particularly true when it comes to showing your appreciation for your customers and your audience. Sharing content that communicates your gratitude helps solidify the relationship you’re building with Millennials. It also enhances the brand experience after a conversion and increases the chances of repeat business. An example is when Cadbury, a UK-based candy maker, shared a video thanking its fans on Facebook after it hit one million fans. Community: Making your content more about the community, the industry, and, most importantly, the audience after they’ve converted goes a long way toward solidifying the relationship. It also enhances the brand experience and adds value to your content. Regular communications: It’s hard to build a relationship with a brand that has gone dark after a conversion. Keep up regular contact with your audience, both new and old.

Article / Updated 09-27-2017

After you establish the objectives of your share economy campaign, you’re ready to provide your audience with incentives to participate. For example, you can create a place for your community to share access to online subscription services, such as creative software, instead of requiring them to buy access to each individual product. This incentive can be a very powerful way of pulling users to your brand over a competitor. However, it’s important to create barriers to prevent this kind of service from being abused. Some ways to prevent abuse include Making sure that shared passwords work only with a certain level of subscription Putting a limit on how many documents third parties can save These methods allow users to access the product until the desire for ownership comes into play, and they move away from simply needing access. Take a look at some marketing tactics you can employ to encourage adoption of your newly launched share economy platform. Reach out to your existing database Current customers are the easiest ones to get on the share bandwagon. Your existing database of Millennial customers is sure to include some users that fall into the share economy group. Go through the audience development process, but focus on existing customers and fans. Encourage them to participate and push them to check out the new offer. Leverage native video ads Mobile is where Millennials spend their time, and the success of share economy mobile applications like Uber and Lyft show that this audience is partial to the mobile platform. Develop your ads and push them to your selected media on mobile devices. Highlight the benefits of the share concept for your product or industry and provide some incentive to get Millennials to try it. Target ads to the share economy audience After you segment the audience that fits into the share economy, create content that focuses exclusively on the sharing aspect. Touch on the fact that your audience may have a pain point that this feature addresses — for example, not needing the full service or product or not being able to afford the full option. The model you should use in the case of these ads and pieces of content is the problem-solution model. This model involves presenting your target audience with a problem they may or may not know they have and then offering them the solution to that problem all within the ad itself. Develop incentivized adoption schemes Incentivizing adoption is your best bet to get the ball rolling. Every one of the models you implement should include some sort of incentive. Incentives will generate the fastest adoption by users in all categories. The incentive can be something simple like a free sample, gift card, or offer redemption. It can also be something more complicated, like a tiered offer based on subscription level, subscription length, or frequency the product is used.

Article / Updated 09-27-2017

Your share economy campaigns leverage unique segments of your Millennial audience, which means that the objectives you create will relate to a particular audience construct (niche) and may not necessarily focus on long-term goals. Your goals can relate to universal objectives, such as driving up brand awareness, engagement, or conversions, but they must target a particular segment. If the campaign has the share economy as its focus and your goals relate to the audience that you cultivated for the share economy, then your objectives will work. Ask yourself the following series of questions to simplify the process of developing your niche goals. They can help you construct readily achievable objectives. What are you going to measure? To create your objectives, you need to determine what you want to measure. For example, if you’re providing a learning exchange where participants are sharing knowledge with one another, are you going to measure the amount of data collected or the size of your growing user base of experts? These are two separate objectives, and while you can aim to achieve both, you need to have a different objective plan for each one. Does the share economy campaign operate in a vacuum? You need to decide just how connected your share economy initiatives will be to your overall objectives. The share economy has some unique aspects to it that may not fit in with the rest of your program, but this isn’t to say that it will be different from your brand online. Branding attributes and your brand persona will be consistent wherever you have a presence, so ask yourself this question: How much of your brand and the brand experience will you incorporate into your share economy campaign? What universal elements of your marketing strategy tie into the share economy campaign? You shouldn’t run the risk of conducting an effective share economy campaign only to find that several members of the community aren’t familiar with your brand outside of your share economy platform. For this reason, you need to identify those elements and ensure that they’re present and represent your brand well. Does the campaign end with the share economy, or are secondary actions important? You’re targeting a unique segment of your Millennial audience that is particularly attracted to the concept of sharing. However, you should also include incentives that push your audience to take another step beyond the share economy. It can be a download or an incentive-based signup, such as a discount code that encourages share economy participants to become customers. Millennials want access over ownership, at least at first. Providing them with an option to participate in the share economy aspect of your business can mean giving them the desired access until a fraction is eventually ready to buy.

Article / Updated 09-27-2017

Your involvement in the share economy and targeting of Millennials doesn’t mean you need to change the way your business operates. The share economy, like any strategic tool, is something that you apply to a particular segment of your audience. Creating a voice for these users is an important part of your strategy. Creating your brand’s voice specifically for the share economy means focusing on two priorities: Mapping out your target audience: Target a very specific segment of your audience with the content you create. Creating a content strategy: Focus on the sharing element of your business. Mapping out your target audience The first step to launching a campaign that leverages the sharing economy is the identification of a viable audience. This audience may consist of existing customers, or it may be an audience affiliated with your industry. Regardless of where the audience comes from, you need to identify certain traits to ensure that the audience you target with your offers is a viable one. As you put together a targeted campaign, you’ll find that the majority of the audience identification process will take place on your new media ad platforms. The most valuable of these platforms related to narrowing down the audience will undoubtedly be Facebook. The following steps help you narrow down your audience: Select a general audience of Millennials that is either saved or segmented based on a particular age range. Start with a broad focus and narrow down. In this particular case, you should either begin with your general Millennial audience, or just select an age range. Start targeting a specific set of share-based interests. Here, you can see a few examples of share-based interests, but you should expand on these interests so that they include any share economy-associated interests. Target interests and behaviors affiliated with your brand or industry. After you complete the general share economy targeting, you should include interest categories associated with your brand or industry. Select specific placements to develop segmented content strategies. Content will vary from one medium to the next. Segment your efforts to reach users with your share economy campaign on all current media. Creating a content strategy for Millennials At this point in the development of your share economy campaign, you hopefully have accomplished three crucial tasks: You identified your brand as having the right characteristics and the potential to leverage the popularity and value of the share economy. You developed a target audience that is likely to engage with your brand in this share-focused campaign. You developed content specifically geared toward the traits that define the share economy. Several standardized elements of your share economy-focused initiative includes your objectives, target audience, and KPIs. The content is going to be particularly important because its structure, layout, and calls-to-action are the driving force behind the framing of a share-based campaign. Consider the following to help you communicate that the focal point of your content is sharing: Create stand-alone landing pages. Your landing pages should remain separate from your other campaigns. One of the fastest ways to lose your audience’s interest is to bait them with content that highlights some information and then sends them to a landing page that doesn’t feature anything matching that content. Highlight the share aspect. Use keywords like “share,” “participate,” or “join” to encourage users you sent to your landing page to take part in the share-oriented environment you created for them. Integrate a community conversation or activity feature. Your audience may be reluctant to join your community if they don’t have enough information to make a decision. To avoid this issue, highlight topics that are popular right on your landing page. Also, offer prospective participants a glimpse into the community to allow them to see what’s being discussed. Provide detailed instructions. Millennials are intuitive, but you shouldn’t take their tech-savvy abilities for granted. If you provide a platform where people upload information about how to do something better, walk them through the process to display it. The upload or communication process may be straightforward and familiar, but don’t assume that they can figure everything out on their own. Your share economy campaign relies on user-generated information and content. You want your audience to participate as much and as frequently as possible. So, if detailed instructions are one way of encouraging participation, make them as detailed as possible, even if you consider it overkill. Highlight the benefits of sharing. You need to demonstrate to your target audience that sharing provides value, something to keep in mind when you’re creating content for your campaigns. You also have to highlight the value of your target audience’s specific participation. Audience members are going to ask why they should spend their time sharing about brand. You have to answer that question before they’ll take the time and effort to engage. Consider an incentive-based initiative. One of the fastest ways to drive up participation in any campaign, including a share economy-focused initiative, is to provide your Millennial audience with some sort of incentive or acknowledgment. It doesn’t have to be anything grand, but it should be something that highlights the individual user, like a leaderboard or a Contributor of the Month program. Communicate with your audience as a peer. You want your community to establish a real relationship with your brand. To build up the community as quickly as possible, communicate with participants on a peer level. If you hide behind a corporate persona, you can’t encourage real relationships.

Article / Updated 09-27-2017

Leveraging the share economy to market to Millennials isn’t going to be a strategy that suits every brand. For some, there simply isn’t going to be a way to organically integrate a sharing component into a product or marketing strategy. To effectively leverage the share economy, you can run through a checklist that will help you determine whether your brand is capable of utilizing the strategy. See how many of the following items you can check off: You have an active community forum. You have a peer-to-peer opportunity. You can afford short-term opportunity costs. Your product or service has an online component. You have an active community forum You need to have a community focus if you want to participate in the share economy. If your customer experience doesn’t include engaging with a larger community about your brand, product, or even your industry, then taking full advantage of the share economy may be difficult. A community forum can take different shapes. It can be owned by your brand, where the majority of participants are either customers or hot prospects, or it can be industry-based. If you manufacture power tools, for example, the community forum may include a topic like home improvement with an audience made up of general contractors or builders. The key is to have an online discussion that engages your specific audience. You have a peer-to-peer opportunity The ability to share content has been a pain point for many industries that rely on individual consumption, as opposed to community use of a limitless, digital product, such as software accessed via a cloud service online. As brands have recognized that fighting market demand has no value, they have made adjustments. Instead of adjusting to this demand, your aim should be to create supply for it. Your digital content should be shareable and possess certain qualities that actually encourage users to share your information with one another. You can afford short-term opportunity costs Being able to afford short-term opportunity costs is likely going to be the hardest point to check off on your share economy campaign checklist. Service-based organizations that provide a platform for sharing, such as Uber or Airbnb, don’t have the same opportunity cost as other brands because they own their platform. Leveraging the share economy may mean providing your product for free or for a single fee to several users. In the past, you may have individually charged each user. The benefit of this kind of sharing with Millennials produces short-term brand exposure and long-term loyalty. The question most marketers or business owners need to ask themselves is whether these benefits outweigh the opportunity costs involved in this strategy. Your product or service has an online component The online component serves two purposes. For brands that have online content or logins, an online component makes sharing simpler and can lead to a rapid rise in adoption. For all brands, both those with an online product or service and those that operate offline, the online discussion serves to heighten awareness of the campaign and mitigate the short-term opportunity cost. If you find that your brand, product, or service meets these criteria, then you’re in a great position to take advantage of the share economy by capitalizing on the Millennial’s desire for access over ownership.