Millennials Crave Mobile's Missing Piece: A Voice

Millennials: the toast of many a successful campaign, the subject of secret cabalistic meetings, the cause of premature baldness for retailers nationwide. Why?

Because they have, or soon will have, a ton of money: $1.4 trillion in spending power by 2020, according to some estimates.

And they like technology. It’s a match made in heaven!

Despite how many trend pieces I see about marketing to millennials, and the hype and hyperbole around mobile ecommerce and millennnials, I just can’t help but feel — with feelings backed by hard, emotionless data, which are the only kind of feelings I can feel anymore — that the differences between generations are subtle.

They revolve around the refractory period of communication and the embrace of technology.

By both of those metrics, millennials are as different from Generation X as the Gen Xers were to baby boomers. Through all tech advances, the way people spend their money hasn’t changed. According to a recent survey called “Marketing to Millennials: Do they Really Shop Differently Online than Gen X and Baby Boomers?” by Adroit Digital, marketers might be better served by segmenting consumers based on behaviors rather than demographics.

The survey asked 1,000 U.S. and Canadian consumers ages 18-35, and 500 US and Canadian consumers 35+, questions regarding the influence of digital advertising on purchase. Citing previous studies, Adroit Digital notes that millennials consider price, value and quality before buying things. A good portion still rely on word of mouth.

The study also shows that different generations have  similar buying habits, regardless of gender or age.  The majority browse in-store, they pay attention to online reviews, and agree that one-click purchasing makes a difference in their likelihood to buy something.

The rise of mobile has consumers craving a more immediate and personal experience with marketers. But so many marketing campaigns seem to be based on the same creepy tactics a fedora-wearing neck beard might use to get a girlfriend: “I saw that you liked Norah Jones one time on Facebook, so I made you a mix tape and left it in your mailbox. And in your friend’s mailbox. And on your pillow. Love me.” It’s a facsimile of personal.

Marketers are sometimes blind to the fact that technology flows both ways. Yes, you now have access to more data than ever about various marketing segments, but millennials have the capability to learn just as much about you. They can know if a product is made in sweatshops, or isn’t sustainably farmed, or contributes to deforestation.

Most marketers hope consumers will just get used to the new status quo, while a small few try offer something more genuine. Mobile is more than a smaller, portable version of desktop.

Millennials want a trusted source that shares their values, to tell them what’s good and what isn’t: friends and family.

This is where mobile marketing could be much stronger. I spoke to Oliver Roup, CEO of affiliate marketing company Viglink, which helps publishers monetize content. He mentioned that a single tweet from a shoe enthusiast Viglink works with, who has 100,000 followers, netted a major shoe retailer $600,000 last year. The enthusiast received nearly a 10% commission.

Obviously, that’s an outlying case. Monetization in the manner that Viglink encourages can be a hard sell on mobile, as links are easily missed or ignored on a device. Many retailers also have a terrible UX for purchasing on mobile. The mobile Web is dying, and traffic is converting to apps.

But the ingredients are all there for a really remarkable marketing strategy based on trustworthy, though brand-tangential, individuals.

Roup’s work is a prognostication, a potential sales model of a digital cadre of trustworthy reps paid entirely on commission. Of course, it’s only one facet of any marketing strategy, but it bears emphasis: Real people wearing, touching, feeling, reacting to, and recommending a product, and you achieve personalization without invasiveness.

Attach those videos and reviews to location-based targeting and offer discounts on the product and you encourage consumer trust, in-store and digital engagement. All of which is exactly what millennials want.

Millennials Crave Mobile"s Missing Piece: A Voice

Online store Crave Home's content marketing tips

Jude Turner, owner of Crave Home.

When and how did you get started with your content marketing efforts in your business? What were the motivations?

For years I just concentrated on giving great customer service in-store and looking after the customers we currently had. But then I realised that if I wanted my business to grow I needed more of those customers, and that word of mouth was only going to go so far to do that.

At the time I didn’t have too much of an advertising budget – although I would put ads into the home magazines because I knew my customers and potential customers read them – but I did have a Facebook page that my customers were good at interacting with.

My business coach, Zac de Silva from Business Changing, suggested I put a bit of a focus on growing my Facebook page and other social media channels through using good content, so I’ve been doing that for the past six months.

So what are some of the different channels you’re using, and what kinds of content are you producing for them?

We use our Facebook page – which is currently sitting around 6000 ‘likes’ – Instagram and Pinterest, which is huge with our customers. We also have a newsletter. Our customers are generally pretty tech savvy and really interested in homewares, design, styling and the latest in home design trends, so they’re always scouring the web for new inspiration and hot new releases so they’re open to anything along those lines.

I also opened our online store www.cravehome.co.nz last year, and talking to my customers through these online channels is great because they can usually just click straight through to the product page and buy then and there if they’re interested. I also like the dialogue we get from them – customers ‘liking’ a post we put up, or asking how much or what colours they come in. It’s a bit like being a virtual personal shopper sometimes.

What kind of impact are you seeing from your efforts so far?

Our follower numbers on all three of those social media accounts have grown, but I think more importantly it’s just got the Crave Home name out there a bit more. Before we were quite well known to our Birkenhead locals or on the North Shore, but now we regularly have people coming over from across the bridge or ordering online from around New Zealand, just because they’ve got to know us through our social media posts and content marketing.

It’s really cool for me to see how many people click through to our online store from our newsletter – and then even cooler to see them make a purchase! For me, success with this is primarily about growing brand awareness and perception at the moment – I figure the sales will come; getting our name out there and having more people learn about us, what we sell and why we’re pretty great is my main measure of success at the moment. I think it’s a pretty good ROI.

What have you learned so far about what works and what doesn’t in terms of engaging your particular audience?

Giveaways work in ramping up the engagement on our Facebook posts! People love them and they most certainly drive engagement. Also, in the beginning I was wary of posting too much and thought I’d put people off if I just kept putting up product shots of what was new in store. But in fact we’ve found our followers really like to hear from us and to keep up with what’s new and cool. I’ve just improved a bit on how I do it by using more ‘styled’ images of our products.

I think this has particularly paid off on Instagram where account holders are all about images that look good. But I’ve also learnt that our followers like homeware-related posts – nothing to do with my store or the things we sell, but based around home design or celebration and gift ideas.

For example, in the lead up to Christmas we shared some cool present wrapping ideas, some festive food suggestions and ways to bring Christmas into your home using things like driftwood and decals. Those posts got tons of engagement, with likes and comments and people tagging their friends in. They’re always looking for inspiration and new trends.

What plans do you have in terms of evolving or improving your content marketing from here?

I just need to keep working at it and making it more regular. I know it works and it’s important, so I just have to find time each week to work on it. There’s quite a wide scope for my audience, as far as their common interests are concerned, so in the future I can see us doing more articles on topics of interest to our followers – things like how to style a shelf – as well as having guest bloggers, contributing more to magazines, running evening events with special design guests, and having our customers share their purchases at home, in-situ, with us. But my number one goal? It’s to get us featured on The Block!

- NZ Herald

Online store Crave Home"s content marketing tips