Digital marketing to Millennials

Abstract

Millennials, those born from 1980-1999, are the largest generational cohort in history. With this being said, they have massive buying power, which is very significant to marketers. However, before marketing to this generation it is helpful to know how to market to them. Millennials shy away from traditional advertising campaigns and techniques and lean more towards that of social media/the Internet as a means of buying goods/services and helping with their purchasing decision process.

The research and data that I have gathered show ways and methods to effectively advertise to Millennials. Katherine Taken Smith's studies indicate that coupons are the favorite form of online advertising for Millennials, where as they strongly dislike pop-up ads, as they perceive these as annoying. Amelia Ashton Adams' research show that Millennials will shy away from advertisements that contain poor quality content and that are annoying (via frequency of posts). In addition, her studies show that Millennials have a strong desire to share and thus engage in WOM; therefore, advertising is less impactful than word-of-mouth for Millennials purchasing decisions. Lastly, Shawna Brown's study shows that online video is a very effective form of advertising to Millennials.

Finally, I will discuss strategies and implication for marketers attempting to target Millennials. These suggestions I provide are based off of my research on Millennials' characteristics and the research studies that were done on Millennials.