Because we get it – it’s important to stay on top of trends in a rapidly evolving digital landscape, where Generation Z holds immense influence and purchasing power. So, we built this Insights Hub (and a bunch of other ones), to provide you with comprehensive information and actionable strategies that’ll help you engage, connect, and thrive in the wonderful world of Generation Z.

Who Is Generation Z?

The Definition of Generation Z

Generation Z, often referred to as Gen Z or Zoomers, represents the cohort of individuals born roughly between 1996 and 2012ish. While the exact dates defining this generation may vary, they are commonly considered the successors to Millennials. 

They’re Digital Natives

Generation Z is the first generation to have grown up entirely in the digital era. They have been exposed to technology from an early age, seamlessly adapting to smartphones, social media platforms, and a hyper-connected lifestyle. 

This innate familiarity with digital tools and online platforms has influenced their communication style, information consumption patterns, and overall digital fluency. Much of the communication that you see now from companies, is patterned after the behaviors of Millennials and Gen Z. 

Growing up in a rapidly advancing digital age, Generation Z has been deeply influenced by technology and the internet, shaping their behaviors, preferences, and outlook on the world. They represent the first generation who are truly digital natives. They have grown up surrounded by technology, social media, and instant connectivity. To give you a bit of context, the oldest Zoomers were only in first or second grade when MySpace launched in 2003.

With a unique set of characteristics and preferences, this generation is reshaping industries, challenging traditional marketing practices, and revolutionizing consumer behavior. So, let’s get into ALL THINGS GEN Z.

Generation Z Values

Diversity and Multiculturalism

As the most diverse generation of Americans in history, Generation Z is characterized by its diversity. About 49 percent of Gen Zers identify as an ethnic or racial minority. This generation embraces multiculturalism, with members representing a wide array of ethnic backgrounds, cultures, and identities.

They value inclusivity, diversity, and equality, and expect brands and organizations to reflect these values in their practices. Gen Z’s embrace of diversity extends beyond ethnicity and encompasses gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Socially Conscious

Generation Z is all about making a difference! Whether it’s fighting climate change, pushing for racial justice, promoting gender equality, or supporting mental health, Gen Zers actively look for ways to have a positive impact on the world. 

The term “slacktivist” gets floated around as means of identifying social media users whose fervent interest in a social cause doesn’t extend beyond the virtual walls of their favorite social media platform. But those who use that term often don’t consider the power of social media to influence the mass and be used as a call to arms for supporters of different causes.

According to Pew Research, Gen Zers and Millennials cast a quarter of the votes in the 2018 midterm elections. No small feat when you consider that 4.5 million votes that were estimated to be cast in 2018 were from a generation of voters who weren’t even old enough to vote in the previous midterm elections.

Hustle

Gen Z is all about that hustle! For this group, hustle matters because success matters. Getting 1 percent better every day – that whole situation? That matters. Gen Z has an incredible entrepreneurial spirit that starts very early on. These guys are go-getters! Compared to other generations, Gen Zers over-index on: 

• Being successful (62 percent of Gen Zers prioritize success vs 49 percent for everyone else)
• Learning new skills (61 percent vs 54 percent)
• Challenging myself (48 percent vs 40 percent)

Gen Z is all about those side hustles, personal branding, and entrepreneurial ventures. They aren’t known for waiting for opportunities to come knocking; they’re out there creating their own paths. So, as they enter the workforce into corporate environments with rules, traditions, and red tape, it’s easy for older professionals to mistake their alacrity as entitlement. 

So, independence and autonomy are major buzzwords for Gen Z. 

Personalization and Authenticity

Generation Z seeks personalized experiences and authentic connections. They value brands and companies that understand their individuality and cater to their specific needs and preferences. Traditional marketing methods often fall short with this generation, as they can quickly identify inauthentic or generic attempts to engage with them.

Hyperconnected and Visual Communication

Communication for Generation Z is mostly visual and usually instant. They are experts at using emojis, memes, and visual content to express themselves. Short attention spans, attributed to the constant flow of information, have made Gen Z highly skilled at filtering through content quickly. They prefer bite-sized, easily digestible information and have a strong affinity for video and visual platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

What Is the Population of Gen Z? Well… Kinda Depends on Where You Are

Gen Z holds the distinction of being the third-largest generation in the United States after Millennials and Baby Boomers, making up 1 in 5 Americans (or 20.6 percent). In Canada, the numbers are a bit lower, with Gen Z encompassing roughly 18 percent of the Canadian population. However, their representation varies significantly across different countries. For instance:

• In Australia, Generation Z accounts for nearly 20 percent of the country’s population.
• In China, Gen Z constitutes around 16 to 18 percent of the nation’s inhabitants.
• In Japan, Gen Zers make up 13 percent of the nation’s population.
• On the continent of Africa, Gen Zers make up 31 percent of the population.
• And they account for as much as a quarter of the population in Nigeria, a country where more than half the population is under the age of 18.

Gen Z Money Moves: How Gen Z Earns, Saves, and Spends

Let’s talk about Generation Z and their money. In America, there are approximately 7.3 million full-time Gen Z workers who collectively earn a staggering $229 billion in full-time employment wages. Part-time employment contributes around $70 billion per year to their earnings. And since this cohort is still making its way into the workforce, we actually have to talk about allowances. Yeah. Allowances provided to Gen Z individuals amount to an impressive $57 billion per year. These statistics highlight the significant financial impact and economic potential of Gen Z in the workforce. 

If ever there was one generation that had a gift for hustling, it’s Generation Z. They’re not afraid to dive into the gig economy! About half of Gen Zers freelance to earn money (or more money), generating a substantial income of $40 billion per year from side gigs and freelance work.

They understand that in the current landscape, they have options. They don’t have to be tied to a desk to make money. They launch online businesses and create content on platforms like YouTube or TikTok to monetize their skills and passions. They’ve got that entrepreneurial spirit and they know how to leverage technology to their advantage.

They’re Savers

But what about saving? You might be surprised to learn that one of the defining characteristics of Generation Z is that they’re actually pretty money-savvy. Why? Well, think about it – they witnessed economic uncertainty and are determined to build a secure future. Many of them prioritize saving from an early age, whether it’s for education, investments, or simply building up an emergency fund. They’re all about that financial independence and having a safety net.

But They’re Also Spenders

Now, let’s talk Gen Z spending habits. What makes Gen Z want to buy? That’s what all the cool kids wanna know. Well, they’re not your traditional spenders. Gen Z values experiences and purposeful purchases. They’re more likely to spend on travel, events, and unique experiences that create memories. And when it comes to products, they’re all about brands that align with their values. Gen Z is known for their love of sustainable, ethical, and socially responsible companies. They want to feel good about where their money is going.

Does Gen Z Tip? Yes… If You Earn a Tip

This one is a popular question right now, and the answer is simle, but has a backstory.

#1 Tipping for All the Things. First of all, tipping practices are changing. You may have noticed that places that didn’t ask for a tip a year ago, all want you to determine – from transaction to transaction – whether you’re going to tip if you happen to make a point-of-sale purchase using a debit or credit card from a point of sale. So, there are more establishments (not necessarily people) requesting tips that may or may not go to the people actually serving you. #thatpart

#2 Gen Z dines out. Percentage-wise, they are least likely to be employed. Convenience-wise, however, Gen Z is the most likely generation to grab takeout. According to Morning Consult, 51 percent of Gen Zers polled say they have treid a new restarant in the last month, compared to 40 percent of all adults.

#3 Facts. Lean pockets + an affinity for eating out + an increase in random establishments requesting tips means that a generation who values authenticity, transparency, fair wages, and corporate responsibility is not going to be overly inclined to tip their hard-earned money (or their parent’s hard-earned money) without believing the tip’s been earned or that they see a compelling enough reason to do so.

Ready to -hole on all things Gen Z? Check out some of our other articles.

Generation Z’s Game-Changing Impact on Industries, Markets, and Marketing

Today, we’re witnessing a wealth of insights around how Gen Z is transforming corporate culture and reshaping the CSR landscape. But here’s the kicker: a whopping 42 percent of Generation Z is still on their journey to adulthood.

Currently, Gen Zers make up about 12 percent of the US labor force, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number’s set to jump to 27 percent in the next two years. Which means…

Not only are they shaping corporate culture and changing the way companies do business, but Gen Zers are doing so largely as culturemakers and consumers, not as employees or company stakeholders.

The Influence of Gen Z on Corporate Culture and CSR Landscape is Just the Beginning

Gen Z has made its mark across various industries, catalyzing significant transformations from fashion and beauty to technology and entertainment. The way Gen Z consumes content on platforms like TikTok has prompted fundamental shifts in how other platforms including giants like Instagram and Facebook present content, moving from connection-based algorithms to interest-based algorithms.

As a result, brands have had to adapt and recognize that simply staying on-brand is no longer enough to raise awareness. They now understand the importance of being interesting and relatable to capture the attention of Gen Zers. This shift has compelled brands to completely revamp their social media marketing strategies. It’s a massive change.

Gen Z and Sustainability: Authentic Action, Not Empty Promises

Gen Z also places great importance on sustainable and ethical practices, pushing industries to take genuine responsibility for their actions and actively support the communities they operate in. Younger consumers prefer to spend their money with brands that align with their values both internally and externally. Nearly 4 in 10 younger Gen Z individuals expect brands to demonstrate social responsibility, while 3 in 10 expect brands to actively contribute to their local communities.

Consequently, brands must embrace social responsibility and community involvement if they want to establish long-term relationships with Gen Z consumers.

Generation Zers tend to lean on their moral compass with a strong inclination to stand up for what’s right. They prioritize critical issues such as healthcare, mental health, education, financial stability, civic engagement, racial equality, inclusion, and environmental conservation.

When it comes to healthcare… Gen Z is looking for convenience, efficiency, and transparency. They readily embrace telemedicine and are comfortable sharing personal information during virtual appointments.

Mental health… holds significant importance for Gen Z. A frequently cited study conducted by the American Psychological Association reports that when surveyed 27 percent of Gen Zers say they would describe their mental health as fair or poor, compared to 15 percent of millennials and 13 percent of Gen Xers. They are more likely than previous generations to be transparent about, and to seek treatment for their mental health struggles.

In higher education… Gen Z prioritizes skill acquisition for their careers, but for many Gen Zers, that no longer means a traditional four-year degree. According to a recent study conducted by ECMC Group, only 51 percent of Gen Z teenagers express interest in pursuing a four-year degree. That’s a huge drop off from the 2020 figures in which 71 percent reported wanting to head to college. Additionally, over a span of two years, there has been a 6.6 percent decrease in total undergraduate enrollment between the fall semesters of 2019 and 2021.

Financial security… They aspire to stable, well-paying jobs and aim to avoid burdensome student loan debt. They are open to non-traditional educational paths and entrepreneurial pursuits. The financial impact of COVID-19 has affected them negatively, but it has also made them more financially cautious.

Government involvement… Gen Z is not content with passive observation; they actively strive for change. They believe in the government’s role in addressing social issues and utilize social media platforms to advocate for causes, displaying high levels of online engagement.

Equality is a core value… Gen Zers champion diversity and work toward ensuring equal opportunities for all. They acknowledge the flaws in the system and support organizations that combat systemic racism.

Environmental concerns… Generation Z members are deeply concerned about climate change and expect brands to take a stand on environmental issues. Deloitte’s 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey reveals that 15 percent of Gen Zers believe they can positively influence their organization’s sustainability efforts. They are willing to invest more in sustainable products and show a preference for supporting environmentally conscious brands.

Conclusion

Understanding Generation Z means understanding Gen Z characteristics – that values and beliefs that make Zoomers such a standout group. These insights are key for businesses, marketers, and society as a whole. Gen Z habits, digital fluency, and social media wizardry are reshaping industries and pushing boundaries. By speaking their language, embracing innovation, and reflecting their aspirations, we can build meaningful connections and create a future that thrives with Gen Z’s dynamism.

As Gen Z continues to make waves, their impact will reshape everything—from commerce and technology to the way we connect and thrive together. So let’s tune in to their vibes, celebrate their uniqueness, and join forces to create a world that’s vibrant, inclusive, and bursting with youthful spirit for this extraordinary generation.

The post Meet Generation Z: Characteristics and Values of America’s Most Diverse Generation appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

But smart marketers have their sights set on converting them now. To date, Generation Z is the single most influential generation of kids in history to wield sway over Mom’s and Dad’s wallets. And their financial superpowers are only going to get stronger.

Who Is Generation Z?

Generation Z is the age group born between approximately 1996 and 2012, though there continues to be some debate around the exact birth years that make up Generation Z. In general, the consensus says that the members of the cohort that follows Millennials were born starting in the mid-1990s up through the early 2010s.

Gen Z commands a remarkable $360 billion in buying power according to Bloomberg, compared to $143 billion in buying power just 4 years ago. For the next 20 years, as this generation continues to enter the workforce and maximize their earning potential, their spending power will continue to increase.

Which is why we’re even talking, right?

Today, while some of them still have to be in the house before the streetlights come on (jk – kids today have no idea about the street-light curfew their parents grew up with), Gen Zers play a huge role in how the adults around them spend money.

Ninety-three percent of parents say their Gen Z children influence their household spending. Another 70 percent of parents ask their Gen Z kids for advice before making purchase decisions. That’s A LOT of influence.

The obvious next question you probably have is how can you influence them to buy your product or service?! Let’s find out what makes post-millennials buy.

While the oldest members of Generation Z have already entered the workforce and are starting families, its youngest members are still in middle school.

8 Gen Z Spending Habits to Inform Your Marketing Strategy

#1 Gen Z Consumers Value Their Boundaries and Their Privacy

Generation Z consumers don’t play about their privacy. They take extra measures to safeguard their personal information. As this article’s being updated, Snapchat users – 58 percent of whom are between the ages of 13 and 24 years old (or about 364 million people) are flooding social conversations with negative reviews of Snapchat’s new AI feature, using words like “invasive” and “creepy” to describe the AI’s ability to always know (and share) where users happen to be. And it’s a new feature they cannot opt out of without subscribing to Snapchat’s premium monthly subscription.

So the headlines are all like…

Boundaries matter to Gen Z! and Snapchat seems to have wandered into a privacy landmine that’s ticking off large portions of its users. Take a look at the following stats from SheerID:

• 87 percent of Gen Zers say privacy is more important than getting “likes” on social media.

• 75 percent of them will only use location features on apps when it’s required to function (which is why Snapchat users are going ham).
• 58 percent turn location sharing on and off based on how and when they wish to use it.
• 33 percent of Gen Zers worry about the security measures of brands.
• 38 percent worry that brands are sharing their personal info without consent.

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It’s also worth noting that fewer than 1 in 3 teens are cool with the idea of sharing their personal details beyond just contact info and purchase history.

Now, don’t go crazy. I’m not saying you can’t try collecting their emails to market to them. Two in three Gen Zers are okay sharing their personal information with brands they trust.

So, build some trust!

Create useful content that’s targeted. Personalization is big with these guys. The key is to prove your value then assure them you’re taking the proper measures to protect their data.

Value + security. That’s your way in.

#2 Gen Z is Willingly Loyal to Brands (assuming your brand offers the best overall deals)

Loyal to brands? In 2023? Yah. With post-millennials, you have a pretty good chance of snagging loyal customers — but only if you can align with their expectations (and slim personal budgets).

Gen Zers are looking at your brand’s mission, product quality, and service before committing. So, you’re going to need to fine-tune these areas if you want their ongoing business.

• 60 percent of Gen Z consumers are happy to be associated with their brand of choice.
• 2 in 3 say they’ll stick with the brands they like and buy from them for years.
• 65 percent admit that rewards programs influence which brands they choose.

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For Gen Zers, if you can demonstrate your loyalty to them and align with their values and needs, then they’ll return the favor by becoming a long-term customer. Which brings us to the next point – personalization.

#3 Personalization Is Super Valuable for Building Trust

Young consumers are looking for personalized experiences from brands. They want to know you’re listening and that you see them. Things like rewards programs matter and they have a HUGE impact on whether younger buyers patronize your brand. Plain and simple.

Rewards programs

We talked about rewards programs a bit in the post on millennial dads, and like millennial dads, Gen Zers aren’t super-thrilled about having to track down promo codes. So, you’ll probably find that a rewards program that sends or notifies them of specific rewards works best.

So, we’re not really talking about creating a bunch of digital coupons that Gen Zers will have to go on a treasure hunt to find. That won’t really work. Restaurants like Wendy’s, Chick-Fil-A and Chili’s send emails and/or SMS notifications to their customers of deals and FREEBIES (like free desserts, sandwiches, and BOGO deals) straight to their phones. Super smart, since Gen Zers tend to over index on eating out and being more adventurous when it comes to food as compared to other generations, according to Morning Consult.

Other apps have geo-fencing capabilities that remind users of existing deals whenever they are within close proximity of the store.

So, whether you want to offer free chicken sandwiches or a birthday discount if you don’t have a rewards program yet, it’s time to create one. And keep in mind that price is critical to these savvy shoppers — 60 percent of Gen Z base their brand choice on price. Yeah, they influence a significant amount of household spending, for most of them, Mom and Dad are still supplying them with spending money in the form of an allowance.

Targeting with gated content

Also, consider developing a plan to attract them with gated content. Capitalize on this by creating exclusive promotions for different groups based on their ages, affiliations, or occupations.

For example, you can have separate promotions for college students, recent grads, and adults in the workforce. Aligning your content and your offer to their individual needs will show you understand them and are committed to helping them.

Not sure if it’ll work? Maybe this will make you feel better:

• 41 percent of Gen Zers say gated content makes them feel rewarded
• 41 percent say they feel special
• 54 percent feel excited

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Identity marketing

A fancy term that just means you’re personalizing your marketing for different groups based on their life stages, affiliations, occupations, passions, etc. This is a great solve for the zero-party-data world we’re living in, folks. And it works with younger consumers because this form of personalization provides an opportunity for Gen Z consumers AND their peers to take advantage of your promos, rewards, discounts, and special access opps.

Think of how important a student discount may be to a college student in the current environment. According to a webinar I attended just today sponsored by SheerID, 89 percent of students would buy more if extended a student discount. And the retailers who offer these types of discounts typically see a 20 percent increase in average order value.

Add to that this stat (from the same webinar) that 72 percent of high school and college students polled said they would be more loyal to brands that gave them exclusive offers.

Short-term discount for long-term loyalty.

#4 Gen Zers Are Working Earlier and More Than Millennials Did At the Same Age

For Generation Z, money is a HUGE motivator. When it comes to things that matter to Gen Z, 62 percent of those polled say that success matters to them. More than any other generation, they would say that challenging themselves, upskilling and making progress are high on their list of important values.

Twenty-something Gen Zers are shopping for homes already. And let me tell you — they’re not doing the tiny house thing. They want 2,000+ sq ft and are willing to buy a fixer-upper at a lower price to get it.

Gen Z members are also working while in school, which was one of the things millennials didn’t really do as much as previous generations.

Whereas millennials wanted to focus solely on their education and then enter the workforce after college, Gen Zers are already working. About 10 percent of them are working full time, earning $229B in FT employment wages, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. They’re not trying to follow in the footsteps of the 13 percent of millennials who didn’t even have jobs until after they were in their twenties.

Here’s another interesting tidbit: Nearly half of Gen Zers (46 percent) have already joined the gig economy to maximize their earning potential and get the things they want.

For Gen Z consumers, your hustle matters.

What are they buying? Well, they’re buying what young people buy. Clothing is at the top of their shopping list, no doubt driven by the desire to sport different looks in the photos they publish to Instagram and other platforms. But it’s worth noting that they’re willing to pay for a monthly membership to access lightly used clothes (and even clothing repair services).

Makes sense, right? Gen Z did grow up during a recession.

So what does all of this mean for marketers?

I mean… Gen Z is a budget-conscious group that likes to earn and spend money. That’s all teens and young people, isn’t it?

Yeah, but we’re talking about recession kids. This group has a different mindset. They can save enough cash for a down payment on a home within five years. A home.

If you can offer something they really want, they’ll find a way to make the money to buy it. The thing is, you have to know how to make your thing attractive to this generation. If you do that, even if your price is steep, they’ll find a way to increase income so they can buy it.

A quick tip: If you can come up with payment plans and other methods to maken buying your thing more affordable without sacrificing quality, you’ll significantly boost your chances of winning them over.

#5 Gen Z Cares About What Your Brand Cares About

It’s not enough to develop a product or service that’s within their budget. And it’s not enough to have the best-quality offer to meet their needs.

If they learn that your brand is all about making money or, worse, participating in egregious acts (like hiring kids in a sweatshop), then you can forget about earning their trust and loyalty.

In fact, you may even get your brand name slandered all across social media. So it’s time to straighten up and find a cause if you haven’t already.

Social responsibility matters to younger buyers. So, let me ask you: what do you stand for? And how does your brand reflect that you’re concerned about what matters to them? The time has come to look deep and ask yourself what cause you can back passionately and effectively, because when Gen Zers are looking at your products, you better believe they’ll be looking for your answer.

If you need some guidance around social issues that really move this generation, take a look at what they care about most. You can compare them to millennials below.

#6 For Generation Z, Connection Comes From Authenticity

Geez… who isn’t on the hunt for authenticity these days? Between your typical brand hyperbole, social media filters, AI, and magic-working makeup, it’s hard to find “real” anywhere.

For the 12 to 27 crowd, there are a handful of things that are really critical when it comes to engaging with brands. Because young people talk. They are quick to share their experiences – positive or negative – with their communities. And these communities rely on recommendations from others within the community.

According to SmartBrief, “Some 27 percent of Gen Z consumers always share recommendations or reviews following purchases, while 37 percent do so most of the time.”

Almost 69 percent ‘very often’ search for reviews and recommendations of items they’re considering buying, per an infographic from Social Media Link.

More than 85 percent of Gen Z consumers trust recommendations from friends and family the most, followed by online reviews at just over 76 percent and social followers at 62 percent.

What to do when the authenticity you need to demonstrate is off-brand

You want to reach younger consumers, but your brand team is giving you the side eye about your campaign ideas. Well, this mini-article is going to provide tips for some workarounds for brand guidelines that make it difficult to seem relevant.

If you want to reach younger buyers, the fastest path to their attention is to integrate technology and creative storytelling into your marketing strategy. And visual marketing works really well for this.

GRAPHICS AND IMAGES

If your brand is using photoshopped images and staged props, you’re less likely to convert a Gen Z scroller into a clicker. Something like 79 percent of post-millennials say they’ll trust a brand more if it doesn’t use photo editing.

If you’re getting resistance from higher-ups on your loosening the restrictions around your branding and marketing assets, say so. Tell your audience the story of how you can’t take shortcuts and then document your process and release that content as behind-the-scenes footage. Heck, you could even create a meme.

Twenty-nine percent of Gen Zers who answered a Meta poll said BTS content makes them feel a closer connection to brands. Boom! Just what you needed to see, right? Here’s another one: 57 percent like it when brands participate in memes, according to the 2022 YouTube Trends Report.

Focus on your internal process and the humans behind the beautiful photoshoots and product layouts. This way you boost awareness around your product AND connect with the audience. It’s a smart workaround to stay on your CMO’s good side and still win authenticity points with younger buyers.

MESSAGING

This is another sticky area where brands – especially legacy brands – have a hard time jumping into the fray to appeal to younger buyers. If your messaging is typically more formal or high-brow, it’s going to be tough to suddenly switch things up and start using slang and making dance-trend videos. Without seeming like the Pierce of the group (“Community” reference).

The fix? Influencers, dude. This is the situation in which influencers are worth their weight in GOLD! Creators have a knack for creatively delivering brand messaging in language that resonates with THEIR audiences (not yours).

If your team has done a great job with influencer selection, the audience of your influencer partner WILL ALSO BE a segment of your target audience.

Influencers are perfect for this sort of thing because they can demonstrate the value of your product contextually, in a way that matters to your audience. I LOVE this example from skateboarding TikToker GmCasto for CeraVe (the way he keeps saying “might as well” tho.)

@gmcasto CeraVe lotion is so good for my skin that I had to try it out for skating @CeraVe #ceravepartner #cerave ♬ original sound – Garrett Casto

Look at the comments! This piece of #sponcon art right here is why working with non-celeb influencers works so well. And if you can create an edgy campaign, then even better.

Gen Z doesn’t love traditional marketing… and they’re really good at not noticing it.

VIDEO

Teens watch twice as many videos on mobile than any other group. As a brand, YouTube has more influence over this generation than big names like Oreo, Mcdonald’s, and even Lego.

Eight-five percent of teens watch YouTube, and 70 percent of them watch two hours of YouTube daily, usually in one of three categories:

• Humor – They love videos that make them laugh
• Short and snappy content to compete with their busy lives and busy minds
• Unboxing and product reviews to keep on top of trends

Now that I think of it, I can grab a screenshot of something from an internal insights hub our team built on Notion for Generation Z. It’s not the most beautiful thing we’ve ever published, but it’ll give you an idea of the preferred content formats for Gen Z. And let’s give it up for Notion templates!!

#7 For Gen Zs, Being Distracted Doesn’t Mean DisConnected

Sure, millennials grew up with the internet and desktop computers. But Gen Z grew up with mobile devices and social media, and it shows in their daily habits.

Sixty-six percent of Gen Zers are ultra-distracted because they’re using more than one device at a time. As you’d imagine, they are watching entire seasons of shows On Demand while doing stuff on their and grabbing their smartphones when they ping. And they’re engaging with each device throughout the day (or even by the hour).

Because of all these inter-connected distractions, it’s tough to get, and even tougher to keep, the attention of your average Gen Zer. If you thought millennials’ 12-second attention spans were bad, then you’ll find Generation Z’s 8-second attention span horrifying.

Or is it? As it turns out, Gen Zs may have stumbled across an evolutionary moment for humans that previous generations can’t really grok. According to a Kantar study commissioned by Snapchat, Gen Zers display higher advertiser recall than older social media users even when they’ve spent less time actually watching an ad.

Less than two seconds. That’s what the average Gen Z consumer needs to see and remember an ad AND the advertiser. For foggy minds like mine whose system for remembering things includes paper and digital planners and existing in a perpetual state of having 33 tabs open on my laptop AND my desktop (because I am legit working on both right now)… this is unfathomable.

I literally can’t with this.

Gen Alpha has yet to show up on the scene and really move the evolutionary needle for humanity, but Gen Z has mastered the concept of distracted but not disconnected:

• 94% own laptop computers
• 80% receive most information from social media
• 75% say smartphones are their top choice
• 75% spend their free time online
• 73% follow at least 1 brand on a social
• 25% spend five hours A DAY on their phones

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It seems as though they spend the majority of their lives on a device. As a brand, you can capitalize on this by ensuring your campaigns are responsive.

50% of Gen Z consumers are more likely to buy from brands that demonstrate they really understand their wants and needs.

And 41 percent say they would buy from a brand that delivers timely, responsive customer service over a competitor, according to SproutSocial.

Being mobile-friendly isn’t enough. Your ads, blog posts, videos, and other marketing materials need to be accessible and easy to engage with on any platform.

To that point, make sure your content is interesting, visually-appealing, and engaging. Eighty-five percent of Gen Zers say easy mobile experiences are a top priority for making a purchase. In other words, if it won’t work on mobile, then you’ve lost a potential customer.

#8 Gen Z’s Shopping Journey Begins & Ends In the Store

Here’s an interesting catch though, and it’s a BIG one:

Despite the virtual tendencies of this digital-native generation, guess where they are going for reprieve? Good ol’ brick and mortar stores. If your response was “what the what” that’s okay.

We’ve got intel. As of September 2019:

81 percent of Gen Zers prefer shopping in-store.

73 percent like to discover new products in store.

While this generation is immersed in all things digital, they are seeking refuge in the physical. So, thought needs to go into aligning your in-store experiences with your digital campaigns, too.

Gen Z discovering brands and products through social search

Generation Z isn’t using Google to search around for products to buy. Instead, they’re exposed to products on Instagram and they search for everything from local restaurants to local events on TikTok. Weren’t you shocked last summer when the stat that 40 percent of Gen Zers use TikTok and IG for search starting floating around?

That stat’s a little misleading, as I discovered when I walked that info back a bit. The original story published by TechCrunch was around Gen Z bypassing Google for TikTok, not TikTok bypassing Google as a search engine.

Still, it was startling… but kinda believable, right?

Young shoppers are finding and being shown new products in their social feeds. So, what happens once they discover a product? The next step is to head on over to YouTube to see it up close and personal, while also getting an honest review from a YouTuber they trust. They’ll likely look at multiple videos to get a holistic view of a product or service before making a decision.

So quite literally, their experiences with your product in the physical world will often be seeded from a digital or virtual experience. Best advice, short and sweet: Build a social media marketing strategy that includes working with non-celebrity influencers that threads opportunities to reach them with personalized content on their phones through SMS, gated communities, or paid social.

Wrapping Things Up

In the beginning, marketers thought Gen Z would be an extension of millennials. They grew up in a similar technologically advanced world, so it only made sense that they would follow suit.

But as we look closer, we can see the lines drawn between millennials and Generation Z, especially in the way they shop. Post-millennials are more inclined to purchase in stores, care more about cool products than cool experiences, and are prominent in speaking and acting on important matters.

Brands that stand for something, offer seamless online/offline experiences, and are obligated to providing quality products at competitive prices are going to come out on top. Because remember, Gen Z will make up nearly half of the consumer market in less than a year.

So if you haven’t already future-proofed your campaigns, it’s time to start!

The post What Makes Them Buy: The Gen Z Spending Habits To Know in 2023 appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

In this post, we look specifically at how a few important characteristics of Millennial Parents and how they use social media to make purchasing decisions.

Millennial Moms

Who Are Millennial Moms?

Estimated to be born between 1980 and 1995ish (we actually adjusted this date since we first explored this demographic in 2018), Millennial women are now between the ages of 28 and 43 years old. They are the kids of Baby Boomers and Gen X parents.

More and More Millennials Are Becoming Moms

More than 80 percent of new moms are Millennials, according to BabyCenter. Approximately a quarter of America’s mothers are Millennials, and about half of Millennial women are now moms to school-age kids. I want to say the number falls somewhere around 10 to 12 million moms, but I can’t say for sure. What I can say is the percentage of mothers who are Millennials will increase over the next decade and a half. Why so long? Well… in part, because women are starting their families later and giving birth to kids well into their 40s. And the youngest Millennial women are still in their late 20s.

Millennial Moms Really Are Different From Previous Generations

Culturally… Sixty-seven percent of Millennial Moms are multicultural, according to research from Carat. In fact, Millennial Moms and their children are part of the two most ethnically diverse generations currently living in the US.

When it comes to the work-life thing… Like Gen X and Boomer Moms, most Millennial Moms work, often out of necessity. And it’s a heavy load to carry for the one in three moms who feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities, according to data released by MDLIVE. Thirty percent of Millennial Moms work full time, and 35 percent call themselves homemakers.

In 2018, one-third of Millennial Moms were the primary breadwinners in their households, and a third of THEM were either unmarried, or not cohabitating with a partner. In 2022, for moms as a whole, nearly half (47 percent) are the primary breadwinners for their households.

But as the children of Millennial Moms get older, balancing their own mental health with that of their kids’ mental health is proving to be tough.

When it comes to a sense of self… According to Think with Google, 67 percent of millennial moms say they have continued to pursue their personal passions since having children, which is significantly higher than Gen X moms.

When it comes to money… Unlike mothers of generations before them, Millennial Moms are, by and large, more confident with (and more savvy about) finances and products that protect their family’s financial well-being.

Millennial Moms and Their Identities As Mothers

Motherhood is crucial to the identities of Millennial Moms. In fact, with so many “social” eyes watching, being a perfect mom is a goal to which many Millennial Moms aspire. In a world where Millennial Moms must work, 17 percent of Millennial Dads are now stay-at-home dads.

Work-Life balance is an ideal to which many Millennial Moms aspire. One in four Millennial Moms is willing to pay at least $50 a month to have someone step in and help them keep their home lives organized. About 20 percent of Millennial Moms are willing to pay up to $150 a month for that kind of help. It’s probably a good move considering one in five family meals are now being eaten in a car.

Get this: 9 in 10 Millennial Moms would clone themselves if the option were ever on the table. Interestingly enough, about a quarter of the women polled would send then their clones to medical school just so they’d be able to step in as doctors or nurses as needed. Me? I’d have the cloned me in charge of laundry. And proofreading. And Instagram engagement. Laundry, proofreading, and Instagram engagement.

And maybe those third and fourth performances of The Nutcracker at my daughter’s ballet school.

WHAT JOBS WOULD MOMS WANT THEIR CLONES TO DO?

1. Housekeeper – 56%
2. Laundry service – 51%
3. Chef – 41%
4. Nanny/babysitter – 38%
5. Personal assistant – 36%
6. Personal shopper – 34%
7. Tutor/homework helper – 31%
8. Handywoman – 30%
9. Chauffeur – 28%
10. Doctor/nurse – 26%

Source: SWNS Digital

How Millennial Moms Use Social Media

Millennial Moms are social creatures indeed, significantly more social than Gen X Moms. While Millennial Moms favor Instagram and Facebook (average MM has 500 Facebook friends), the typical Millennial Mom have 3.4 social media accounts, compared to 2.6 accounts for moms, according to Weber Shandwick’s Digital Women Influencers: Millennial Moms report.

For Entertainment

Millennial Moms prefer smartphones to laptops. More than half of the Millennial Moms surveyed said they spend most or all of their time online using their phones. They also spend more than 17 hours on social networks every week. That’s 30 percent more time than the average mom spends on social sites. Millennial Moms spend two hours more per week on social than they do watching TV.

For Community

Where Millennial Moms are concerned, “community” is the magic word. Millennial moms have more close friends than the average mom (24 vs 22 for other moms). Yes, they spend more time on social, but they’re not vegging out on Instagram. They engage with one another. The average Millennial Mama gets asked for a product recommendation 9.6 times per month.

She also offers her own unsolicited product recommendations online 10.4 times a month.

Millennial Moms rely on the online communities they’ve built to make buying decisions and are totally okay with offering their opinions online about products – any products at all. They talk openly about clothes, brands, retailers, experience-based services, and even financial products.

In addition to giving advice, 46 percent of Millennial Moms look to the recommendations of their own networks when it comes time to make buying decisions.

How They Shop

Moms control 85 percent of household purchases, with spending power that tops $2 trillion. Women also outpace men when it comes to using mobile for shopping, especially in-store shopping.

Millennial Moms Look for Deals

Millennial Moms shop for deals. Here are a few interesting stats from Tribe and Retail TouchPoints:

• 83 percent of Millennial Moms shop online to hunt for the best price
• 79 percent of Millennial Moms use e-commerce to get a better selection of products
• 62 percent of Millennial Moms shop online because of the good shipping options
• 57 percent of Millennial Moms shop big sales like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday
• 49 percent of Millennial Moms shop at big box retailers and clubs for discounts and bulk buying opportunities.

I, and 41 percent of my female contemporaries, look up email promotions while actually in the store.

How does that play out? While my better half is loading the conveyor belt with products from our cart, I am punching in the names of products as they move down the belt to find discounts. Between the time we get in line and the time hubby hands over the cash, I can usually cut our bill by up to 25 percent with coupons I can click to download to my phone in a few seconds. I count it a victory, a dazzling display of teamwork.

That’s women shoppers for you.

What about brand names? Well, Millennials, as a whole, tend to be less brand-focused than Gen Xers, Flipside: Millennial parents can be swayed. More than half of Millennial parents say they are “very loyal” to a brand once they find one they think is the perfect marriage of quality + price.

And Millennial Moms heavily favor speed and convenience to streamline as much of their day-to-day work+life tasks as they possibly can. One in four Millennial Moms has a smart home assistant like Google Home or Amazon Echo. And of those who have such devices in the house, 31 percent of Millennial Moms use them to add items to their shopping lists.

Millennial Moms are far more likely to have necessities like diapers and beauty products delivered to their homes than to spend time combing the aisles for them in-store. Forty percent of Millennial parents currently use a subscription service.

Millennial Dads

Who Are Millennial Dads?

If you think there’s a bit of a gap between how Millennial Moms do things compared to previous generations of moms, I gotta say: Dadhood has changed quite a bit as well. While the youngest Millennial men are still finding their footing in the workforce, older Millennial Men have officially reached middle age (gasp!). No less cool… just older.

Millennials are parenting about half the world’s kids. No small feat, considering we just posted about how there are 50 million kids heading back to America’s public schools for the 2022-23 school year.

Without a doubt, Millennial Dads are responsible for some of the biggest shifts in fatherhood… maybe ever. They are more likely to think of fatherhood as important to their identities; when polled, 9 in 10 Millennial Dads even went so far as to say it’s important for them to be the “perfect dad”.

Crushing It As Dad

Millennial Dads spend five more hours per week with their children than dads did in 1995, and 3x the number of hours dads from 1965 spent with their kids.

Prince Harry’s request for a two-week paternity leave just ahead of the birth of his baby boy made headlines. Granted, I’m not exactly sure what he does as his 9 to 5 (other than be the most awesome Royal), but his request isn’t an unusual request for today’s new parents. Paternity leave is a priority for Millennial parents; 80 percent of Millennial Dads would be reluctant to leave a job that offered paternity leave.

Millennial Dads prioritize family time, and many of them are sharing in the day-to-day responsibilities of raising children and maintaining a family. Half of the two-parent households say they split the household chores equally between the parents.

How Millennial Dads Use Social Media

For Millennial men, fatherhood seems to turn on that social media gene. About 70 percent of Millennial men use social media, according to Nielson Newswire. They use blogs, online news websites, and social networking sites to make purchase decisions.

By the same token, 70 percent of Millennial Dads seek out parenting information online, according to Think With Google. And most of the time, that searching is done using the device closest to them – usually their smartphones. When are those moments showing up? Daily. Half of the dads are heading to social media daily for parenting advice.

As well, 45 percent of Millennial Dads use search to get answers to questions on everything from the best baby products to the best cities for families. This they do in lieu of getting advice from their own dads, by the way.

Dad Time

Far more than Boomer fathers, Millennial Dads are kicking in on one-on-one time with the kids, the shopping decisions, and the housework. As most Millennial families are two-income households, the changing role of fathers in the home is just too big for marketers to ignore.

Millennial Dads dedicate 28 percent of their time online to dad-related content and 60 percent of Millennial fathers say they’re better dads because of the resources they’re able to find online. One such resource is YouTube. Moreso than millennial Moms, Millennial Dads rely on YouTube for parenting guidance and as a way to connect with their kids.

How Millennial Dads Make Buying Decisions

When we ran down the stats for our recent back-to-school post, one of the things that stood out was the fact that, on average, dads outspend moms on back-to-school stuff by more than 100 bucks.

It’s not really a question of whether or not Dad goes shopping. It’s more a question of how Millennial Dads are shopping. Eighty percent of Millennial Dads handle (or chime in on) the household shopping, and we’re not talking about getting a list from Mom and running an errand she doesn’t have time to run. I’m talking about Dad doing a little research then going to the store to buy what his family needs. And Millennial Dads shop a little differently than Millennial Moms.

Couponing

Millennial Dad probably isn’t going to the store in a fanny pack stocked with coupons as Millennial Mom. He isn’t even super-duper concerned about loading up his grocery store app with digital coupons. One, it takes too long, and most dads are all about getting the task done fast and done well. And two, handing a fistful of paper coupons to a pretty cashier is not on any dude’s list of ways to crush it. It’s just not.

So, if you’re a brand that’s targeting men, discounts are great and they absolutely WILL make it more likely that Dad will buy your brand… but add the discount to his rewards account automatically as points or email it to him. Don’t expect him to spend time in the evenings searching your app for a $3 off coupon.

Quality Counts for Something

Millennial Dads shop for quality more than Millennial Moms, AND they are more concerned about quality than Millennial men without kids. According to MediaPost, 66 percent of Millennial Dads say that high quality is extremely important. By comparison, 50 percent of Millennial men without children, 45 percent of Millennial Moms, and 51 percent of the general population focus on quality.

A Brand’s Value and Values Matter to Millennial Parents

A brand’s corporate values matter as much as the quality and value its products deliver. About half of Millennial Parents always will a brand’s views on topics that matter to them personally, according to an article published by the National Retail Federation. An article went on to say that 45 percent of Millennial Parents will only shop for brands that reflect their own social and political values.

In-Store Mobile

Both Millennial Moms and Millennial Dads will use their phones in-store to enhance their shopping experiences. The difference is usually a matter of what they’re looking for.

Moms are more likely to be looking for deals. Dads? Product reviews. Dads also use their phones to find nearby locations, look up store hours, and create shopping lists while shopping.

Courtesy of: The Shelf Full-Funnel Influencer Marketing

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Conclusion

Millennials are the most educated generation on the planet, and the most socially connected in decades, but they face trials American parents haven’t had to face in recent history.

Economic instability, the recent pandemic, job uncertainty (Millennials change careers more than Gen Xers, Boomers, or the Silent Generation ever had to), climate change, and shifts in the global political landscape can have a catastrophic impact on the future of the entire world.

This is the environment in which Millennials are rearing children. Yet, they spend twice as much time with their kids as previous generations. Millennial Dads are home more to shoulder some of the responsibility of helping around the house. Millennial Moms are somehow present with the kids AND working full-time.

Millennial parents value parenting as perhaps the most important part of adulthood, out-ranking even professional aspirations and financial success. So, it seems Millennial parents are crushing parenthood… or at the very least, raising the bar.

For brands and marketers: use social media marketing, video marketing, and of course, influencer marketing to help parents streamline and even marry the research+ purchase process so that Millennial parents can achieve what they want most – to optimize everything around them in an effort to preserve and prioritize family.

About the Author

Sorilbran Stone | Content Strategist

I serve as the resident content strategist and the official Head of Content Marketing at The Shelf. Marketing is my happy place. I’m as happy looking at analytics as I am actually creating a thing. I focus a lot on dreaming up and implementing the best ways to create, publish, and distribute content that will build your brand and get your audience to do a thing.

The post What Makes Them Buy: Millennial Parents in 2023 appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Product launches are an exciting opportunity to increase sales and grow your audience. In this guide, we’ll demystify the process with a step-by-step plan for introducing Instagrammers to your brand and new product. 

Step 1: Figure Out Who You’re Targeting and What They Want to Fix

The first step to any successful product launch is defining your target audience. You’ll want to identify which demographics you’re speaking to and how they shop on Instagram. Consumers behave a little differently on each social platform, so make sure you’re tailoring your launch specifically to your audience’s Instagram habits. 

It’s also great to understand their pain points. What problems are they trying to solve? Pain points could be the specific reason they’d buy your product or service, and pain points could include any challenges they’re having with one of your competitors.

Here’s what I mean…

Let’s say you’re a sea moss brand. Last year, sea moss gel was trending all over TikTok. Kim K was spotted having a sea moss smoothie and A-List celeb (and TikTok darling) Kevin Hart invested in a sea moss brand during an episode of Shark Tank.

People choose to drink sea moss for a number of reasons, many of them health-related. So, customer pain points can be focused around things like trying to get more essential and trace minerals in their diets without adding a bunch of calories. Or maybe they’re trying to find a fix for respiratory issues.

BUT a quick look at the customer reviews of some of your competitors could reveal that one of your competitors has logistics issues that result in sea moss gel jars arriving cracked or reaching the customer spoiled because of refrigeration problems during shipping. Another competitor may have customer service issues – customers can never reach anyone to get their questions answered or address their problems.

Both aspects – the health-related ones and the quality control ones – are pain points for your customers. So, understanding the pain points of your prospects provides you with different ways to shape your messaging during your launch campaign.  

TIP: IG Stories is the PERFECT way to test messaging since Stories disappear from the feed, your profile, and Direct after 24 hours unless you add the Story to your highlights.

Step 2: Grow Your Instagram Following with Members of Your Target Audience

Okay, this one may seem like a chicken-egg situation, but you’re going to have to put some time, effort, and other resources into growing your following.

This is an essential step for two reasons. First, you want to promote your new product to a full house, not an empty crowd. And second, influencers will be more excited to work with you if you have a greater audience reach.

The good news is that you don’t need to garner millions of followers. Nor do you need hundreds of thousands. A couple hundred is a great place to start.

Here are a few no-sweat ways to grow your audience quickly:

• Fill out your Instagram bio. Infuse it with your brand voice, and tell new followers what you’re all about. Don’t forget to add a link to your website. 
• Lean into video. In years past, we urged readers to build a grid of at least 12 images. That’s cool. But if you have 12 images, you’ll want to have at least 12 videos. And maybe make half of those image spots carousels instead of single pics. Make your grid as engaging and interactive as you possibly can.
• Ask your existing network to follow your page and pass it along to their friends. A story share goes a long way for brand exposure. 
• Use the hashtags your customers are using. Instagram allows users to follow not just people, but also topics, right? So, make sure you’re cataloging your content with hashtags.

Step 3: Clearly Define the Goals for Your Product Launch

We’ve been harping on this one for years. Set goals for your influencer marketing campaign. Build your campaign out to meet those goals. Know which influencer campaign metrics to check to determine whether your campaign was successful.

The trick here is to set specific goals that you can track and measure. Of course, you want to generate max buzz, pre-orders, and sales for your new product. Setting more specific, intentional goals will help you reach even more conversion-focused goals vs awareness goals.

Before building your campaign, you need to ask yourself: Is your main goal to gain more followers? Increase brand awareness? Sell lots of your new product? Drive downloads of your app? Gain a bunch of 5-star product reviews?

Narrowing down your specific campaign goals will help you tailor your content and choose the right influencers for your campaign (more on that later).

Remember, when it comes to influencer marketing, not all success has to equate to a sales transaction. In fact, influencer marketing helps drive action that eventually will lead to a conversion. But that’s eventually.

If you don’t hit your sales goals, but you get thousands of views, gain hundreds of followers, and increase engagement with your campaign, that’s a major win. That sort of increased brand lift always precedes more sales.

Want more specifics on how to create product launch goals? We penned a short ebook that shows you how to structure influencer campaigns to meet specific goals. If that’s your thing, click the big, ol’ button below.

Step 4: Map a Timeline for Your Launch Date

How long does it take to run a good campaign? Ideally, you want to create an Instagram marketing campaign that’s around 30 to 60 days. This gives you enough time to grow buzz, track analytics, and optimize the best-performing content.

Remember that it typically takes a couple of weeks just to recruit influencers, ship products, approve influencer content, and schedule posts to go live. So, make sure you start your campaign a few months before you want to see those results.

Start by selecting the date you want your campaign to go live. Then work your timeline back from there. Just know that this is a weeks-long process.

If you don’t have four months, don’t worry. We’ve pulled together successful campaigns in a few weeks. You can always scale down your campaign. Launching a service is also more flexible. Because there’s no need to ship physical products, you can get away with a service launch campaign that’s only a month long, depending on when you’re running the campaign. You have to snag influencers for a holiday campaign early because they get booked up fast.

HERE’S WHAT A TYPICAL PRODUCT LAUNCH TIMELINE CAN LOOK LIKE:

Day 1-7: Building hype

Day 8: Product launch

Day 9-14: Post-launch follow-up

Day 15-30: Maintaining momentum

TIP: Lean on your influencers for content. Not in a mafia way, but in a trusting-them-to-do-what-they-do kinda way. Influencers literally make money by knowing how to create content that resonates with their audiences. So, let them do that. You want to allow for structured creative freedom, meaning they know what your goals are and they understand your brand and message, but they have the freedom to introduce your product and present your brand in a way that THEIR followers will find compelling. (the best way to do this is to provide them with an influencer brief that outlines the expectations.)

BENEFIT: If you do it this way, you’ll have a ton of influencer-generated content that you can repurpose later across your own branded channels. And the content that comes from each creator will be different. You know what they say: Variety is the spice of life. Just make sure to get the content rights.

Step 5: Choose the Right Influencer Partners

Okay, influencer marketing is a whole big thing – you know it, we know it. We’ve penned a massive, detailed, everything-you-need-to-know guide to influencer marketing strategy. But for now, we’re just going to talk about influencer selection.

Finding the right influencer partners is a crucial part of the process. And we’ve gotta be honest here: it may take you a few weeks to get the right influencers committed to your campaign, especially if you’re not using an agency like The Shelf for the influencer selection process.

But never fear – you can totally find influencers on your own. We’ve laid out this checklist to help you do just that.

So, who are the “right” influencers? Well, the trick is to choose influencers whose audiences overlap with your target audience. Once you’ve found them, you’ll want to consider your budget and the reach you’re hoping for with the campaign.

Would your influencer budget be better served on one mega-influencer or would your audience be better served using several micro-influencers or even nano-influencers with more defined niches? This all depends on your campaign goals, budget, and whether you’re hoping to reuse influencer-generated content (which we recommend, if possible). We’ve broken down the influencer tiers here so you know which creators to target. 

Step 6: Use Your Team’s Creative Genius

Cue your creative vision. This is the “structured” part of that structured creative freedom I was talking about before. Now, what makes Instagram so compelling is that it went from being a photo-sharing app to being a storytelling platform.

The photos you use on Instagram should support your corporate brand. When people arrive at your Instagram account, they should “get” how the pics align with your brand and the launch. We’re talking about having a color scheme that’s in line with your brand, consistent use of filters, camera angles, layouts, frames, negative space in your pics — the regular Instagram stuff. A pretty feed that’s eye-catching and useful, just branded. Create & Cultivate is great at this. And Compartes Chocolate – they have such a great feed.

Anyway, my point is that with influencer campaigns, you get to have a little more freedom with your brand theme. Reels and Stories are a great place to allow your influencers to run wild with their own creativity. 

New Product Launch Examples

When Activewear brand @popflex_active launched their Stardust collection, it featured a range of black and sparkly leggings, bras, and tops. This is what their Instagram feed looked like in the week leading up to the launch and the week of the launch itself. You can see they had a clear vision for the visual direction: blacks, whites, and pops of iridescent shimmer. 

Their influencer partner @zoestone posted this all-black Popflex ‘fit the day before the Stardust launch. Although it’s not as stylized as the in-house creative the brand generated, it still sticks with the theme of the launch and effectively teases the new products. 

Step 7: Build a Catalog of AMAZING Assets for Your Campaign

The content influencers create should be centered around themes and concepts that your in-house creative team (or your influencer marketing agency) comes up with. And the type of content you need for your campaign (i.e. video hauls, product reviews, memes, etc.) plays a huge role in which influencer partners you choose for the campaign.

But you don’t have to rely solely on the content your influencers create. Feel free to also create assets and content in-house to run alongside your influencer-generated content.

We recommend coming up with unique branded hashtags so you can follow along with consumers who are reposting your products and have all your influencer-generated content accessible in one place. Have influencer partners add that branded hashtag to all of the posts they publish throughout the product launch campaign (including their Instagram Stories).

Keep the lifespan of each post in mind as you’re planning out your calendar. Stories last for 24 hours, which makes them perfect for testing out messages. (Of course, you can add a story to your highlights within that 24 hours if you want to hang on to them.)  Whereas infographics can be shared over and over for weeks, especially if they’re funny, informative, or entertaining.

One of the primary benefits of working with influencers is the sheer amount of sponsored content you get so you can repost campaign content across your own branded channels without having to recycle the same content over and over again.

Step 8: Rock Your Launch Day!

Instagram marketing goes beyond pushing the “publish” button and monitoring the launch. You need to be online all of launch day engaging with your audience.

In fact, why not go live so you can answer questions and see all the excitement first-hand?

Here are other tips you can use to ensure your launch day goes well:

• Answer DMs promptly
• Reshare relevant content from followers
• Add your Instagram Stories to highlights for the late-comers
• Edit your bio to reflect your launch specifically (including a trackable link)
• After launch day, don’t forget to continue measuring the results of your campaign

Final Words On This…

Planning an effective influencer marketing campaign for your product launch may seem tedious, but it’s well worth it. Once you have all your nuts and bolts, all you have to do is screw them into place. We hope these 8 steps help you take your next launch out of this world. 

And if you’d like help crafting the perfect influencer campaign for your launch, you’re in the right place. In addition to the tips above, our experts have all the industry know-how to get eyeballs on your products and sales in the bank. We’d love to help make your campaign goals a reality. Schedule a strategy goal with us by clicking below. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ariana Newhouse | B2B Writer

I am a freelance writer and comedian based in Los Angeles, and while making people laugh is my jam, it’s not always the company brand. So, I strive to make people feel something. My writing philosophy is collaborative, empathetic, and humanistic. At the end of the day, no matter the message, there are real people on both ends of the process.

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These trends point to an important insight — this generation does things differently than the Boomers and Gen Xers before them. So if you want to know how to effectively market to Millennials and to Millennial Men, you pretty much need to understand what makes them tick.

Despite what you’ve heard, Millennials are not destroying every industry they touch. Instead, they’re just changing them (for the better). Consumerism has changed dramatically in recent years, and we can tie many of those changes directly to the arrival and impact of millennial consumers. And while some may see this as a negative thing, it’s created new opportunities for brands to reach and understand their target audiences more intimately.

What is a Millennial?

First, things first! If you want to know how to appeal to Millennials and the men among them, you need to know who they are. Pew Research Center defines them as anyone born between 1981 and 1996. Gen X precedes them, and Gen Z comes after them. So, marketing to Millennials in 2023 means focusing on the segment of the population in their late twenties to early forties.

It’s worth noting that millennials are the largest living generation on earth. Millennials were the largest generation group in the U.S. in 2021, with an estimated population of 72.19 million. Globally, their numbers are about 1.8 billion.

Now, even at the higher end of the age group, millennials’ behavior is unlike any other generation at their age. But they aren’t aliens from Rigel VII. They’re just people who grew up in a different time, with different experiences, and who are approaching things from a unique perspective. (They’re also people with some expendable income and the power to make decisions for their households-the perfect recipe for a target audience).

In this post, we’re going to go over a few key traits to understand how to excel in marketing to Millennials in 2023 and beyond. These will help you to craft a UGC-based influencer marketing strategy that allows you to connect with this powerful generation in a way that resonates.

Yeah, They’re Different, But…

It’s true that targeting Millennial men is different from targeting Gen X and Boomers (at least until Millennial men start having kids). But that’s not really because Millennial men are weird. It actually has more to do with their levels of exposure.

In this post, I want to identify a handful of really important traits of Millennial men that you can leverage this holiday season during your campaigns. And when the shopping frenzy comes to an end, you can lean on these same traits to refine your marketing strategies during the Super Bowl and on into March Madness.

Saddle up.

Trait #1: Millennial Men Have Access to Tons of Information

Perhaps the single most important thing to understand when you’re marketing to Millennials is that they have access to an enormous amount of information. And they know how to to turn info into insights, especially when it comes to choosing which businesses to patronize.

These are people who lived through the Internet’s long march through our lives. By 2001, half of US households were surfing the net — and that’s when the oldest millennial men were 20 and the youngest were kindergarteners.

Today, these digital natives rule the internet, and they use it for everything. They aren’t waiting for ads to come to them and tell them what to buy. They are looking for products that will add value to their lives, and they are looking for information to help them make the best decisions.

The Information Age changed the brand-consumer dynamic

In the past, brands could depend on consumers remaining in the dark about their options and knowing only what they saw on TV. With a big enough budget, brands could use Superbowl ad to tell young Boomers and Gen Xers in America that their brand was the best thing since sliced Wonder bread. And many of them would believe it.

But that’s not the world we live in anymore. Millennials have more information at their fingertips than any generation before them, and they know how to use it.

Tech-savvy millennials can fact-check your message on the spot. And most of them will call brands out if they even think a brand is lying- and that’s if they take the time to pay attention to it at all.

This constant access to information has made Millennials more skeptical than any generation before them. And that’s not a bad thing! But it means marketing to Millennials requires a different approach.

Millennial men prefer authenticity over splashy ads

Authenticity is a buzzword, but it’s also often the only way into the budgets of Millennial men needs to be authentic. That’s what attracts Millennials to brands today. Simply hiring an influencer to endorse your brand won’t do anything for these independent thinkers. Traditional sponcon isn’t enough.

Millennials are incredibly skeptical. They can smell a sales pitch from a mile away, and they’ll quickly tune out anything that feels like it’s trying too hard to sell them something. Do you want the attention of the millennial man? The best way to get it is to focus on providing useful, relevant, and interesting information that will add value to his life.

Data-driven, well-targeted campaigns will grant you access to this powerful group of consumers.

Trait #2: Millennial Men Are the Most Educated Generation of Men in History

If that sounds like a killer stat, that’s because it is. 

According to “15 Facts About Millennials,” a report released by the US Council of Economic Advisers (you can view and download that report here), Millennials are the most educated generation in US history.

In 2013, 47 percent of 25 to 34 year-olds had a post-secondary degree (Associates, Bachelor’s, or Graduate degree). Another 18 percent had attended college without earning a degree.

Only one percent of Millennials say they are moved by ads from brands. Instead, they make their buying decisions based on independent research, online reviews, and user-generated content.

Like Millennial women, Millennial men favor authenticity over ads and social proof over self-proclamations. Brand awareness aside, Millennial men are far more likely to trust the recommendation of a friend (even an online friend) over a multi-million-dollar Super Bowl spot.

That said, a Millennial man will likely respond to the same types of content his grandpa did – ads that are funny and clever, and ads that turn regular guys into heroes by putting them in extreme circumstances. I’m sure this explains how Captain America has made his way down through the generations over the last 82 years.

Point is… the way to a Millennial man’s heart (and wallet) isn’t through gimmicks and celebrity endorsements. They’re too smart for that, and we have seen too much as a society to believe the words of a celebrity whose only connection with a brand is the contract he signed to promote that brand.

Trait #3: Millennial Men Make Less Money Than Boomers

Okay… this isn’t a dig. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that Americans in their 30s to early 40s are less likely to outearn their parents than previous generations. That’s thanks in large part to stagnating wage growth. How stagnant is stagnant? In terms of the 2018 value of the US dollar, the average hourly wage has only risen the equivalent of$2.38 in 54 years. So, very, very stagnant. That’s despite the fact that Millennial men are the best-educated generation of men this country has ever seen.

You might wonder how to market to Millennials if they are all impoverished, unable to scrape together enough dollars for a Starbucks drink every morning. Nah. Who am I kidding? You know better than that!

Millennials’ spending power is $2.5 trillion. Yes, trillion. With a T. But the oldest American millennials have survived five recessions, not including the current “inflationary environment” or “recessive market” situation in which we currently find ourselves.

• The average college-educated Millennial has more debt in the form of student loans than did their parents at the same age. Plus:
• Millennials are less likely to have jobs while attending college
• Millennials have experienced slower wage growth than Gen Xers and Boomers.
• Millennials aren’t buying homes at the rates their parents did. They are renting longer and living in multigenerational homes.
• Nearly 1 in 3 Millennials under the age of 35 live in multigenerational households, more than any other generation. Men between the ages of 25 and 34 are more likely than women the same age to live in multigenerational homes.

Percentage-wise, there are as many Americans living in multigenerational homes now (20 percent) as there were in the years following the Great Depression (21 percent). In stark contrast, in 1980, when Boomers were in their 20s and 30s, only 12 percent of them lived in multigenerational homes.

This affects their perception of economic insecurity, they are much more strict about how they use their money.

More Millennials in North America have a professional financial advisor than any other generation – 72 percent of Millennials have them, compared to 66 percent of Generation Xers, and 70 percent of Baby Boomers.

Older generations sometimes associate so-called Generation Y with being lazy and uninterested in long-term planning, but lo. and behold! They’re wrong again! Millennials save more for retirement than any other generation – socking away nearly $1 for every $5 earned.

This generation’s relationship with money may not be considered the norm, but they show a generational mindset best summarized by the immortal words of Snoop Dogg: “I got my mind on my money and my money on my mind.”

But don’t cry for Millennials just yet. While Millennials are earning less than their parents did at their age, a recent survey found that Millennials are also more likely to plan their spending than Gen Xers and Boomers.

In fact, older Millennials and younger Gen Xers were the primary participants in the life design movement that Tim Ferriss kicked off with his New York Times best-selling book, The 4-Hour Workweek a decade ago, a lifestyle centered around the idea of living richly by spending money and time on the things that matter most to you.

CEO and author of I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Ramit Sethi starts off his Personal Finance class at CreativeLive.com this way: “I don’t know… Is anyone else tired of 65 year-old guys telling us we can’t spend money on lattes?”

Life design is about investing in the things you want and restricting the resources you put into the things you don’t want. For some Millennials that could mean downsizing your living situation after getting a much-deserved raise and spending more on international travel.

It could mean renting a house instead of buying a home, or using rideshare services instead of buying a car and using the money you save to explore other passions or fulfill other indulgences, like eating out, or subscription meal services.

According to Charles Schwab, 34 percent of Millennials have a written financial plan compared to 21 percent of Gen Xers and 18 percent of Boomers.

That said, you need to play the long game. Millennials are planners and researchers with more than enough information at their fingertips to learn what they want to know about new products and services.

Trait #4. Millennial Men Value Experiences Over Shiny New Things

Millennial men are known to prefer experiences to things. That’s not to say they don’t enjoy the occasional material purchase, but they would rather spend their money on an amazing vacation than a new car. About 77 percent of Millennial men prefer an experience-rich existence, with fewer possessions.

This focus on experiences over things has led Millennials to be a driving force behind the growth of the sharing economy over the past decade. They have access to apps that allow them to temporarily rent anything they’d ever need. This causes ownership to look more like an expensive hassle than a life goal.

Nearly 8 in 10 consumers (78 percent) believe the sharing economy reduces waste and clutter. And millennial men are certainly doing their part to make that happen. Millennials pride themselves on being acutely aware of the environmental issues facing the world today; they also expect the brands they support to be socially responsible.

You may be wondering how to convert product offerings into valuable experiences. The answer is fairly simple. Create beautiful experiences by being authentic, community-minded, and focused on helping your customers connect with who and what they value.

Nike is a mensa-level genius at practicing this model. It doesn’t just sell shoes and workout clothes. It also offers a comprehensive app that allows users to shop, save their preferences, and join a run club, a fitness club, or SNKRS, a space for sneaker enthusiasts where they can unlock rare sneakers. Users can also track their fitness goal progress, share their successes with friends, compete in challenges, and register for virtual or live events.

It’s this focus on community and connection that has helped Nike+ become one of the most popular fitness apps with Millennials.

Trait #5: Millennial Men Do Shop… More Than Their Dads and Grandpas Ever Did

Make no mistake about it – Millennial men spend on things.

So, Millennial men have money, and they spend it. Millennial men are willing to shell out more money for a product if it will last longer than a similar product of lesser quality. This is especially true of Millennial dads, who tend not to be coupon-clippers, even during the early years of building a family.

 By and large, 66 percent of Millennial dads prefer quality products that they think are the best for their families, as opposed to what’s most convenient or the least expensive. 

Millennial men buy clothes more often than did men one generation ago, picking up new apparel items at least twice a month. They also tend to be early adopters of new technologies and products.

Millennial men spend an average of $2,200 a year in retail, directing their spending toward home improvement, apparel, digital, electronics, and mass merchandisers, and they tend to shop alone.

Trait #6: Millennial Men Defer to Social Media for Purchasing Decisions

About 70 percent of Millennial men use social media, according to Nielson Newswire. They use blogs, online news websites, and social networking sites to make purchase decisions. 

As well, 45 percent Millennial dads typically use search to get answers to questions on everything from the best baby products to the best cities for families. This they do in lieu of getting advice from their own dads. 

Far more than Boomer dads, Millennial dads are kicking in on one-on-one time with the kids, shopping decisions and housework. As most Millennial families are two-income households (sort of goes back to what I talked about in Trait #3), the changing role of fathers in the home is just too big for marketers to ignore. 

Millennial dads dedicate 28 percent of their time online to dad-dedicated content and 60 percent of Millennial fathers say they’re better dads because of the resources they’re able to find online. 

There’s an opportunity here, of course. Most brands target moms with respect to things like grocery shopping, household items, and child-rearing. Many Millennial dads are feeling like there’s not enough brand-owned content online that’s specifically for fathers. Remember how I said men like seeing themselves as the hero in ads? Well, dads do, too. And typically, dads are positioned in TV ads and other content as add-ons, like a cool Texan uncle who smells like leather and tells great stories (sorry, I was in Dallas over the weekend).

Millennial dads are looking for brands that produce quality products and that are listening and responsive. If you can accomplish that, you’ll get Millennial dads on your team. 

There’s one important thing I’m not mentioning here, though. Ad blockers. Which brings us to our next important trait.

Trait #7: Millennial Men Are Among the Biggest Users of Ad Blockers.

Insider Intelligence reports that nearly 40 percent of internet users are using ad blockers, with adult men under the age of 35 being the most likely to use an ad blocker on at least one of their devices. And for men in their 20s, the percentage of users is upwards of 61 percent.

Just a quick tip: More men follow influencers than women. So, influencer marketing serves as a great hedge against ad blockers for this demographic.

Trait #8: Millennial Men Expect More Out of Brands

Millennials hold brands to a higher social standard than previous generations. They expect the retailers and service providers to be helpful at every stage of the sales process, and responsive after a sale is complete. They also expect brands to take on the responsibility to do good out in the community. When they find brands who are crushing it in business and in the community, Millennials tend to stick with them. 

The Elite Daily study I mentioned earlier confirms that 62 percent of Millennials demonstrated more loyalty to brands that engaged with their customers on social networks. In fact, half of the Millennials surveyed consider themselves brand-loyal. Millennials, as a whole, are more loyal to brands than Gen Xers and Boomers, in part because of the level of social proof and transparency social media offers.

Final Thoughts For Marketing to Millennials 2023

Knowing how to market to Millennials, male or otherwise, really comes down to understanding the world they live in. They are bombarded with information 24 hours a day from every conceivable angle. To reach them, brands need to be authentic, community-minded, and focused on helping Millennials connect with the people and things they care about.

Millennials are now and the future. And, with a little bit of understanding, your brand can be too. Here’s a quick recap of what you need to know about marketing to millennials.

Millennials are the most connected, educated, and tech-savvy generation ever. They grew up with the Internet, social media, and smartphones. And they’re using all of these things to their advantage.

Millennials are also known as digital natives or netizens. And there are a lot of them. Millennials make up the largest generation in history, with over 72 million people in the United States, and 1.8 billion worldwide.

Millennials have completely changed the way we think about marketing. They’re not interested in traditional advertising, and they’re not easily influenced by it either. Millennials are much more likely to trust peer recommendations over ads. Millennials say user-generated content (UGC) from reviews and social media posts is a major factor in their purchasing decisions.

A Social Media Today survey revealed that the vast majority of those polled said that user-generated content (UGC) is the most authentic, with almost 80 percent admitting that UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions. This makes it 8.7x more impactful than influencer content and 6.6x more influential than branded content in consumers’ eyes​.

The best way to reach Millennials is by using influencer marketing. We’ll pair you with a vetted, trusted, influencer in your industry that will create organic posts featuring your brand. It’s an effective way to reach Millennials because it’s more authentic and personal than traditional advertising.

You’re ready to take your marketing to the next level. We’re ready to help you get there. Book an obligation-free strategy call with one of our Influencer Marketing Jedis today Let us blow your mind, then launch the campaign of your dreams, then blow your mind again. In that order.

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Who Are Baby Boomers?

Baby Boomers are the demographic born between 1946 and 1964, and they account for a whopping 70.23 million people in the United States alone. Boomers are part of the cohort of people born during the post-World War II baby boom that started in the mid-1940s and continued through the early 1960s.

The post-war baby boom was largely attributed to increased economic prosperity. Many families chose to wait until the end of the depression to try for their kids. Couple this with millions of soldiers coming home from fighting WWII with a G.I Bill which allowed them to purchase homes, obtain formal education, and ultimately provide for a family. Almost exactly 9-months later, a baby boom started.

Many Marketers Have Outdated Notions of What a Boomer Looks Like

Brought up to appreciate hard work, value education, and fight for what’s right, Boomers have been present to witness virtually every major cultural event in the past 75 years. They’re tech-savvy, healthy, active, and independent.

Did you see Angela Bassett’s arms as Queen of Wakanda? Or Keanu Reeves as John Wick? Tom Cruise is still out here doing his own stunts for the seventh AND eighth installations of Mission Impossible films. The clip below, we grabbed from the YouTube channel of Paramount Pictures. This footage was released in December 2022.

7 Characteristics About Boomers You Need to Know, and How to Address Them In Your Marketing

Chances are when you think of Boomers, you’re getting the wrong idea. For some unfortunate, bottom-line-diminishing reason, brands tend to miss the mark when crafting traditional or influencer marketing strategies and analyzing the spending habits of Baby Boomers. But these mature consumers are willing to spend money with your brand IF you market to them properly.

#1: Boomers Are Influential. So, Let Them Influence.

Marketing campaigns shouldn’t only target Millennial Moms and Gen Zers; marketing to Baby Boomers is essential for success. Not only do Boomers have control of their own $7 billion of annual online spending, but they are also critical influencers in the lives of their adult children, young adult grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren.

These adults have a lifetime of experience building relationships that span beyond marketing products to creating personal bonds with people in their lives. As Boomers age and life expectancy increases, they are increasingly investing in younger generations — whether it’s college tuition or buying the latest tech gadgets for their grandkids.

Boomers are now more likely than ever to be a member of a multi-generational household.

In marketing to Baby Boomers, you can reach multiple generations with a single marketing campaign: the Gen Xers, Millennials, Gen Zs, and Alphas who are influenced by their parents’ and grandparents’ spending habits, as well as the Boomers themselves.

#2: Boomers Love To Shop Online

For years marketers have overlooked opportunities to market to Boomers online. This may be because Boomers are known for their in-person shopping preferences. Any marketer worth his or her salt knows that the decision phase is only one part of the buyer’s journey. It’s 2023 for crying out loud! Consumers (of all ages) are using the internet to discover, research, review and compare products before ever stepping foot inside a store.

Boomers are no exception to this trend. They are the fastest-growing e-commerce demographic. Consider this: 86 percent of Boomers in the US did their holiday shopping on Amazon.com in 2022.

It doesn’t stop there! Forty-five percent of Boomers have discovered new products on the internet in the last 3 months. An overwhelming majority (59 percent) of those polled say online search is the primary channel for uncovering hidden gems. 

This means marketing to the over-60 crowd requires creating content marketing strategies, thoughtful influencer marketing campaigns, and digital marketing targeting.

#3: Baby Boomers Also Love Loyalty

Baby boomers are the most loyal generation of consumers. They’re reluctant to try new brands and products, but when they like something, they generally stick with it. This is great news for your brand for obvious reasons.

Loyalty to brands is especially strong among older generations, who value the affordability of their products. In a study conducted by Oracle, participants identified three primary reasons for brand loyalty: Fair pricing, product selection, and quality. Both Baby Boomers and Silent Generation consumers prioritized fair pricing as the most important factor when choosing their favorite brands.

Good service from decent people. While price is the most important, What makes Baby Boomers buy again and again is providing a high level of attention and service. Coming from a traditional background, they were brought up believing that the customer was always right and quality service was more important than any product.

My aunt is a Baby Boomer. She loves to go to breakfast at a particular diner in Oak Park, Michigan. She’s been going there for years and has formed relationships with the staff. When she visits, they always greet her with a warm welcome and give her great service that keeps bringing her back.

Each time I go with her, I can’t help but think, “This has got to be because of the service”. The carpet is old, the chairs are pink and outdated (I’m positive that those chairs are older than me), and the place never really looks clean. I will never understand her love for that place!

Values. Another way to the Boomer’s heart is to stand for something they believe in. Baby Boomers are more likely to be loyal to a company that shares their core values and makes them feel as though they are being heard.

Ben & Jerry’s does a phenomenal job at this. For decades it used marketing campaigns for social justice causes. This resonates with the Baby Boomer generation as many were involved in civil rights movements in their life.

Although Millennials and Gen Zs like to consider themselves woke, and socially conscious, and they have been praised for their progressivism and social consciousness, older generations are more likely to take into consideration a brand’s values and community contributions when making buying decisions.

Baby Boomers are marketing gold when you consider their loyalty, desire to build relationships, and expected level of customer service. With marketing strategies tailored toward Baby Boomers, your products and services have a much better chance of being seen

.

#4: Baby Boomers Are Active On the Socials

If you’ve spent any amount of time on TikTok, you’ve no doubt seen the video of the senior discovering a “Snapping Turla” on her property. At the time of writing this, the original video has 1.2 million views, and the sound has been used 5.6 million times.

Not only do Boomers like to use social. Everyone else loves when they do too! The fact that the Baby Boomer generation is now actively engaging with social media marketing should be good news for marketers hoping to tap into this segment of consumers.

While only two percent of Boomers polled (Statista) reported using TikTok, 78 percent of U.S. Boomer and Senior respondents stated they use Facebook, compared to 71 percent of the general online population. Next is YouTube (67 percent), then Pinterest (40 percent).

With the help of Facebook, Boomers stay connected with their loved ones and informed about current happenings in their area. Furthermore, this platform has even started to sway how they decide what products to buy! It’s a win-win!

Not only does social media marketing allow companies to reach a wide audience, but it also allows them to target marketing strategies for baby boomers more precisely. Companies can use data collected from social media marketing to understand what products baby boomers buy and what activities they enjoy spending their money on.

Facebook, for example, allows companies to target ads based on a person’s age, interests, and topics discussed in posts. This marketing strategy can be used to create marketing campaigns tailored specifically for the Boomer generation that resonate with them and are more likely to convert.

#5: Boomers Ain’t Going Nowhere…Have You Seen Them?

During my lifetime, my dad has celebrated “his 26th” birthday 40 times. Literally 40. While he can no longer pass for 26, He certainly doesn’t look 66 years old. Baby Boomers are not the seniors of generations past. I think I know more millennials that like rocking chairs and knitting than Boomers.

They have a lot of living left to do and they are actively doing it! With more free time on their hands, Boomers are traveling the world, participating in philanthropic activities, and living their best lives.

They’re not getting any younger, but due to technological advances and medical innovations, the average life expectancy is increasing each year. In a historic milestone, the US Census Bureau estimates that by 2034, for the first time in history, older adults will outnumber children under 18 years of age.

#6: Boomers? They Got Money!

The U.S. Census Bureau According to a survey conducted by USCB, Baby Boomers hold almost nine times more wealth than Millennials. This mind-blowing research revealed that Baby Boomers boast the highest median wealth of all generations, excluding home equity – with a hefty $90,060!

The Silent Generation (those born between 1928 and 1945) come in second at $72,280. Gen X trails closely behind them with their median wealth amounting to $48,070 while Millennials tot up to an impressive sum of $13,110, and Generation Z clocked in at two-thousand dollars ($2,000).

The financial success of Baby Boomers is a result of their commitment to accumulating wealth and investments over time. Furthermore, Baby Boomers are increasingly active in the stock market.

Astonishingly, Vanguard Group reported that nearly one-fifth of their retail clients in the age range 65 to 74 have up to 98 percent of their portfolios allocated into stocks. A report from the group reveals that 40 percent of investors aged 60-69 who are associated with Fidelity 401(k) hold 67 percent or more of their portfolios in stocks.

Boomers have so much money that by the year 2030, millennials are poised to inherit a net worth five times greater than what they currently have. It’s projected that this generation will inherit over $68 trillion from their boomers during The Great Transfer of Wealth.

#7: They’ll Open Your Emails!

If you’re looking for marketing strategies for baby boomers, you don’t want to miss this one! Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach baby boomers. Research has shown that they are more likely than any other generation to open emails and respond–so if you want to make sure your marketing efforts hit their mark, this is a great place to start.

With email being the preferred medium for communication by an overwhelming 74 percent of Baby Boomers, it indicates that this generation considers it to best channel to receive communications from brands. This isn’t an invitation to spam their inboxes though. 68 percent of Baby Boomers said it was acceptable for brands to contact them digitally regarding a purchase, while over half (53 percent) expressed that being contacted with offers or deals on digital platforms was alright.

Conclusion

Baby Boomers are indispensable and valuable to every brand. It may take more than a trendy meme or a pretty post to get them on the hook, but tapping into this marketing group’s needs and wants can bring great rewards to your brand.

To curate your marketing for Baby Boomers, you should take the time to invest in communicating the value of your product. Be socially responsible and tailor your efforts to their values, interests, and needs. As long as you offer marketing content that resonates with them, Baby Boomers will be happy to invest their time and money in your product. Your brand will thank you for generations to come!

Baby Boomers and Influencer Marketing go hand-in-hand. Trust us! With decades of marketing experience, our marketing experts are uniquely equipped to help you reach this valuable demographic.

We understand how Baby Boomers think and what products they buy. From the research and marketing techniques to get their attention, The Shelf can help you stand out from the competition every step of the way and design marketing strategies for baby boomers. Book A Strategy Session today to learn more!

About This Author

Lira Stone | Effective, Magnetic Strategist

For over a decade, my focus has been ensuring that professionals stay ahead of the curve in the most time-efficient, task-prioritized, and stress-free manner possible. My extensive experience has equipped me with the knowledge to design a concise, company-culture-relevant, methodical approach to internet sales and marketing.

The post Marketing to Baby Boomers: What Makes Them Buy in 2023? appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Born between 1965 and 1980, Gen Xers grew up during an era of sweeping social and economic change. Marketing dollars and ad spend are commonly focused on Millennials, the much-maligned generation that follow Generation X, but there’s a lot to be said about the unique and powerful consumer group known as Gen X.

By the end of this post, you’ll understand how to hold Generation X’s attention, what makes them tick, and how they choose to spend their hard-earned money. You’ll have the elements of an ultra-dope marketing strategy that won’t allow this slept-on generation to look away.

In comparison to other generations, Gen X is relatively small. With only 65 Million people (compared to 70 million Boomers, and 72 million Millenials). They are the first digital natives, and as such, have a deep understanding of how technology can be used to solve problems and make life easier. 

They’re also fiercely independent, a quality that has become synonymous with Generation X. But what many brands and marketers miss is that households headed by Gen Xers have an average of $102,512 in disposable income, according to Statista.

So, let’s Get Into the good, the bad, and the ugly of Generation X’s buyer behaviors. 

6 Reasons Why Gen Xers Are Both A Marketer’s Wildest Dream, and Worst Nightmare

No. 1: They’re Back-In-The-Dayers

Gen Xers dig nostalgic experiences and are willing to pay a premium for them. That’s why you see so many 90s trends making a comeback in recent years. High-waisted jeans, chokers, and even fanny packs have all made their way back into the fashion consciousness (yes, even fanny packs).

When marketing to Gen X, try to tap into their sense of nostalgia. Use images and language that harken back to their childhoods or teenage years. You can also partner with other brands that have a similar target market. For example, Urban Outfitters has had great success partnering with iconic 90s brands like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.

It’s not only fashion that’s making a comeback thanks to Gen Xers. The entire concept of “retro” is being revived by this powerful consumer group. Brands like Big Chill Appliances (@bigchillappliances) are capitalizing on this trend by selling retro-styled refrigerators, stoves, and dishwashers. What’s old is new again, and Gen Xers are leading the charge.

This method of marketing works because it’s a callback to a simpler time. In a world that’s constantly changing and evolving, it can be comforting to hold onto something familiar. That’s why Gen Xers are willing to spend money on experiences and products that remind them of the good old days.

According to scientific research, nostalgia is mostly experienced as a positive emotion. It has the effect of making someone feel good and also increasing their sense of purpose in life. Additionally, it raises self-confidence and hope for the future.

Since nostalgia is essentially a form of escapism, it makes perfect sense that a generation that came of age during some of the most tumultuous years in recent memory would want to escape into simpler times. If done well, nostalgia is a win-win for everyone.

McDonald’s recently released a Happy Meal for Adults in partnership with Cactus Plant Flea Market. The meals, which could be purchased as either Big Mac Meals or 10-piece McNugget meals, came packed in the traditional Happy Meal box (redesigned by the Cactus Plant team) and came with fries, a drink and a throwback McDonald’s mascot toy.

As you’d probably expect, these adult Happy Meals sold out in days in many locations.

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A drawback to this tendency is that Gen Xers can be resistant to change. If a brand has been around for decades and has built up a strong reputation, they’re likely to have a loyal Gen X following. These consumers are also more likely to stick with products and services that they know and trust, even if there’s a newer, shinier option on the market.

No. 2: Unbreakable Brand Loyalty

This brings us to point number 2. Gen Xers are ridiculously loyal to their preferred brands. My sister is a Gen Xer, and she holds fast to the belief that JIF is the best brand of peanut butter. That is clearly brand loyalty-based malarky. We all know there are tastier options out there. I said what I said!

She isn’t the only one that holds their favorite brands close to their heart. Gen Xers are more likely than any other generation to be brand-loyal customers. They’re also the most likely to say they would pay more for a product from a brand they trust whether it was endorsed by an influencer or not.

Gen Xers frequently join loyalty reward programs to save money and for a bespoke brand experience, though they often leave programs when it takes too long to rack up points. Except Chick-fil-A. People are just going there for the sauce.

Loyalty programs are a great way to show your appreciation for the Gen X consumer. Many brands offer loyalty cards or apps that give customers points for every purchase they make. These points can then be redeemed for discounts, freebies, or exclusive experiences. 

Starbucks recently revamped its loyalty program. After hinting Web3 plans to its investors, the coffee giant announced the offering of limited-edition NFTs for purchase in Starbucks’ Odyssey web app.

The loyalty of Gen X could be a byproduct of their formative years. This is the first generation to come of age with consumerism as we know it. They were raised on advertising and are extremely brand-conscious. For many of them, the brands they grew up with are a big part of their identity.

This intertwining is the reason why it can be difficult to get them to switch, or even acknowledge a brand other than the one they prefer. This can be challenging for marketers present new products to this audience.

Check out our deep dive on What Makes Millennial Parents Buy >>>>

No. 3: Gen X’s Side-Eye Game Is Too Strong

If there’s one thing that characterizes Generation X, it’s skepticism. This is a group that came of age during the Watergate scandal, the Iran-Contra Affair, and the Savings & Loan Crisis. This suspicion often manifests as a healthy skepticism of advertising.

They’ve seen it all, and they’re not going to be taken for a ride, or simply take your word for it. Gen Xers are turned off by pushy sales tactics and marketing that’s too in-your-face. Instead, they respond better to subtlety and humor. They also appreciate authenticity and transparency from the brands they shop.

They’re not going to believe your marketing claims without some solid proof. This is a very research-oriented consumer group. They’re going to read reviews, compare prices, and look for the best deals before they make a purchase; and again, once they’ve decided on a product or service, they’re extremely unlikely to switch to something else. 

This means that if you’re trying to sell to them, you need to have your ducks in a row. Make sure your product is top-notch, your prices are competitive, and your customer service is responsive.

Brands need to be able to back up their marketing claims with proof, or they’ll lose Gen Xers’ trust. 

If you can appeal to their need for convenience, their love of family, and their sense of responsibility, you’ll be able to tap into their unbreakable loyalty and experience substantial ROI.

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No. 4: They’re Do-Gooders

Generation X is known for demanding social responsibility from the brands they buy from. They want to know that the companies they’re supporting are doing their part to make the world a better place. This means that cause marketing is a great way to appeal to them.

Gen X was the first latchkey generation; they were often left home alone after school while their parents worked. The rise in divorce rates during their childhood meant that many of them were raised by a single parent, and they’re known as the latchkey generation because of it. This can lead to a sense of independence, but also feelings of insecurity and anxiety.

It’s also worth noting that this consumer group also came of age during the AIDS crisis, which instilled a sense of social responsibility in many of them. They’re more likely than any other generation to donate time to charitable causes.

Most Gen Xers didn’t have the typical all-fun and games childhood. They grew up a little faster than Boomers did which gave them a certain independence and self-reliance that’s unique to their generation. This also points to the fourth item on our awesome list.

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No. 5: Gen Xers Often Head Multi-Generational Households

Gen Xers are extremely family oriented. This is evident in the fact that they’re more likely than any other generation to head a multi-generational household. 28% of Gen Xers are currently doing so. Family is so important that they’re usually the driving force behind the merging of households within their families. Their inherent sense of responsibility often extends to their role as caregivers. This is a consumer group that’s more likely than any other to be caring for both young children and aging parents at the same time.

They’re also more likely to be providing financial support to extended family members. Studies show that members of multi-generational households are less likely to experience poverty. This means that they have a lot of buying power and that their purchasing decisions are often made with the whole family in mind.

Studies show that while millennials used the pandemic years to spend more on experience, and boomers took part in the great resignation, gen Xers kept a level head, held on to their jobs, and spent their money in ways that would improve the lives of their families.

Since they’re often the ones doing the household planning for their families, they’re very attuned to dependable brands that offer products and services that make their lives easier.

Making their life easier is very important to Gen Xers. It’s one of the defining characteristics of the generation. They value convenience and efficiency. Brands like HelloFresh and Blue Apron, which deliver fresh, pre-measured food ingredients and easy-to-follow recipes to your door, are a perfect example of this.

No. 6: The Tech Split

One of the biggest challenges marketers face when trying to target Gen X is the demographics within the demographics. Let me explain. This generation spans between the birth years of 1965 and 1980. This means some of them are old enough to remember life before the internet, while others can’t imagine a world without it.

This difference in tech usage has led to a split in the generation, with those on the younger end being dubbed as being consumed with social media and tech, and those on the older end being disinterested or not as engaged with digital platforms.

This tech usage split has led to two very different groups within Generation X: digital natives and digital immigrants.

Digital Natives are those who grew up with technology. They can’t remember a time when there weren’t computers in every home and cell phones in every pocket. They’re the ones who are always on social media, and they’re very comfortable sharing their personal information online.

Digital Immigrants, on the other hand, are those who didn’t grow up with technology. They remember a time when you had to wait for the dial-up internet to connect, and they’re not as comfortable sharing their personal information online.

This is one of the reasons why some marketers don’t consider Gen X worth the investment. They think that because the generation is split, they won’t be able to reach them all with a single message.

But this isn’t necessarily true. While it’s true that you might have to tailor your message to appeal to either digital natives or digital immigrants, the fact is that both groups are part of Generation X, and they control almost 30% of the United State’s total wealth. This is a stark contrast compared to millennials- who only own 5% of the nation’s wealth.

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Marketers often gripe about how difficult it is to target Gen Xers because of this fluid duality. The truth is, though, that being able to reach them across multiple platforms isn’t a bad thing.

Cross-channel living is a way of life for Generation Xers. They will Research the best product and price online to find what they want before heading into the store. Although they communicate much of the day through social media, they acknowledge that some things are better expressed with an old-fashioned handwritten letter.

They logged onto The Sims, Candy Crush, and 2048, but they look fondly on the days of playing Monopoly, Sorry, and Oregon Trail (and occasionally dying of dysentery).

Best Practices: Remember the imminent pivot of the internet from social media websites to AR and VR. They bear witness to the fact that change and more importantly adaptability are the order of the day for marketers targeting this powerful generation.

Before I Go…

During their teen years, they were uninterested in what “the man” was doing to our nation, using the birth of rap, skateboards, grunge, and bags of teen anguish as a means of rebellion. They didn’t need no education. They didn’t need no thought control. These rebel girls and rude boys leaned into their misfit tendencies and redefined teendom.

Their parents may have been a little more hands-off and they’d like to think they turned out just fine. As they’ve aged, they’ve mellowed a bit. They’re doing their best to balance the scales by being ultra-involved in the lives of their kids- even if that means being the embarrassing parent at their kid’s soccer games. They’re also careful to be great children to their elderly parents, taking care of them in their retirement years.

They still don’t need no education, but most of them have found their place in the world. They’re comfortable in their skin and they know what they like. They’re also unapologetic about it. So marketers beware- if you’re going to target this powerful generation, you better know what you’re talking about. Otherwise, they’ll see right through your BS.

You made it through the post! Surprise! Here’s A Bonus-Just For You.

Bonus Insight:  Xers Will Become Boomers

Well, not exactly. But they’re aging. This means that their needs are rapidly changing, and marketers need to change with them.

When Gen X became young adults, their focus shifted from being “free and rebellious” to being responsible. They wanted to have it all- successful careers, happy families, and great social lives. And they were willing to work hard to get it.

Now that they’re approaching retirement age, their focus is shifting again. As they age, their priorities shift from raising a family to empty nesting. Health and retirement planning will begin to take precedence over everything else. And as they move into retirement, their spending habits will change once again. Today’s boomers are concerned with making their money last, and they’re much more conservative with their spending. That’s where Gen X is headed. What does this mean for marketers?

This means that marketers need to start thinking about how to appeal to this generation in a way that acknowledges their changing needs, and the changing buying habits of Gen X. They can no longer be marketed to in the same way as younger consumers. Their priorities have shifted, and so must your marketing strategy.

This is a generation that has dealt with a lot of change and they’re still standing. They’re a powerful force to be reckoned with, and marketers would be wise to keep them in mind when targeting consumers. When it comes to marketing to this enigmatic generation- understanding their background is key to success. Keep an eye on the trends, and adjust your marketing accordingly.

Remember households headed by this generation have over a hundred grand in disposable income. This is an astonishingly profitable consumer group that is often overlooked. But, if the mathematically inclined marketer knows what makes them tick, that information places them head and shoulders above the competition.

If you’re not sure how to target Gen X, no worries. We know exactly how to reach them. Just book a strategy call with our marketing team and we’ll get you on the right track. Book a strategy call today. We’ll help you develop a marketing plan that targets Gen X and helps you achieve your business goals.

The post What Makes Them Buy: Generation X appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

Why bother defining a target audience? Isn’t it better just to lump everyone together? If my brand reaches out to everyone and their mom, someone is bound to like us, right? NO. NOT RIGHT! (CAPS STRESS URGENCY) That’s an expensive and ineffective strategy because the success of your entire influencer marketing campaign hinges on hitting certain metrics by partnering with influencers who can get your buyers to take certain actions.

You NEED to define a target audience for your product.

Why? Because without knowing who you’re targeting with your campaigns, your sponsored content – for the campaign you’ve spent weeks building – is going to have very little impact. And you don’t need some big, fancy piece of software and a bunch of explainer videos to teach you how to do this. Most of what you’ll need to figure out who you’re targeting (and what their deal is) can be found right in the dashboard of your brand’s social media account.

Time is money, and without a defined audience in place you may as well shred your Benjamins, weave them into a basket, and light that basket on fire.

Defining your target audience is crucial when it comes to marketing, and especially influencer marketing. Regardless of the business you’re in or the products/services you sell, relevant marketing demands deliberate targeting.

To achieve your influencer marketing goals (and we’ve literally written a book about it – grab a copy by pressing the big, ol’ button in the middle of this post), you need to know your target audience inside and out. This way you will be able to convert prospects into customers a lot easier. Uh… hello, BETTER ROI (we wrote a post on ROI, too)!

Hopefully, at this point, you’re at least somewhat convinced there’s merit in defining your audience on social media. Now, on to the good stuff. Let’s talk about how to find the right audience for your brand.

TLDR: Jump To…

• Definitions
• Kind of info to collect for demographic insights
• Kind of info to collect for psychographic insights
• Tools that collect demographic/psychographic info automatically

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What and Who Is Your Target Audience?

Before we get into this, let’s make sure we’re working from the same basic definition of ‘target audience’.

Target Audience vs Target Market

While the terms “target market” and “target audience” are often used interchangeably, they’re actually different. Your target audience is the specific group of people you want to reach with your message, your brand, and your products. Think of your target market as the pool within which your target audience swims.

The target market refers to the larger group of people a company markets to, for example, men under the age of 35. The target audience, however, is typically a more specific subset of this group, e.g. college-educated millennial dads (with gen alpha kids) under 35 who watch sports and are health-conscious. Definitely, a part of your target market, but gets down to the nitty-gritty of what to consider when marketing to them, specifically. 

So, who is your target audience?

Well, it’s not everybody, I can tell you that. And it may not even be millennials. (Geez… I can’t think of a company that wouldn’t like some of that barely-earned and poorly-spent millennial cash, but millennials can’t buy everything.)

And yeah, you can add millennial dollars to your wish list if you’re casting a wide net and hoping for your thing to be the next big rebirth of Hush Puppies (for all you Tipping Point fans out there) but why hope you hit your target? Just do the research, man!

Honing in on your target audience will take some initial effort on your part. That’s true. There are obviously a ton of things you could hone in on when defining your target audience, but we’re going to focus on two very important pieces of the puzzle: demographics & psychographics. 

The First Step of Audience Targeting is Data. It’s ALWAYS Data.

This should go without saying but since we’re pretty thorough here, we’ll go ahead and say it: in order to do an effective deep dive into your audience, you’re going to need to find ways to collect some information from them.

And while there are many ways to do this and certain questions you should be asking yourself when doing so, you need to find an ethical way to do it… you know, so you don’t end up with a Facebook-sized scandal on your hands.

What Kind of Demographic Information Should I Collect?

In order to start the process of analyzing your target audience, you’ll need to consider their demographics, which is really just the basic info about the population that makes up your buyers. Easiest way to get the engine going? Questions. For example:

1) What is the age of your targeted audience? Are they tiny tots? Tweens? Elderly?

2) What is their gender? Male, female, both?

3) How much dinero are they pulling in annually?

4) What is their family situation like? Married? Kids? Single and ready to mingle?

5) What do they do for a living?

6) What is their ethnic background?

7) Are they educated?

8) Where do they live, work and play?

Coincidentally, these are also the types of questions you’ll ask when finding influencers followed by this audience.

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The First Step of Audience Targeting is Data. It’s ALWAYS Data.

This should go without saying but since we’re pretty thorough here, we’ll go ahead and say it: in order to do an effective deep dive into your audience, you’re going to need to find ways to collect some information from them.

And while there are many ways to do this and certain questions you should be asking yourself when doing so, you need to find an ethical way to do it… you know, so you don’t end up with a Facebook-sized scandal on your hands.

What Kind of Demographic Information Should I Collect?

In order to start the process of analyzing your target audience, you’ll need to consider their demographics, which is really just the basic info about the population that makes up your buyers. Easiest way to get the engine going? Questions. For example:

1) What is the age of your targeted audience? Are they tiny tots? Tweens? Elderly?

2) What is their gender? Male, female, both?

3) How much dinero are they pulling in annually?

4) What is their family situation like? Married? Kids? Single and ready to mingle?

5) What do they do for a living?

6) What is their ethnic background?

7) Are they educated?

8) Where do they live, work and play?

Coincidentally, these are also the types of questions you’ll ask when finding influencers followed by this audience.

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THIS ALL SEEMS A LITTLE INVASIVE – WE GET IT

I get it. This all seems kinda random, and even a bit intrusive. But even if you just think about things simply, you can see how gathering information about the people you’re targeting can help you.

For instance, knowing that 60 percent of your Instagram followers are in New York versus that surprising 19 percent of your followers who are in Ireland (somehow) can be super helpful when it’s time for you figure out when to post AND REPOST your clever little quips and amazing pictures to social media.

And demographic information will also play a key role in determining the type of content you create, long before psychographics ever enter the picture. Men in their 60s respond to different types of content than, say, single women in their late 20s.

Take a vertical like cannabis-related products…

A younger woman may be using CBD oil as part of her beauty regimen or to relieve foot pain from a pair of GORGEOUS stilettos, or for things like stress-reduction or chronic pain.

The older man is far less likely to include CBD as part of a daily beauty regimen or to relieve pain from a pair of heels that were hell on his feet. Most men won’t even be able to relate. He’s more likely to connect with your social media posts about reducing stress and minimize chronic pain, though.

We actually penned a series of posts on strategies for hyper-targeting different types of CBD buyers, if you’re interested.

Knowing the demography (or composition) of your target audience is critical for an effective marketing strategy. And answering these type of nosey little inquiries will allow you to serve your customers personalized content that helps connect with your brand and your message.

Really, any brand trends your particular industry might collect regarding the type of people who typically buy the products or services you are selling is important to consider. Not everyone will pick up what you’re putting down, so having demographic info on-hand arms you with an advantage that your customers will actually be glad you have.

This information puts you one step ahead of anyone marketing to folks who might NEVER buy their products. You want to focus on the people who do, or who might, given the right marketing strategy. 

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What Kind of Psychographic Information Should I Collect?

Demographics take a look at who your buyers are. Psychographics focus on why they buy. Psychographic information could include:

1) What do they value?

2) What type of lifestyle do they have?

3) What are their interests?

4) Are they impulsive shoppers or master-researching super savers?

5) Do they trust brands?

6) What special features would they find appealing?

7) What are their thoughts about your industry?

8) How do they behave?

9) Which brands do they like? Which do they actually buy? Which brands represent #goals?

10) What types of brands do they mention, follow and engage with on social media?

The information in a chart like the one above that shows the relationship different groups of people have with social media can make the difference between a successful social media campaign and an unsuccessful one.

Whereas before, you might have known who your demographic is, by coupling buyer behavior with demographic info, you can have a better understanding of how your particular buyer demographic uses things like social media to make decisions about what they will and won’t buy.  

Combining demographics and psychographics gives your brand a clear picture of who your client is and why they typically buy what you’re selling.

After you have finished bombarding yourself with questions (remember, the more specific the better), gather all of your data and make a statement about your target audience combining demographic and psychographic information to create a mental profile. Think about ultimates. What ultimately is your demographic? What ultimately is your psychographic?

Once you have your defined target audience in hand, use their characteristics to have a one on one conversation with them when marketing. Perfecto! By assessing who you are speaking to you will undoubtedly be able to boost your company’s success in many different verticals.

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Tools You May Already Have That’ll Help You Find Your Target Audience

I’m going to sum up this section in one sentence – your social media dashboard offers a ton of data besides just who’s liking, commenting on, and sharing your posts. If you use LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, you already have access to a nice stack of demographic info and some key psychographic insights. The same is true of your Google Analytics dashboard. And what’s cool about this is that it’s not going to cost you anything extra. No three-digital monthly subscription fees. Bonus: each platform offers a different data set than the others.

In this section, the goal isn’t to come up with an exhaustive list. It’s more about showing you what types of data are available in the free apps you’re already using for reach and brand lift (we wrote on brand lift, too). #yourewelcome

Google Analytics

Age, gender, and location are stats that most platforms will share with you. This screenshot from our Google Analytics dashboard helps us understand who we’re targeting. We pretty much cater to young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 years old, which makes sense. The Shelf is an influencer marketing platform and the influencers our clients partner with use the platform to submit content. So, we know these numbers don’t just represent blog readers (because what teenager is reading this blog, man?).

Our website users skew female. Also makes sense. But what’s a little more interesting is if you look in the left panel, you’ll see there are different types of data sets we can pull, from location data to the way in which people behave on the site, to the devices they’re using to access The Shelf.

When we open the Interests, we can get information on the stuff our site users like.

Facebook

But you don’t have to be an SEO or marketing genius to read this stuff. Facebook offers quite a bit of audience insights as well, for both your fans (people who have Liked your page and now get to see the content you post to Facebook) and your Followers (the people who actually follow your page).

Facebook’s targeting capabilities are legendary at this point. The platform can produce insights on the its two billion users. For marketers, that means you can target just about anyone – any subcategory of shoppers, and even the most niched-down audience segments.

Facebook and Instagram are definitely platforms that favor the ultra-niche. It’s where people go to find their tribes.

Want to target modest Gen X moms with your biblically-inspired fat loss plan? Well, check out this Christian Keto group on Facebook. They’re pretty active. And you know what? I didn’t know about that group before I wrote this paragraph. I was just like, “what’s a niche group? Ketoers. No, smaller. Christian Ketoers.”

Did a Google search. Real group. No immodest progress pics. #thatsfrigginawesome

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LinkedIn

LinkedIn is another social network that provides useful insights about the community you’re connected to. The analytics tools are geared toward B2B marketing.

Take a look at the screenshot below. The stats showing are for the category of Seniority. You can basically gauge the percentage of your followers who may influence buying decisions. But you can also see which industries are following you, where your followers are , their specific job functions, and the sizes of the companies. This info is STELLAR for deciding what kinds of content would be most useful to your LinkedIn followers.

Instagram

If you have a business or creator account, you can access Instagram insights from your mobile device. Insights aren’t available when you’re accessing the platform by desktop. One of the things I like about the Instagram insights is the nuance it offers.

 

Pinterest

Pinterest does something really interesting for audience insights. Pinterest lets you compare your specific audience with all Pinterest users.

So, for instance, the content we post to Pinterest is mostly marketing-focused. Seems like a weird thing to post, but since we’ve been posting consistently, our engagement and follower numbers have increased. We repin tons of fashion and beauty pictures, and DIY stuff. But by and large, what we pin ourselves – marketing content.

So, if you look at our audience, you can see that the people who follow us are into things like marketing, advertising, and design.

But Not Twitter

Twitter just did away with audience insights in January 2020 (TOTAL bummer), so you can no longer pull this kind of information (Marketingland) about your Twitter followers from that platform. Your Influencer Platform

Influencer marketing platforms are also treasure troves of audience insights. Our clients use The Shelf platform to determine if an influencer is a good fit for a partnership or one-off campaign, and it starts with an ample supply of data about the influencer’s audience.

I wanted to include this one because when you’re working with an influencer, having the demographic/psychographic info of their audiences is just as important as having that information for your audience. Take a look at the screenshot below of data we pulled on an influencer who was being considered for a campaign.

A quick scroll across this sucker and you’ll be able to pinpoint which sets of data are about the influencer (like content category, brand mentions, hashtags used) and which are about the influencer’s audience (like age, location (actually, I didn’t pull that info for this example, but you can grab it)).

This is super-important, too because ideally, the audience of your influencer partner contains large swathes of your target audience. If it doesn’t – meaning if the data you find out about potential influencer partners don’t align with what you already know about your audience, it’s not a good fit.

The Big Wrap-Up

So there you have it! Demographic and psychographic insights are the two pieces of a targeted marketing strategy that will help you build a campaign that resonates with the people who’ll ACTUALLY BUY from you.

You don’t have to buy expensive attribution-tracking data that someone on your team now has to learn to use (and spend countless hours on with the software’s onboarding team and later with their tech support team). Most of the information you need you can find in the dashboards of apps like LinkedIn, Google Analytics, Pinterest, and Facebook.

So go forth and conquer. Target superbly and collect those coins.

The post Influencer Campaign Planning: Defining Your Target Audience appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

A few years ago, we were all abuzz about millennials favoring Instagram-worthy experiences over tangible items…and that’s still the case. That shift from tangible to intangible, however, made marketing to millennials way more about brands being able to create memorable shopping experiences than any of us really imagined it could.

(….except for futurists like Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore (not even sure if they’re futurists), who wrote the book The Experience Economy back in the 90s when non-futurist marketers were stocking up on Hammer pants.)

A Few Quick Points About Millennials

The Numbers. Millennials make up more than a quarter of the US Population – 83.1 million strong – and have spending power of about $65 billion a year. Just $65 billion? Yeah… but they influence more than 10x that. Nielsen reports that millennials influence about $1 trillion in spending.

That’s “trillion” with a trill.

The Trend. And, of course, we’re marketers, so we’ve talked almost nonstop about millennials for the last five years (nope, not tapped out yet). Born between 1980 and 1995ish, millennials are the current-day 24 to 39-year-olds. The eldest millennials are pushing middle age while the youngest millennials are now in their mid-20s.

The Adulting Part. Regardless, most millennials are trying their hand at full-on adulting (or at least they should be), and they’re game for spending an extra buck or two *cough* grand *cough* on travel. Bank accounts are finally out of that awkward teen phase and most millennials are at that stage in their careers where their incomes are increasing pretty steadily every year.

27 High-Impact Stats on Millennial Travelers That Will Help You Craft a Brilliant Marketing Campaign

So, let’s talk about the portion of that spending power that millennial travelers have earmarked for travel. In the next few sections, we’re going to hash out the stats on a couple of key areas of millennial travel including:

• Why millennials travel
• How millennial travelers choose a destination
• Vacation spending
• Millennial parents traveling with Gen Alpha kiddos
• How mobile and social media factor into travel spending

Millennial Travelers: Raise Your Hand If You’re On Your Vacay Grind

#1. Millennials travel more days per year than any other generation.

According to a 2017 Expedia Group Media Poll (gated), Millennials who were [then] between the ages of 24 and 35 years old took the lead on travel days, averaging 35 travel days a year. The next closest was Gen Z with 29 days, followed by Nana and Pop-Pop (Baby Boomers) with 27 days. Bringing up the rear is our time-pressed support economy all-stars, the Gen Xers at 26 days.

#2. Millennials travel for self-development.

Sometimes travel isn’t just about the pics. It’s also about the climb. More than 22 percent of millennials travel for personal development (sounds like fun, am I right?).

For many millennials, personal development is all about finding their identities and sharpening their skills while immersing themselves in a foreign culture. Good way to expand your goals and expose yourself to bigger and greater things. That there is dream fuel!

#3. Millennials are all about that Bleisure work-life balance.

We didn’t make that term up to be weirdos. Bleisure (pronounced buh LEE zhur) is an actual thing that you’re probably really familiar with. It’s when business trips are extended to leisure trips (hence the funny word Bleisure). In 2017 more than half of business trips were extended to allow business travelers to get a little me time.

#4. Millennials are twice as likely as other generations to seek travel adventures.

It’s true that many of us just want some place by the water where we can chill… but millennials are overwhelmingly interested in actually DOING non-chill stuff during their travels. Of those surveyed, 89 percent of millennials say they will go anywhere as along as they can explore the outdoors and be active.

#5. Three in five millennial vacays are now international travel.

Millennials are THE fastest-growing segment of travelers, and they’re more likely than other generations to travel the world (and even travel it solo). An older stat published by the United Nations back in 2012 reported that young travelers made up 20 percent of all international tourists. Fast forward to 2019, and three in five planned trips will have millennial travelers heading abroad.

How Millennial Travelers Choose a Destination

#6. Eighty-six percent of millennial travelers would rather experience a new culture while on vacation.

Compare that to the 44 percent of millennial travelers who want to party on vacation and the 28 percent of millennial travelers who prefer to shop. Seventy-eight percent of travelers want to learn something new while they travel, and half would pick a destination because they want to experience the culture.

“These young travellers are environmentally-aware and tend to stay longer and interact more closely with the communities they visit than the average tourist. As such, youth travel has emerged as one of the most promising paths towards a more responsible and sustainable tourism sector.” – UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai

#7. Millennials are the MOST likely generation to book their travels using an online travel agency.

More than half of millennial travelers (53 percent) book their trips using an Online Travel Agency (OTA). When it comes to finding online content resources, OTAs are also the number one resource travel shoppers use to get info on destinations, with 54 percent of American travelers using OTAs and information sites to find get the 411 on different spots.

#8. Cost is a major deciding factor for 36 percent of American travelers.

Not surprising at all, really. A few other important factors that typically play into the destination decision are hotel accommodations (34 percent of travelers look at this), and the recommendations of friends (online and offline) and family (14 percent).

The Millennial Traveler’s Path to Purchase

#9. For 72 percent of millennial travelers, the ads they see during the planning process play a role in their decision-making process.

That’s according to Expedia Group Media Solutions. In fact, for all the talk about the growing popularity of ad blockers, millennials are more likely than other generations to notice travel ads for hotels and travel packages.

#10. The average traveler visits 140 travel sites over 45 days before making a purchase.

In total, it’s more like 290 for the number of sites American travelers visit before making vacay plans. Of that 290, about 140 of them are typically travel sites. By comparison, Canadian travelers will visit 317 travel and non-travel sites before booking a trip, while British travelers will visit 181 travel and non-travel sites before making a purchase decision.

#11. One in three US-based millennials consider multiple travel destinations.

Interestingly, this stat is actually on the low end, as 42 percent of millennials in Canada and the UK consider multiple destinations. But then, U.S.-based millennials tend to have (and take) fewer vacation days from work.

#12. American travel shoppers spend 8.7 billion minutes per month consuming travel-related digital content.

That makes sense, right? ‘

“I’ve witnessed my teenage nephew literally watching hours of destination content on YouTube that’s basically just images set to music or – and I’m really surprised I’m not kidding about this part – computer-generated walks (where you see the city from the walker’s point of view) through different cities.” Sorilbran, head content geek for The Shelf.

In general, three in five [American] digital users consume travel-related content. That’s more than 160 million users checking out travel content every month, whether or not they’re actively planning a trip.

How Mobile and Social Fit Into the Picture with Millennial Travelers

#13.“Instagrammability” is an official travel term.

Forty percent of travelers under the age of 33 prioritize the Instagrammability of a destination when making a decision on whether they want to book it. Of course, we know that Millennial travelers look to social media for guidance on everything from shoes to mobile apps. Well, 97 percent of millennial travelers also share their experiences to social media while they’re traveling.

But this tendency to rely on social media to make key purchase decisions, aka the Instagram Effect, also factors in when it comes time for people to decide where to holiday, honeymoon, and chill.

I’m about to go off on a totally related tangent… but don’t worry, I won’t do a lot of these in this post.

Here’s how Instagram x travel play out in the virtual-to-real world.

New York beats Paris as a top travel destination, according to Vogue. I know that because Vogue published a pretty lengthy roundup of top travel destinations.

And apparently this cave in Portugal…

….has 63 friggin’ POSTS!.

Kidding. Lol.

This cave has actually been tagged in more than ten thousands posts because it’s considered Instagram-worthy.

In reality, it’s this influencer…

…. who has 63 posts that she tagged at different locations in Portugal (and many of those individual posts are carousels with multiple images).

The post above is currently one of the top-performing posts under the hashtag #benagilcaves…

…. which I found skimming through a BuzzFeed article, “20 Destinations to Travel If You Want a Lit Instagram”.

…

A few years ago, Benagil was just a small fishing village on the edge of Portugal. Today, you can literally read Google reviews about the Benagil Caves. There are more than 5500 reviews of this tiny 4.7-star village, and three ideas are threaded through most of them:

• It’s a beautiful place
• It’s tough to reach without a boat
• It’s swarming with tourists

The word there is swarming.

#14. Sixty-two percent of millennials use mobile to access online resources of travel inspiration.

Inspired millennial travelers say they found ideas for their most recent trips on Instagram. I have a few stats here from Facebook’s Insights platform (which is AWESOME, by the way).

#15. Nearly half of U.S. travelers are comfortable planning and booking their entire trip using their smartphones.

It’s 48 percent, to be exact.

#16. Price and ease-of-use play a huge role in determining which hospitality companies millennial travelers book with.

While price is THE major factor when it comes to booking travel, convenience and ease-of-use are the primary factors when it comes to brand loyalty. Measure that against the previous stat about half of U.S. travelers being cool booking their entire trip on their phones.

Eighty-five percent of US travelers say convenience is enough of a reason to remain loyal to a travel brand.

#17. Eight-six percent of millennial travelers would be okay with a travel brand posting in an online group that was started by a person.

This stat actually ties in nicely with another key insight from Facebook that three in four millennial travelers who are weekly users of Facebook use the platform for travel-related activities.

Related Post

What Makes Them Buy: Millennial Men

Luxury on the Road

#18. Millennials are redefining luxury travel. And that’s pretty big.

The word luxury means different things to different people. While you may think of luxury accommodations as fancy lamps, crystal vases (pronounced VAHzis), and a skyline view that takes your breath away, for many millennial luxury travelers that “skyline view” could easily be in reference to a sea of treetops that canopy a jungle.

For millenials, the term “luxury” often doesn’t translate as a high-end lifestyle so much as it translates as prestige moments… elements of luxury. As these moments, when captured, are as good as social media gold.

#19. Six in ten millennials want the option for “full or selective” luxury travel.

LEK 2017 Luxury Travel Study (gated) states millennials want 13 percent luxury at all times, 20 percent luxury on some travel, and 28 percent option for a luxurious experience when traveling.

Okay… what?

Let’s break it down: You put 10 Millenials in a room (hopefully with their phones or they’ll get bored), and 6 of the 10 will want the option for luxury when they travel.

• Of those 6, one wants to be wined and dined all day, erryday when traveling. This one luxury millennial wants all-inclusive eat and drink, etc; you name it, they want it.
• Two of the 6 want to take some luxury vacations here and there, but don’t need all travel options to be fancy. Sure, they want to stay at a resort in Mexico or hopefully have a direct flight, but they’re also down to hop in the Jeep and road-trip to Colorado and camp in the mountains.
• Half of the 6 want a luxurious experience while on a regular vacation. That could mean going to a spa one time or splurging at a restaurant, or seeing their favorite artists on stage. They’ll select at least one elaborate activity then plan several low key options around it.

Millennial Parents:Traveling with the Fam

#20. The average millennial family with gen alpha kids take more than three family trips a year .

And the chances are pretty good these family trips will be domestic travel (they are 68 percent of the time)… even when the kids aren’t in tow.

#21. Family vacays with Gen Alpha kids under nine are a week long on average.

It’s 6.9 days, to be exact.

#22. Sixty percent of millennial parents in the process of planning a family trip that includes their Gen Alpha kids are deciding between multiple destinations.

Typically, only one in ten millennial parents will decide to go on family vacation without first having a destination in mind. Twenty-nine percent will already have their hearts set on a specific destination from the start, and the remaining 60 percent will start off eyeing multiple destinations and make a final decision later on.

#23. Fifty-four percent of family travel with kids under the age of nine are by plane.

The next most popular mode of transportation for family trips – cars by 47 percent.

#24. More than half of millennial families traveling with kids stay in hotels.

Fifty-eight percent, actually, compared to resorts (21 percent), family/friends (17 percent), or vacation rentals (16 percent).

Millennial Vacation Spending

#25. In the 45 days leading up to a trip, US travelers spend $1,255 online on average, not including travel spending.

The average vacation planning cycle is about 45 days. Travelers who book their trips scheduled to take place less than 30 days from the booking date tend to spend 50 percent more on travel preparations than those who gives themselves more time to plan, book, and prepare for their trip.

#26. Millennials spend more on travel than other generations.

One in three millennials are willing to spend $5,000 or more on vacation. Forty-two percent of millennia travelers plan to shell out between $1,0001 and $5,000 on a vacation in the following 12 months.

#27. Millennial men are more likely to outspend millennial women on their travel plans.

While 15 percent of women planned to spend more than $5,000 on their vacations in the next twelve months, 37 percent of men planned to spend more than $5,000 on their vacations.

The post 27 Millennial Travel Stats You Need to Know for a Brilliant Marketing Campaign appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.

I know. I know. Social is time-consuming as hell when you’ve got other things to do. On its own, social media is glorious, but the moment you stick it on a To-Do list, it gets super-hard to understand, all of a sudden.

In this fourth installment of our CBD series, let’s get into the strategies that appeal to the buyer persona High Yield Insights named the Dosing Dad.

Let’s do it.

Who Is Generation X?

Born between 1965 and 1980, Generation X is thought to some of as the “middle child generation. They are often overlooked for the cooler, trendier Millennial market and the won’t overtake Boomers by number for another ten years, according to Pew Research. But Gen Xers wield a significant amount of influence in the market, with spending power that tops $2.4 trillion.

Despite being the hardest hit by the Great Recession, most Gen Xers count the cost of home ownership among their many financial responsibilities… in addition to college tuition, business costs (they’re the entrepreneurial generation who invented hustling), and saving for retirement.

This may explain why Gen Xers are so likely to zero in on good deals and thrifty spending… despite their ample incomes. That said, it’s pretty safe to assume that Generation X will respond positively to the use of compelling UGC in your digital marketing campaigns. They put a lot of stock into researching brands to figure out which companies are worth patronizing.

FINANCIAL POWERHOUSES WITH FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

According to a recent study released by Merrill Lynch, there is actually what is referred to as an “economy of support”. Millennials and adult Gen Zers are relying on their Gen X and Boomer parents to help them meet financial obligations, to the tune of $500 million a year. The money Gen Xers and Boomers would otherwise earmark for personal purchases and retirement is being reallocated to financially support adult children.

Gen Xers make up around 20 percent of the population, and control 14 percent of the nation’s wealth. But 75 percent of them also help their parents financially, and 52 percent support their adult Millennial children struggling to make it on their own. Add to that the 54 percent of Gen Xers still controlling the spending of younger Gen Z children who are now teens and in their early 20s – entering high school, college and the workforce – and you can see why Gen Xers are smart about their spending.

GEN X DOES SOCIAL A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY (OF COURSE THEY DO)

Getting CBD products in front of Gen Xers is a bit different than it would be for reaching Millennials, and even Boomers. Whereas Millennials rely on Instagram and Facebook to discover new products, Gen Xers are not about that ad-in-the-feed life. They use social media to stay connected to friends and family. According to eMarketer, 56 percent of Gen Xers say there is just too much advertising happening on social media.

Makes sense, right? Gen Xers tend to be the independent, go-against-the-grain type. Nearly one in five Gen Xers won’t even share personal info online at all, let alone let you tell them what they like. So, the bad news is you’re probably staring down the barrel of the old “Don’t call me. I’ll call you” vibe.

The good news is we’re gonna tell you how to get past it.

The Two Influencer Marketing Strategies That Will Help You Draw Gen Xers to Your CBD Products

Meet Dosing Dad. He’s a little younger than Senior Susan, the buyer persona we featured in the most recent post in our CBD series. This predominantly male demographic is also just about at their peak earning potential.

With minor children still in the house and many Dosing Dads contributing financially to both their young adult children AND their Boomer parents, the higher income often comes with financial strings already attached. But don’t fret.

That higher income also means CBD brands have the opportunity to introduce Dosing Dads to both high-quality (and even luxury) CBD products and things like pet CBD products (their spouses and partners would probably be thrilled to get in on that action).

COPY AND PASTE THIS CODE TO EMBED THIS GRAPHIC.

<div style=”clear:both”><a href=”https://marketing.theshelf.com/gen-x-dads-and-cbd”><img src=” https://marketing.theshelf.com/gen-x-dads-and-cbd” title=”Dosing Gen X Dads x CBD” border=”0″ /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a style=”text-decoration:underline; color:#11d3c8;” href=”https://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/cbd-products-gen-x”>The Shelf Full-Funnel Influencer Marketing</a></div>

Strategy #1: Target Gen Xers Separately, Meaningfully, and Deliberately

There are two things to keep in mind when marketing Dosing Dads (and Dosing Moms). If you notice, 13 percent of this particular demographic is made up of military veterans. So, proceed with respect and empathy. The other thing to remember is that Dosing Dads are usually administering CBD products for a specific purpose that may go beyond being trendy and healthy.

So, lead with plenty of useful information, insights and assistance without being the guy who’s trying to leverage someone else’s experiences (good and bad) to make a buck.

@NEUROXPF

A popular CBD-related hashtag being used on Instagram is #cbdforptsd. I used that tag to find @neuroxpf. What this account does really well is rally CBD supporters together through cannabis education posts and user-generated content from high-profile users that this demographic would recognize and respect (like retired NFL offensive lineman Kyle Turley, who’s everywhere talking about CBD).

The post below isn’t about taking CBD. Instead, it talks about regulations that keep veterans in the cannabis industry from getting home loans.

Uh… super random, Sorilbran.

Not really. This post is successfully targeting a demographic that:

1. Values home ownership
2. Made entrepreneurship cool (twenty years ago, calling yourself an entrepreneur was like being a snake oil salesman, a bad one at that)
3. Is accustomed to having to outsmart “the man” and out-hustle the next guy to even earn their keep.

While it may be tempting to overlook this generation, or worse, to lump them in with your millennial targeting, that doesn’t work. Yes, Gen X rode the wave into the Digital Age, and they have become really proficient at living both analog and digital lives simultaneously. But they are not their all-things-social kids, and they are not they’re Kumbaya-singing parents. They are the nut-packed nougat holding those two generations together. 

For Gen Xers (who are kinda used to being ignored and overlooked) CONSISTENCY IN YOUR TARGETING will be crucial. Target them deliberately with content that anyone can see is totally aimed at them. That means the images, the hashtags, the captions should all be curated, crafted and aligned to appeal to Gen Xers.

****

I talked extensively about this concept of becoming the resource in the post on grabbing the Baby Boomer CBD Market, too. A good read if you want to use that strategy and it works really well on Facebook (Facebook groups about CBD are gaining traction), too.

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TILLMAN’S TRANQUILS

Now, take a look at another post I found under the hashtag #cbdforptsd.

Initially, I thought, “Oh, cool. Microdose on the go…” It’s such an eye-catching post, I wondered why this particular post didn’t get more engagement… that is, until I clicked on the Instagram account associated with this post… and realized the company’s actually targeting a much younger demographic. My knee-jerk response was as a person, not a marketer, and it was that they don’t know a damned thing about PTSD!

Two things: Not sure why I was so outraged; I don’t have PTSD. AND I honestly have no idea how much Tillman’s Tranquils know about PTSD.

What I do know is that the demographic featured in this feed isn’t consistent with some of the key hashtags they’re using to promote their CBD brand. In fact, none of these pics align with hashtags like  #cbdcures #cbdheals #cbdforptsd #cbdforpain.

Remember, I found Tillman’s Tranquils under the hashtag #cbdforptsd. So, there’s a glaring disconnect between their hashtag strategy and the images they post. Which means…Tillman’s has inadvertently given itself a credibility issue. Hashtagging is a way for users to find posts about a certain topic. It’s also a good way for algorithms to identify spam. So, be careful about copy/pasting entire hashtag blocks to “cover all your bases”. Using popular hashtags to draw eyes to an unrelated post is click-baity at best. At worst, you could be creating credibility issues for your brand

Compared to @neuroxpf (who was able to generate 75 percent engagement on Instagram with a single video), 200 views is noticeably low. This instance may just be a case of copied hashtags, but it’s messing with their brand. I’m thinking if they tighten up their targeting, Tillman’s can start kicking some butt. (The Shelf platform can help you nail your targeting. See it in action).

Strategy #2: Video Is a Gen X Dad’s Best Friend

Gen X may be the most adaptable generation yet. When older Gen Xers were the youngest people in the world, having a TV in the home was juuuuust becoming the norm. Now, programmed TV is becoming obsolete as people now spend more time consuming content online than watching live TV. (TV manufacturers were smart to make televisions essentially 50-inch computer screens for watching YouTube and Netflix – that definitely kept electronics companies in the game.)

YOUTUBE IS VITAL

Gen Xers are no exception. They spend A LOT of time watching video, and they account for over 1.5 billion views on YouTube every day. So, there’s a reason YouTube is such an important content delivery method for CBD brands.

Gen Xers aren’t just spending time on YouTube though. While it is an important platform, Gen Xers share content – especially video – more readily to Facebook than any other site. This is closely followed by YouTube and Twitter, showing that in order to reach this generation (well, any generation really), an omnichannel approach is the best strategy.

Why not just stick with Instagram? Well, a couple of reasons. While men under the age of 24 dominate the platform, men over 35 aren’t as enthusiastic. For the older men who are, we’ve discovered they’re not schooled in (or pressed about) the fine art of hashtagging.

So, even for posts from Dosing Dads that probably would be valuable to other Dosing Dads there’s a good chance they will never be found because it’s not uncommon for older men to skip the hashtags (and subsequently skip searching and following hashtags).  

The INSANE Edge CBD Brands Get by Creating Content for YouTube

Regardless of age, YouTube is everybody’s favorite place to go to learn new things and to get answers on how to do stuff. CBD is no different. YouTube is a great place to find and create content that addresses very specific health conditions and uses of CBD. 

And if Dosing Dad isn’t into Dr. Oz (not a lot of older men really are), he could probably stand a guy’s guy like Joe Rogan, who’s not Thomas-DeLauer-young, but he’s recognized by lots of different people because he  was a comedian and a fighter before becoming a podcaster. He was also the host of the show Fear Factor back in the day. In 2001, Fear Factor was the number one show for 18 to 49 year-olds. Coincidentally (or not), Joe is literally the 17th most searched thing on YouTube. Love that guy.

Joe’s on-air personality is of someone who’s insightful, funny, clever and a straight-shooter. He has strong opinions about most things and talks A LOT about vitality. And he’s had his fair share of posts about CBD. 

Now, I’m not saying you should try to get Joe Rogan to endorse your product. I mean… good luck with that. But I am trying to drive home the point of why YouTube is a great marketing tool and I’m using Joe as an example because for all his popularity, he’s still pretty niche.

Unlike a Google search, YouTube’s algorithm isn’t as focused on search intent. A broad search term like “CBD Oil” will deliver relevant content from channels I like PLUS those the algorithm calculates I might like. But that first list of search results is sort of a, “tell me more” type of thing.

So, for me, a single search of the term “CBD oil” brought up everything from industry news to religion to government security clearances for people who use CBD oil. These are all first-page results.

Stuff I never would have thought about, but would totally watch. Here’s quick hit list of a few other topics I found as a result of my CBD Oil query:

• Should I Take CBD Oil for My Anxiet? – BBC Stories
• Medical Marijuana and Parkinson’s – Ride with Larry
• Autism Son Tries CBD Oil – Autism Families
• What to Look for When Buying CBD Oil (Roy Krebs)- Biohackers Lab
• CBD Oil for Anxiety: Unexpected Effects and Benefits – Depression to Expression
• I Tried CBD Oil; It Didn’t Go Well – WheezyNews
• How Much CBD Oil Should I Take? – Rawls MD
• CBD Oil vs Copaiba Oil – Dr. Hill and Dr. O Discuss How CBD and Copaiba Work – doTerra Essential Oils

Initiating a broad topic query on YouTube will turn up a wider range of results because YouTube search results aren’t as focused on search intent as Google when it delivers results.

For marketers, that means you don’t have to wait for someone to search your weird topic in order to show up in search results. It also means you have options beyond pre-roll and mid-roll YouTube ads… though you could go that route.

(Just remember what I said about Gen X and paid ads – they’re not that into them.)

Instead, you could partner with one or two popular influencers who can create a long-form video that gets repurposed into smaller, five- or ten-minute spots that are topical.

Here’s a really good example…

The video below is actually a powerful example of the nuances of CBD use beyond just your typical “Benefits of CBD” content. It’s both entertaining and insightful and deals specifically with how CBD and THC affect sleep and brain recovery. 

What?

Yeah. Sleep and brain recovery. I’m a total geek about this kinda stuff. I literally just watched a 90-minute documentary about how vitamins D and B12 impact cognition, memory and recovery. I just like that sort of thing.

But you can create these kinds of…virtual CBD rabbit holes on YouTube where vitality nerds, documentary geeks, would-be Jeopardy contestants and Dosing Dads can get sucked in.

Check out this CBD subtopic that showed up in my YouTube search results. It’s my man, Joe interviewing endurance athlete, Ben Greenfield.

Notice how Ben (thought leader in the body-hacking/vitality space) talks about the grogginess he feels when he wakes up in the morning after taking CBD (good to know when you’re one of the 76 percent of Dosing Dads who is employed full time).

He also talks about the differences in the types of sleep you get with CBD compared to THC. This is super-specific content. And for viewers, it means having access to insights you don’t typically get in a “Benefits of CBD” infographic. This is the stuff novice CBD users (and more than half of current CBD users are novices) may not have previously considered. And it’s important information to know.

 If you remember, we said earlier most people who take CBD take it to address a specific issue. As a marketer, you can WIN with this kind of practical, high-value content.

Conclusion

To get the attention of Dosing Dads, CBD brands benefit from an omnichannel marketing strategy that includes traditional Instagram influencer marketing as well as video marketing. For Instagram posts, focus on creating content that you know appeals specifically to men over 40 and that provides them value beyond just being eye-catching. For your video marketing efforts, skip the animated explainer videos and pre-roll ads that only get shown to viewers in your area. Instead, create catalogs of super-useful content that provide unmatched value and insights to Dosing Dads. If you can build a sort of encyclopedia of CBD as short-form video, you can make yourself an authority and a trusted resource. So, focus on educating your buyers (and thus boosting both retention and loyalty), and in the process show them a variety of CBD products to meet their very specific needs.

Put the work in.

The post CBD Products + Dads: The Best Way to Catch the Eye of Men Over 40 appeared first on The Shelf Full-Service Influencer Marketing.