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Millennials are the first generation of natives in the digital universe and as such have rewritten the rule book for inter-business communication. While our methods are structurally based on those of our predecessors, millennials have succeeded in integrating contemporary technology into all aspects of business and as such require a far more contemporary and precise approach when it comes to communicating with us in order to accrue our business.
Here is a guide to the most effective ways to communicate with and attract the attention of millennial business leaders.
Gaining Interest
First and foremost, and this obviously goes for any generation of business leaders, you need to garner their interest. But how on earth, I hear you cry, does one capture the interest of the generation with arguably the shortest attention span in history?
Friends. There is no need to panic. We are the generation that held on for eight seasons of Game of Thrones, five seasons of Breaking Bad, and we still seem to be going on about this whole climate thing.
There are two primary methods that you can use to attract millennial business leaders.
The first: advertising. Millennials will research everything before committing to it. Pay-Per-Click advertising is a great way to use this to your advantage. When using a search engine, the first three suggestions that a person might see will be adverts and, as the name suggests, you will only have to pay for the adverts that get clicks. The main downside to this being that people do employ the use of ad blockers in their browsers, stopping them from seeing what you are putting out.
On to the second! Social media. A millennial may click on your advert and view your page, but quickly forget you once that tab is closed. Alternatively with social media, once a post piques their interest, a follow or like button means your content will appear every time they check their phone or laptop.
The key to social media success is rather than spreading yourself too thin over too many social accounts, identifying the two or three platforms that your target audience engage with. You should also research which platforms will most benefit your business’ content and products. For example, LinkedIn will benefit long-form informational content, whereas Instagram is a great place to update your audience about your team and recent business developments (and pictures of the company pet!).
The Value of Education
Educational or long-form content is where the vast majority of your engagement will come from. This is what shows other businesses why they would want to do business with you. Their versatility means that each format has different advantages. Here are some examples:
Visual content – This can include but is hot limited to videos, presentations, tutorials and infographics. These are the easiest to consume and are used to provide quick answers to simple questions, which is extremely valuable when communicating with millennial business leaders. They should generally be limited to bitesize snippets or chunks but are not totally inflexible. If you are looking to touch on more complex topics, extend your videos for more in-depth analyses, or even separate them into a video series. This works well for things like technical how-to guides and provides more resources for a client to refer to.
Blogs and articles – These are an exhaustive creative resource. Videos and presentations are great for the client but require collaboration, time and energy to create and edit. Blogs and articles, taking less time to complete, can be posted more often and allow for a greater in-depth analysis of your chosen topic. They are also key to improving your website’s SEO performance.
White Papers – These are like theses for a particular business or industry. Hundreds of hours of research and numerous surveys are used to put these together usually by a group of people collaborating and combining their data. These are usually created with a proposal or solution in mind with regards to a specific common issue.
Let Them Find You
We have now reached the final stage of our journey, implementation. This is where we sell. What have we learned about our elusive millennial market?
The millennial attention span is actually not as short as it has been reputed. BUT. We are not time wasters. The reason that out-bound marketing techniques don’t work on millennials as well as it historically has done for generations before us is because, why would we want something that we do not need enough to actively seek out ourselves?
So how do you get millennial business leaders to contact you? Very simply, you allow them the option to do so. Outbound emails don’t generally work but you can offer a subscription service for those who are interested. This is also another way to spread your educational content and even offer exclusive deals for your service.
Contact forms on your website will also offer your target audience the option to contact you rather than pushing your marketing onto them. This can be improved further by offering to select a preferred contact method (some millennials may prefer e-mailing due to our infamous fear of phone calls).
All that is then left for you to do, is identify their pain points and close that lead. As the first generation of technological natives, millennials already have the whole world at their fingertips. Previous generations of business leaders had to rely on outbound marketing to find the services that they needed but for the millennial, this can be overwhelming.
The best way to gain millennial clients is to give them the choice of when and how to contact you. If you market your business well online and provide the opportunity to learn about what your business does through educational content you can’t go wrong.
If you want to find out how we can help you successfully communicate with Millennials, please feel free to get in touch with us directly for more info here.
