How to Court the Younger Generation: Creating the Future of Your Business by Marketing to Millennials Today

In the world of marketing, there’s a natural instinct to go after certain segments of the population when marketing because those are the ones that spend the most money. That may be good for short-term gains, but any business worth its salt will always be thinking about the future. And regardless of the industry, the future can be summed up in one beautiful little word: millennials.

Commonly defined as anyone between the ages of 18 and 34, or those born in 1982 and up, millennials outnumber baby boomers by roughly a half a million people. They’re the largest generation in the country right now and, make no mistake, the one that the very future of your business will be based on. If you want to court the younger generation and create a solid future for your business, you’ll need to keep a few key things in mind.

Treat Them as Equals

No consumers like to be talked down to or told what to do – but this is especially true with the younger generation. Millennials can absolutely sense “marketing speak,” so don’t think that is going to buy you a whole new generation of customers, either. According to one study conducted by Kissmetrics, 89% of millennial buyers trust recommendations from friends and family members MORE than any claim that a brand could make.

Use the same tactics that you’ve been using to win over older generations, but reconfigured for a younger audience. You should still be putting helpful, relevant content that appeals to the people you’re trying to attract out into the world, but keep in mind that what is relevant to a 20-year-old isn’t necessarily the same thing that’s relevant to a 65-year-old. Buyer personas are going to be hugely valuable in this regard to help guarantee your eye is always “on the prize.”

You’re a Combination Marketer Now Whether You Like It Or Not

Marketing to specific groups of people has always required putting your efforts to where those people actually are, and millennials are no different. Millennials are nostalgic about direct mail and appreciate personalized invitations and advertising they can hold. Likewise, according to a study conducted by Nielsen, more than 85% of millennials own a smartphone. That means your digital marketing needs to marry with your print marketing for the best way to meet your audience where they’re at.

When used together, print and digital marketing successfully target that coveted younger generation. Think digital with a smartphone-based loyalty rewards program, and connect that program to your direct mail campaign. Social media is another obvious example. Tie your social media efforts with posters, envelopes, and more to create the best of both worlds.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that no business – regardless of what it is – is time-proof. If you focus all of your efforts on one particular age range or demographic, you run the risk of accidentally making yourself irrelevant when that group invariably ages out of the product or service you’re offering.

Moving On Is Not Giving Up

No business professional in history has ever had a perfect record. Though you only set goals for you and your team with the absolute best of intentions, sometimes you may find yourself coming up short. Everyone from our parents to our teachers to our mentors has told us over and over again to “never give up, never surrender,” when sometimes, you have to do exactly that. The key to coming out all the better for it involves knowing how to identify that moment of surrender when it does arrive, and how to best handle what comes immediately after.

Look for the Signs

The best way to know when to move on from an objective in the world of business involves taking a moment to observe the world around you. How much time have you spent trying to accomplish this task? How much money have you expended trying to do this one particular thing? Would that time, money, and energy be better served if it were reallocated elsewhere within your organization?

At a certain point, you will start to feel diminishing returns. You’ve put your all into something and success is still just as far away as it was when you started. When you have that moment of clarity, the best thing you can do is look deep inside yourself. Do you really believe that you can pull off the challenge in front of you, or do you just hope that you can? If you fall into the latter category, it may be time to move on.

Moving On Doesn’t Mean You’ve Failed

The most important thing to understand about when you should move on from an objective you just can’t quite accomplish has to do with what happens next. If you set a goal for yourself and come up short of that mark, a lot of things have happened -but failure is not one of them.

You can choose to look at it that way if you’d like, but doing so actually limits the power of the moment you have in front of you. Maybe the objective you set wasn’t the right objective in the first place, and everything leading up to this point has been trying to tell you that. It’s a scenario you can see time and time again with some of the most successful companies in the history of business.

Apple, for example, had been set on releasing a smartphone for years – or at least a “smartphone” as per the definition of that term in 2005. Steve Jobs and his team tried, and tried and tried again, and eventually released something called the ROKR E1, a phone designed in conjunction with Motorola that was basically a regular phone with iTunes connectivity built in. The results were disastrous – a rare black mark on Apple’s otherwise top notch record. Jobs had set a goal for himself and had failed to accomplish it the way he wanted.

But instead of saying “Apple and phones are not meant for each other,” he thought differently. He realized that what he really failed to do was find the right hardware company to partner with to achieve this goal. He realized that by handling both the hardware and the software in-house, he could get at what he really wanted in the first place. Apple would go on to release the iPhone less than two years later and the rest, as they say, is history.

In the End

When you set goals for yourself, you always do so with the best of intentions. Remember that Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Sometimes, you need to know when to try harder and when to try something else. However, moving on doesn’t mean that you’re a failure – it just means that you’ve cleared away the cobwebs, reassessed your priorities, and are ready to redirect that energy into something much more positive and appropriate.

Accordion Mini Books

A CREATIVE WAY TO PROVIDE USEFUL INFORMATION IN A SMALL, CONDENSED FORMAT

 

If your business is looking for a creative way to provide useful information in a small, condensed format, accordion mini-books are a great solution! Here are a few suggestions how to use accordion mini-books to educate and captivate your audience:

• Create a product showcase with photos and short teaser information on each product.

• Offer a calendar of upcoming specials, with each page of the mini-booklet highlighting a different promotion.

• Create a coupon mini-book that focuses on lesser-known products.

• Design a compact product manual with instructions, warranty information, replacement details, contact information, etc.

• Offer event information in an accordion mini-book. Educate your audience about upcoming events, seminars, and celebrations with information on keynote speakers, workshops, schedules of events, maps, etc.

• Design a FAQ informational booklet that provides answers to frequently asked questions, useful industry websites and resources, tips and tricks, and other helpful tools.

If you’d like help creating the perfect accordion mini-book, our creative specialists are here to help! Remember, other printers may be nearby, but nobody comes close.

Call us today at 856.429.0715

Failure Is an Opportunity: The Positives That You Can Learn From a Good Day Gone Wrong

Nobody ever plans on failure. When you wake up in the morning, ready to start another rough day at the office, you don’t think to yourself “Oh boy, I really can’t wait to screw up that big project today.” Failure is something that tends to happen, despite the best of intentions. In those moments of darkness, it’s easy to let setbacks both large and small get you down. However, a quality that all real leaders have in common is that they don’t dread failure at all because they know that it is inevitable. Failure is only truly a negative thing if you fail to seize the opportunity of the unique learning experience you’ve just been presented with.

Failure Helps You Combat Momentum

One of the most common reasons why failure sometimes rears its ugly head has to do with something that can often be your biggest strength – momentum. As the machine that is your business grinds along, day after day, you begin to get into a “groove” thanks to our old friend momentum. Productivity is on the rise; you’re producing adequate results, and you’re well on your way to meeting your deadlines and satisfying clients. Then, disaster strikes. Maybe a finished product isn’t nearly where you need it to be, or a mission-critical process has broken down. This is where momentum works against you sometimes – because you were riding the wave of that groove, you likely overlooked small problems earlier on before they had the chance to become much bigger ones in the present day.

This is where failure becomes your best friend – it forces you to stop and think about everything that led to this moment. What along the way caused the failure that you’re experiencing right now? It likely wasn’t anything that happened this morning, or last night, or even earlier in the week. It was probably a series of small decisions made weeks or even months ago that snowballed into your present situation. With failure, you have an opportunity to look back and see things in a much clearer way. You can make a note of certain decisions you made that didn’t quite pay off in the way you thought they would and, as a result, are ones that you’re not going to make again in the future (or at least you shouldn’t).

The Benefit of Hindsight

An old saying tells us that hindsight is 20/20. Many people think this is an ironic statement – because you can’t go back in time and change the past. You’re forced to live with the knowledge that the failure you’re experiencing is one you created yourself. Instead, look at this saying as a positive thing. Hindsight may not allow you to change the past, but it IS a powerful tool that you can use to positively impact the future. This is the core of what learning from failure is all about.

Think about it this way: your mistake may have cost your business X number of dollars today, but it also helped you save a much larger amount of money on an ongoing basis because you had a rare chance to learn and improve in a way that wouldn’t have presented itself otherwise. Learning from failure, therefore, becomes incredibly positive, as you’re investing in the future of both your company and your career with the lessons you’ve learned today.

These are just a few of the reasons why failure is only a negative thing if you allow it to be. Sure, you had expectations that you’ve set for yourself and others that you didn’t meet – feeling disappointed or even upset in these moments is natural. But failure is nothing if not a great opportunity to stop, reassess, and bounce back even stronger. Failure is natural throughout all points in life. In biology, every time you exercise your muscles begin to break down. However, they then rebuild themselves stronger than they were before – this is how we get more fit. There is absolutely no reason why the same shouldn’t be true in the world of business.