millennials

Brad: Hello everyone, it’s Brad and Robert again with this week’s Clarity Digital Marketing Clip. And if you’ll remember from last week, we spent a little time with Dr. Nathan Harness from Texas A & M University and discussed the importance of targeting millennials, understanding millennials and how they think. Not just in your online strategy, but in general business. You better have a strategy for this group of people because they’re in upwards of close to 90 million people. And at the same conference, you got to spend a little bit of time with Angelia Trinidad, a very successful millennial from the Passion Planner.

Robert: Yes, Angelia started a Kickstarter campaign and raised $650,000.

Brad: Not bad.

Robert: For a paper product. It’s called the Passion Planner and you can chart your life’s journey. The women love it because it’s kind of a journal/diary/calendar and you can define your life goals. So, don’t underestimate these millennials, 24-25 years old, and she’s had million dollar months in sales.

Brad: Yeah.

Robert: So she talked to us about how to connect with them.

Angelia: It comes down to respect. It comes down to listening. Taking the time to ask, well how can I help you. Because a lot of people, they pitch themselves and they pitch themselves so hard that, millennials especially are really turned off by it. They’re like ‘okay, why are you trying to sell me?’ And once millennials feel like they’re being sold, like most people, once you realize that this is an advertisement, then it’s like ‘ugh’.

Brad: So what you saw from what Angelia just said, was basically don’t patronize the millennials and don’t pitch them. They don’t need a sales pitch. They’ll kind of figure it out on their own.

Robert: And one of the things that we know about socially is if you start; sell, sell, sell; you lose, lose, lose audience.

Brad: It really is the 80/20 rule. 20% of your posts should really be salesy and 80% of it should be about making that connection.

Robert: So one thing with her success I was curious about was the stereotype that millennials are kind of shiftless and lazy and entitled and you’ve got to hold their hand. So, she kind of debunks the myth of the people in her age group.

Angelia: I don’t know if they’re a myth. I feel like it’s hard to really generalize a large population. I feel like the metaphor that I use is millennials have been pushed in this beautiful wheelchair, that usually their parents or society provides for them. And they get pushed in all these directions until they graduate college, usually. And then everyone says ‘walk’. And we’re like ‘how do we walk, we’ve never walked before; you’ve been pushing us this whole time.’ So how you get that to change is you say ‘allright millennials, we’re taking you out of your wheelchair. We’re not going to make decisions for you anymore. And, let’s have you walk. Let’s have you crawl, let’s have you stumble, I’m not going to catch you.’ Because that’s what parents do, they catch you. And then they say ‘why can’t you walk?’ It’s like ‘well, I have to learn how to do it on my own. I have to fail. I have be able to get back up. I have to be able to take steps in the decisions I want.’ Because if not, then there’s going to be this expectation of ‘why can’t you sprint; I see this other person sprinting? Why can’t you do it?’ So I think the biggest thing is to just be patient and to understand that millennials need to make their own mistakes and you can’t always catch them. But you also need to be like ‘you know, I support you. And whatever decision you make I’m going to be here for you.’ And that’s it.

Brad: So as you can see folks, it’s very important that we spend some time in your business, or you spend some time with your necessary folks and team to really think about this millennial strategy. One of the things to think about is, the top two brands in millennials are Nike and Apple. They’ve figured it out. They understand that if you connect with this audience, at the youngest of the millennials that you can; we’re talking about people that are potentially born in 1980 up to the 2000. So they’re only 16, 17 years old. If you can connect with them and turn them on to your brand now, you’ll have them for the rest of their life. Under Armour is perfect at this. They turn on the young kids to their brand so that they can keep them for the rest of their lives.

Robert: So, kind of, what differentiates the social for the millennials?

Brad: Well, it’s back to what Angelia said. You have to make a connection. You can’t just pitch them or try to draw them in, right? You’re not going to fish for them. They’re too smart for that in their own mind. So you have to connect with them at a deeper level, make the better pitch, if you will, without a sales, and connect with them. And don’t try to overdo it with them. They don’t buy into that.

Robert: Well, Angelia, she’s amazing.

Brad: She’s made it. She’s figured it out.

Robert: She’s got it.

Brad: Yeah.

Robert: Well, that’s the Clarity Digital Marketing Clip of the week; and Robert Riggs, Brad Besancon, see you next week.

Brad: Have a good one, guys.