4 ways to entice the millennial shoppers

Millennial shoppers’ wield powerful spending powers and their influence over brands opens a plethora of business opportunities.

With advancement of technology and communications, companies have to familiarize with their expenditure and consumption psychology. Millennials are more prone to share consumer generated content, brands can no more use a standalone platform to attract and engage with consumers, they have to focus their marketing efforts on multiple media, those where their consumers – the millennials -- engage the most. Moreover, according to ComScore the purchasing power of this group between 18-35 years is more than $ 170 billion, a fact hard to ignore!

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As every technology friendly brand aims to please and attract these millennial buyers, who are more prone to engage with their friend’s post over a brand’s post, here are four ways to woo the millennial shoppers and make them your brand advocators.

#1. Createomni-channel shopping experiences integrated seamlessly across all devices: Seventy three per cent of the millennials shop through their smartphones. They make these decisions while on the move or commuting, hence your brand has to perform seamlessly on all devices. Mobile first is 2015’s buzzword, so ensure that your business is either responsive or available in an app version.

Ideally, they first research on a product or brand via social networks or their website, then visit the store in person to check the product and before making the final purchase browse through the net to check what others are saying about the product before buying.

Tip – Your online store should offer product descriptions, clear visuals, customer reviews and a link to the social networks to best appeal to the millennials.

#2. Craft your marketing efforts across social sharing: According to Ipsos, 63% millennials choose social media to stay updated about a brand and 46% say a strong social media presence influences their purchasing decision, says Pew Social Trends.

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With millennial population being more vocal about their interaction with the brand, they use social networks to express their dissent in case when products don’t deliver the claimed value and at times of unsatisfactory customer service. Many brands are using these feedbacks to improve their products and showcasing that they care for their audience.

The social network influencing the customers purchase are different for every business niche, so for consumer serving industries such as lifestyle, fashion and entertainment, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram will have a greater reach while for the business to business industries LinkedIn and Twitter can garner a better response. However, there is no Holy Grail for social media marketing, you need to check and optimize the network that reverberates the best with your audience.

Tip – Social media marketing best practice is not publishing and advertising your content, but letting and inspiring millennials to do so.

#3. Optimize content marketing in a manner that appeals the millennial – Content relevance and engagement are the key factors to get millennial shoppers onboard a brand. According to Marketing Land, 89% companies are using content marketing. Millennial generation wants the content to be a blend of entertaining, funny, engaging, creative, unique, informative and relevant to their purpose.

They need content that looks good, so optimize the overall feel of your website, navigation, images and make the content easy to share. Make content curation a part of your strategy, post content that addresses their pain points and this 10% will do 90% of the advertising for your brand. The heart of content marketing lies in making the right form of content reach the audience at the right time.

Tip – Deliver personalized content to suit individual customer’s needs. So if you have a mobile app, include push notification as an integral part of information delivery.

#4. Include loyalty programs: According to Yahoo statistics, 63% millennials are more likely to check-in a store if they receive a coupon or discount. Offering a 20% discount attracts 50% of them to visit a retail store.

So how to make the loyalty program noticeable? Make the loyalty programs brief and relatable, speak in an entertaining language leaving aside the buzzwords and use gamification to make it more interactive. These incentives do not necessarily mean cash back offers, explore the other possibilities such as making them the first to try a product and deliver these messages in a personalized way.

Tip – As e-commerce stores are constantly running loyalty and coupon programs, tap into the mobile platform and create a mobile loyalty program to attract the audience.

Wrapping up – the millennial buyers have money and the power to shop. You are armed with the products, it’s now time to go explore, experiment and implement the tips.