Millennial Marketing

Casinos Need to be Ready to Adapt for a New Generation of Player [White Paper]

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Casinos are facing a long road back after the pandemic, and they will need to be ready to adapt for a new generation of player.

The casino industry has been one of the hardest hit markets as a result of the pandemic. In order to emerge and thrive as economies reopen, the focus for brick-and-mortar operations needs to be on the appeal and acquisition of a new generation of player, rather than relying on an aging demographic that might be slower to return, and cannot be counted on forever.

new generation of casino player

In this new white paper, t2 Partner Corey Padveen explores how casinos can focus their efforts on adopting new technologies and adjust the casino floor experience to appeal to younger players with traditionally profitable games: slots. Skill-based games have been slowly rolled out at casinos around the world, and the data shows that there is an underserved market of players that can be encouraged to begin playing through the use of these machines.

Data is explored and analyzed in an effort to highlight a new opportunity that can help casinos regain some of what was lost during the pandemic and subsequent shutdowns, and a roadmap is laid out that highlights how these changes can lead to new player adoption moving forward.

Download the white paper here.

Gen Z and Millennial App Usage Shifts in 2020

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Gen Z and Millennial app usage signal shifts in mobile user behaviors with regards to social media in the coming year.

Gen Z Millennial App Usage and Spend App Annie 2020

Image Credit: App Annie

Gen Z and Millennial app usage can often be regarded as key defining engagement metrics dictating the direction of mobile marketing and engagement. In 2020, a few familiar names disappeared from the top five most likely to use, Facebook among them, to make way for some new, hugely popular platforms.

According to App Annie, Snapchat and Discord took the top spot for Gen Z and Millennials, respectively. In fact, in the United States, massive platforms like Facebook and Instagram that have long-reigned on top of at least some key demographics were not present in the analysis of Apps Most Like to Use for Gen Z, Millennials, or Gen X. While Facebook’s properties still account for the most hours spent overall, the data suggests that popularity might have plateaued as other apps, like TikTok and Twitch, saw significant year-over-year gains in engagement.

genz and millennial app usage 2020

Globally, 3.5 trillion hours of time were spent on apps, leading to over $140 billion in consumer transactions. 2020 was a year that saw enormous growth in mobile adoption and usage, with an average of 8% more time spent on mobile than watching television. That’s a 20% increase in time spent on mobile from 2019. Of course, the pandemic and lockdowns were major contributing factors, but the key here is that the desired platform under these conditions was mobile over any other.

As you might expect, the majority (roughly 2/3) of mobile app spend was generated from gaming – ranging from casual to casino. This was driven primarily from in-app spend in arcade games, which saw a 300% year-over-year growth. Ultimately, all sectors saw a significant increase in both adoption and engagement, which leads one to question how this shapes the future of mobile marketing and consumer engagement.

In terms of live content, streaming platforms saw incredible rises in popularity, with the average amount of content streamed up anywhere from 60-85% around the world.

Gen Z Millennial App Usage Streaming 2020

YouTube still reigns supreme both in the United States and globally, but other live platforms, like Twitch, are gaining steam as live streaming has emerged as a favorite for more diverse audiences outside of gaming during the pandemic.

What Does This Mean for Marketers

Shifting demographic preferences when it comes to marketing is nothing new. IT is something we, as marketers, are constantly adapting to and for which we are consistently creating new strategies. But one thing that has become clear is that experiential mobile is becoming a key component of mobile engagement. Content alone is not going to drive the level of engagement marketers enjoyed early in the rise of mobile on networks like Facebook and Instagram. We need to find new ways of directly engaging with audiences in a live environment. Gen Z and Millennial app usage behaviors are clearly trending towards personalized, immersive experiences, and this has intensified during the pandemic and lockdowns. While there is clearly still considerable value from an overall engagement standpoint in static content, creativity in how mobile and, more specifically, gaming and live streaming, can be used to connect and engage with key, younger audiences will be crucial to building your brand and connecting with new demographics moving forward.

Questions to Ask When Building a Hypertargeted Audience

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When it comes to building lasting relationships with your audience, you’re going to want to segment the general audience into hypertargeted audience segments. Start the process with these questions.

Building a collection of hypertargeted audience segments is a crucial step in the process of developing authentic relationships with your prospects and customers, particularly millennials. While creating those segments has become a much simpler task with all of the data we have at our fingertips, it is still a seemingly daunting task, and it might not be clear where you can begin the process. Luckily, one of the best ways to get started is by asking yourself a series of questions and using the answers to start defining clearly outlined pockets of prospects that you can target with customized content.

Hypertargeted audience analysis

Getting Started

  1. Where is your audience from (country, state/province, city, zip, etc.)?
  2. Can you define a relatively narrow age range?
  3. Can you pinpoint a specific language?

Digging Deeper

  1. What are some of the universal interests of your targets?
  2. Are there any unique behaviors that differentiate this specific group?
  3. Do these individuals have a propensity to use desktop or mobile devices for brand and content engagement?
  4. What is the scale and timeline of the sales cycle for this group?

More Specific

  1. Can you start segmenting interests based on topical events/times of the year?
  2. Can you identify times of the week/day that your target audience members are most active?
  3. Can the interests you’ve identified be parsed more significantly?
  4. Can the behaviors you’ve identified be sub-segmented further?
  5. What types of content are your targets most likely to engage with more frequently?

While there might be several more questions you want to ask yourself while building these hypertargeted audience segments, this is a good starting point that can help you begin to develop audience pockets and their associated content that lead to more stable, longer-lasting relationships.

Rising Utilitarianism in Decision Making: Cause Marketing

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This article originally appeared on CoreyPadveen.com.

More so than ever before, we are seeing businesses adopt causes as core components of both their business and marketing strategies.

Cause marketing is nothing new. Examples of truly integrated cause marketing go as far back as the 70s. What we’re seeing today, however, is a shift in the way causes are being integrated into the missions of businesses; this holds particularly true for businesses that try to appeal to millennials (and often succeed). Let’s start with first taking a look at what exactly cause marketing is and how it falls into the discussion of utilitarianism in decision making.

(Modern) Cause Marketing: What is it?

Almost immediately, I’m sure, most people jump to the idea of defining cause marketing as the concept of brands teaming up with a particular charity or non-profit for a given campaign where “a portion of the proceeds…” – you know the rest. While that is one definition of cause marketing, I would like to look at a somewhat more modern approach, which has seen a rise in recent years.

Cause marketing and millennials

The definition I would like to consider for the examination of how cause marketing highlights utilitarianism in the decision-making process is one where brands do not simply partner with a cause for a particular campaign, but rather adopt the cause themselves, creating an inextricable link between the brand and the cause itself. This is to say that in lieu of a third party partnership, the cause is the brand and the brand the cause. Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing better or worse than those third-party partnerships. For the case of this argument, however, I would simply like to look at the brands that have made their for-profit businesses cause-centric, and how this strategy has paid off.

One of the most notable examples, and one that I make reference to in my book, Marketing to Millennials for Dummies, is TOMS shoes.

TOMS shoes and millennials

TOMS shoes is by no means the first company to align with a cause. They did, however, approach their alignment is a unique way. Instead of donations in cash from each sale, TOMS offers up their ‘one for one’ structure, where they donate a pair of shoes to those in need for every pair sold. The costs of production and logistics are factored into the cost of each pair, and they make that very clear in their mission statement. As opposed to consumers – a huge portion of whom are millennials – shying away from an overtly inflated price tag, they happily pay for the price of two when they are getting one. (Yes, I know that simplifies the whole transaction a little bit, but you understand my point, I hope.) It is in this willingness to buy TOMS over simple, less expensive alternatives that we see utilitarianism poking through.

An Example of Utilitarianism and Economic Utility

By now (if you’ve been following this series of articles) you already have a pretty good grasp on what exactly constitutes utilitarianism, so in the case of cause marketing, it should be pretty obvious.

Utilitarianism has everything to do with making the decision that benefits society as a whole. In this case, we’re talking about the consumer’s decision to buy a product from one manufacturer over another based on its alignment with a particular cause. As much as it may seem contrary to what the majority of societal assumptions suggest, in the case of millennials, this might mean spending more for a product based on the company’s alignment with a given cause. Most marketers’ definitions of millennials focuses intently on their unwillingness to spend. When looking at the actual data, however, we see that certain instances, like those involving cause marketing, lead to a higher transactional spend and lifetime value.

A point that I have regularly reiterated is that millennials, and modern consumers in general, weigh the overall economic utility of their purchases when making a purchasing decision. When it comes to brands that have involved themselves in cause marketing, there is a greater economic utility for the consumer, since the purchase, however much more expensive provides them with the knowledge that the transaction wasn’t simply fleeting, but rather ongoing. They are getting more out of the transaction based on the knowledge that it also involved a cause. In the case of other causes, such as the checkout dollar donation, the transaction feels separate. As a result, it doesn’t have the same added value to modern consumers as the integrated cause marketing, as is the case with TOMS. As a result, this new form of cause marketing resonates significantly with modern marketers, and showcases a clear example of utilitarianism and economic utility melding together, once again, to highlight the new means of consumer decision-making.

Rising Utilitarianism in Decision Making: The Sharing Economy

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This article originally appeared on CoreyPadveen.com.

The sharing economy has experienced explosive growth, and while it might be largely self-serving on an individual level, it has created an environment that betters the greater good.

Welcome back to a new edition of my study of the rise of utilitarianism in decision making processes and economies adopted by the modern consumer (often referred to as millennials, but that’s not giving modern consumers enough credit). In this article, I plan to explore some of the inner workings of the sharing economy on both a micro and macro level, as well as the motivations behind its incipience and rise, in order to further along my assertion that utilitarianism and economic utility both play a role in modern consumer behavior.

Let’s start by first defining and explaining the sharing economy, and looking a little more closely at its history.

Sharing Economy and Utilitarianism in Decision Making

The Sharing Economy

For a fairly comprehensive look at the history of the sharing economy as we understand it today, take a look at the Wikipedia entry. For our purposes, I’ll simply discuss some economic- and social-based roots of the sharing economy’s rise.

The sharing economy refers to businesses and markets that have emerged as a result of consumers sharing resources, rather than focusing on individual ownership. A couple of well-known examples include Uber and Airbnb, which deal with transportation and real-estate, respectively. In the world of virtual sharing economies, cloud storage or P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing services, including open source software platforms, are other popular examples of the sharing economy. The rise of these services and the significant expansion of this economy as a whole (I say expansion because sharing was not invented by the web) has its roots in Victorian England in a theory proposed by economist William Forster Lloyd.

Lloyd’s theory, which is often referred to as the tragedy of the commons, suggests that when users with access to a particular resource act according to their own self-interest with regards to consumption, they ultimately hurt the greater community as a whole. The resources in question are used and depleted at a faster rate and provide less utility to each individual than if the resources had been used for the entire population. This can be applied to virtually any situation, and it often is, but in our case, we’re looking at how this concept applies to the rise of the sharing economy in the context of the Great Recession in 2008.

There weren’t too many people unaffected by the housing (and many other) market collapse in 2008. Cutting costs or pulling in some extra cash was a pursuit of many. Combine this with the growth of access to high-speed internet and the prevalence of web-enabled mobile devices, and a new kind of sharing economy came into existence. In this case, consumers would use their access to the internet to share assets, cut costs on things like utilities and services and offer up free time or expertise for an extra few bucks, far below market prices. Thus, the modern sharing economy was born. So, how exactly does the sharing economy relate to the ideas of utilitarianism or economic utility? Those have to do with the macroeconomic and microeconomic motivations of society and the consumer, respectively.

Macro Motivations of Society

When it comes to utilitarianism, the tragedy of the commons helps explain a lot of the economic forces (Invisible Hand-style) at play, which led to the rise of the sharing economy. When individuals act selfishly, hoarding resources and consuming as much as they can on an individual basis, society as a whole is worse off from a utility standpoint. Think about cars in Manhattan. There are a lot of them. Those cars create traffic, that traffic creates pollution, pollution hurts the city (and the world, but let’s focus on Manhattan), people get sick, they can’t work, they lose their cars because they can’t afford to keep them, etc. etc. This isn’t going to be the case for everyone, but we’re looking at this from an economist’s viewpoint, so we need to look at a full cycle. In the case of every individual using his or her car, this is the potential long-run impact the practice can have on the economy and its players.

Now, if we decide to introduce a ride-sharing service, such as Uber or Lyft, that can mean fewer cars on the road, and a lowered risk of the above-mentioned cycle taking place. Scale that, and you find yourself and society as a whole much better off than if every individual acted in his or her own self-interest by hoarding a resource that could easily be shared. Utilitarian ethics apply here, because we have seen an explosive rise of the sharing economy when it comes to car- and ride-sharing services. This has been championed largely by millennial consumers who have grown up engaging and transacting business on a mobile device and online. So, it would stand to reason that the actors are, individually, acting in accordance with utilitarian principles driving their decisions. When we take a closer look, however, we notice that this might not be the case.

(Seemingly) Selfish Motivations of the Individual

Every month, you pay for your cell phone, your internet, and other utilities and services that you consume individually. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that these services cost you $100 every month. Now, let’s say that you find out that the three other people on the floor of your apartment complex are also all spending $100 every month and receiving the same services, from the same provider. You realize that you could pool all of these together and pay for one, upgraded service for all four of you, and your individual fees would drop to $60 each. In doing so, you could now spend less and consume more, thereby maximizing your economic utility. Great!

Companies like Fon in the United Kingdom offer exactly this service. These kinds of resource sharing businesses have been sprouting up more often in recent years, particularly since the crash in 2008. In the case outlined above, your motivations for sharing access to a resource with other parties are largely rooted in self-interest; you can minimize costs and maximize returns. That motivation doesn’t exactly have its roots in benefitting the greater good. The utilitarian component, in the case of the individual decision to pursue this structure, is a byproduct, not a deciding factor. Egoism (from a philosophical standpoint), to an extent, is the driving force behind the suggestion. And yet, when we take a step back we see that society as a whole is better off. Looping back to the structure of the macro example in the last section, now each tenant has more money, will be able to use that for other resources, such as gas if they drive, will not lose their job, be homeless, etc. etc. Again, this is an extreme case of analysis, but it’s worth using to make the point.

The sharing economy has benefitted society greatly. It has provided solutions to problems that consumers did not even know they had until alternatives were presented. On an individual level, the sharing economy helps consumers maximize their economic utility. Contrary to how this maximization pursuit usually turns out, the result is that we are all made better for it.

The Unintended Rise of Utilitarianism in Decision Making (Part 1)

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This article originally appeared on CoreyPadveen.com.

Whether or not we meant for it to happen, utilitarianism has become a driving factor in the decision-making process.

Millennials are often regarded as being self-absorbed, lazy and entitled. Vanity and the pursuit of perceived perfection have led to the presumption that millennials and, more broadly, the consumer market in general (for the most part) are entirely self-centered. It is easy to see why that way of thinking has become commonplace. All of the superficial elements are there to support the argument. What might surprise you – as it did me – is to discover that consumers are not as self-obsessed as we might think and that when we take into account modern technology trends, consumption habits and general social behavior, we can see that, in fact, quite the opposite is true.

Economic utility and decision making.

I’m talking about an individual pursuit of utility maximization rooted in the moral base that defines utilitarianism. To explain how I came to this conclusion, it’s going to take a few articles. Over the next few weeks – or months, or years, who knows how much I’ll end up writing – I’ll be gathering my thoughts and covering how these two concepts – that of economic utility maximization and utilitarianism – relate to the various habits of modern consumers. In this first segment, I’ll cover the two umbrella topics that provide the basis for my argument. Let’s first take a look at economic utility.

Economic Utility

What exactly is economic utility? Well, the definition, pulled below from Investopedia, is fairly straightforward:

The value, or usefulness, that a purchaser receives in return for exchanging his money for a company’s goods or services.

While this definition is simple enough, the key point of focus needs to be on the concept of value, rather than the tangible transactional details. Exchanging money can be substituted for virtually any type of exchange. The value derived from a transaction is an intangible metric, and in traditional microeconomics, its calculation relies heavily on presumptions made by the economist. Modern behavioral economics, on the other hand, looks at value for what it is: an individualistic motivator that leads largely irrational consumers to improve their economic well-being by choosing an option that leads to the greatest returns. Those returns come in many forms, but the key point to remember is those transactional decisions, on an individual level, are self-serving and aim to derive the longest-lasting dividends.

It is as a result of this concept of economic utility maximization that we get the overwhelming societal opinion that millennials act purely out of self-interest. A 2015 survey by Pew even found that millennials see themselves as self-absorbed a greedy, which you can see in the chart below:

Millennials and Their Self Opinion

So, on an individual level, based on some of the core constructs of behavioral economics, we are all trying to get the most out of every transaction. The motivation behind our decisions is, rather understandably, to make our lives better in whatever measurement criteria we use to define that metric. Individual economic utility maximization, when trying to understand it from a philosophical standpoint, would fall pretty closely in line with egoism. If that’s true, then this consumer trait and the subsequent actions taken by consumers have the potential to conflict pretty directly with the fundamentals of utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism

Before getting into the specifics of the theory of utilitarianism, let’s take a quick step back and talk about consequentialist ethics. In philosophy, a theory is considered consequentialist when the morality of a decision is determined based purely on the outcome of said action. So, if the consequence of an act is considered good, then the action is right. If the results of an act are wrong, then it is considered bad. Pretty straightforward stuff. Both utilitarianism and egoism are considered consequentialist in nature. The difference, however, is that with egoism, as you saw above, when it comes to economic utility, the entirety of the consequence relies on the outcome for the self. That does not necessarily hold true when it comes to utilitarianism.

The utility in the case of utilitarianism is slightly different than that in economics. In the case of utilitarianism, the outcome of an action needs to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This might mean that a morally right action has a lesser benefit on the self, but the welfare of society as a whole is improved. While there is clearly overlap in these two cases, we can almost certainly think of a nearly endless list of examples where the decisions made under the assumptions of egoism will not necessarily line up with those made under utilitarian principles. Take, for example, the case of Edmond Dantès in Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. Under the guidelines of utilitarianism, Dantès would have shared the treasure he discovered with society so as to improve the well-being of every member of society. His choice, clearly rooted in the morality of egoism, was to keep the treasure in order to improve his own welfare and achieve his goals. There are plenty of cases where this outcome might arise, and this particular example is relevant because it has to do with money – or, in the case of the transactional examples noted in the previous section, it has to do with improving one’s own economic utility.

So, thinking about examples in this way, you can probably see how economic utility, a primary driver of consumers’ decisions (particularly millennial consumer decisions on an individual level) might conflict with utilitarianism. And yet, when we take a step away from millennials’ individual actions and look at the trends, emerging economies and social standards set by the demographic as a whole, then we start to see millennials’ operating under the guise of utilitarian ethics.

Over the course of this article series, I will be looking closely at several examples that showcase this reality, juxtaposed against the perceptions we have about millennials on an individual consumer basis and, hopefully, convince you that the theory is true. Hope you enjoy it!

Building Millennial Loyalty with Content Strategies (Part 5)

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Millennial loyalty is within reach, but the key is using content strategically in order to connect with your audience on a personal level.

In May, my new book, Marketing to Millennials for Dummies will be available online and in-stores. (You can also pre-order the book today!) While the idea of marketing to Millennials can be more broadly understood as marketing to a modern consumer, there are certain traits that have been established with the Millennial demographic specifically, and have slowly begun to expand to other cohorts. As such, I am publishing a five-part series discussing the strategic use of content in the pursuit of building loyalty with Millennials (and modern consumers, in general). In this final part, we will take a closer look at how marketers can build Millennial loyalty with conversational content.

Marketing to Millennials For Dummies Corey Padveen

Get Conversational

Your content should entice your Millennial audience to participate in a conversation. This doesn’t mean that you need to avoid your sales pitch at all costs; you simply need to be smart about when and how it is integrated into your messaging. Millennials will spend money, despite what you might have read, but they will spend it at their own discretion. This means that the aggressive sales tactic on new media will not only fall flat (leading you to spend marketing dollars that lead nowhere) but it also means that your brand will leave no lasting impression on your targeted Millennial audience segment. Instead of building relationships and loyalty, you’ll need to run ongoing brand awareness campaigns that target the same audiences, and this is simply a waste of resources in the long-run. Conversational, authentic content is the remedy for this problem.

There are three stages of an initial content strategy: education, differentiation, and motivation. In the education stage, you’re teaching your audience about the industry you’re in and the products or services that are available (some of which you might offer). This provides value to your audience (the first strategy we covered) and builds trust through conversation and content sharing. The differentiation stage is where you’ll highlight why your products or services are better. This is most effectively done by sharing third party content or engaging with existing customers to highlight that it is not simply your own opinion which places your product or service above the rest, but the market opinion.

The last stage, motivation, is the point in the conversation where you can implement some traditional sales tactics. Motivate your now engaged audience to take action by offering some sort of incentive. That can be a discount, a special for first-time customers, or another incentivized offer that leads to those members of your Millennial audience that are ready to buy to take action. The key throughout this entire process is to make it an ongoing conversation. Engage with users on either an individual or large-scale basis. Talk to them on a personal level as opposed to simply sharing marketing materials. Ask questions and let your audience know that they are being heard. Millennials have seen enough advertising content. Converse with them by following this outlined path and you’ll see conversions and loyalty start to ramp up.

I hope you found this series helpful, and for more strategies on reaching and marketing to Millennials, don’t forget to pre-order your copy of Marketing to Millennials for Dummies on Amazon today, available May 15!

Building Millennial Loyalty with Content Strategies (Part 4)

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Millennial loyalty might seem like a myth based on popular misconceptions, but the reality is that Millennials can be your most loyal audience if you leverage content correctly.

In May, my new book, Marketing to Millennials for Dummies will be available online and in-stores. (You can also pre-order the book today!) While the idea of marketing to Millennials can be more broadly understood as marketing to a modern consumer, there are certain traits that have been established with the Millennial demographic specifically, and have slowly begun to expand to other cohorts. As such, I am publishing a five-part series discussing the strategic use of content in the pursuit of building loyalty with Millennials (and modern consumers, in general). This series will run until next week as we prepare for the launch of our new website and the book. In this part, we will take a closer look at what kinds of content drive up your Millennial loyalty the fastest.

Marketing to Millennials For Dummies Corey Padveen

Rich and Digestible Content

Rich and easily digestible are two qualities that might not necessarily go together all that well in the world of dining, but when it comes to marketing, the more your content possesses these two qualities, the more successful it will be at driving your Millennial relationships forward. Rich media are defined as pieces of content that leverage delivery methods beyond standard text. So, for example, an image or a video would count as forms of rich media. These are the types of content that your Millennial audience will be most attracted to, and they are the ones that will most effectively and rapidly deliver your message.

In terms of making your content more digestible, the key to doing so is thinking about simplicity when you craft your message. You’ll want your brand experience (or buyer journey) to be fluid and clear, and you’ll want your messaging to be short, to the point, and genuine. Authenticity (discussed in the final strategy, which follows next week) is key to the digestibility of your content. If Millennials can come across your content where it is presented in a way that makes it simple, eye-catching, and conversational (again, covered in the final strategy, which will be available next week) then the likelihood that they will engage with it is increased significantly. That is especially true if you’ve followed the previously outlined strategy of making the content personalized to the audience segment that you’re trying to reach.

By using rich media and developing a simple enough message that your content can be digested easily by Millennial consumers, you increase the chances that ongoing engagement can be derived from a particular segment of your audience. Ongoing engagement means getting users to return as you produce more content that follows similar patterns. As with any of these strategies, that ongoing engagement is crucial in the nurturing and strengthening of your Millennial relationships. Those relationships provide the very strong basis for loyalty.

If you take advantage of the value of rich media, you can significantly drive up your Millennial audience loyalty. Be sure to keep an eye out next week for the final content strategy I cover regarding the value of a conversation. And don’t forget to pre-order your copy of Marketing to Millennials for Dummies on Amazon today!

Building Millennial Loyalty with Content Strategies (Part 3)

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You can drive Millennial loyalty by implementing some carefully crafted content strategies.

In May, my new book, Marketing to Millennials for Dummies will be available online and in-stores. (You can also pre-order the book today!) While the idea of marketing to Millennials can be more broadly understood as marketing to a modern consumer, there are certain traits that have been established with the Millennial demographic specifically, and have slowly begun to expand to other cohorts. As such, I am publishing a five-part series discussing the strategic use of content in the pursuit of building loyalty with Millennials (and modern consumers, in general). This series will run over the next few weeks as we prepare for the launch of our new website and the book. In this part, we will take a closer look at how marketers can personalize the experience for Millennials, and how value drives loyalty with your audience.

Marketing to Millennials For Dummies Corey Padveen

Personalize Each Segment’s Content

Personalizing the content you share to Millennial audience segments is a two-step process. The first involves segmenting your audience of Millennials using one or several of many (often free) tools that are available to marketers. While this process could easily be a series of articles on its own (and a process that I cover in fairly extensive detail in my book, Marketing to Millennials for Dummies) it suffices to say, in this case, that you could conduct this segmentation process by using Facebook’s Audience Analysis tool on your email lists and identify segments based on interests and behaviors. In this segmentation process, one of the important factors that you’ll want to keep on the lookout for are the expressed (or implied, based on likes and engagement with other brands on Facebook) interests that your audience possesses. These interests will allow you to get a better understanding of what makes your Millennial audience segments tick, which will allow for extensive customization of your messaging.

Customization of your content is an important strategy because of the almost overwhelming amount of noise that exists online. Your audience can simply be too easily distracted by something else in a timeline or news feed to pay attention to your generic content. It needs to speak to your Millennial audience on a personal level, which will accomplish a number of objectives. First, personalized content will catch your audience’s initial attention. Once you have that, the more personalized the message, the longer your audience will be willing to stick around for it. The average attention span of online adults is only a handful of seconds. If you want to extend that, think customization first. Lastly, personalized content will lead to faster relationship development and nurturing. The closer you can get to your Millennials, as noted in the previous strategy, the more loyal they will be and the greater their lifetime value becomes.  

By focusing your efforts on creating personalized, highly engaging content for each of your audience pockets, Millennial loyalty will be a much more attainable objective. Be sure to keep an eye out next week for the second content strategy I cover regarding the types of content that are best suited for building Millennial loyalty. And don’t forget to pre-order your copy of Marketing to Millennials for Dummies on Amazon today!

Building Millennial Loyalty with Content Strategies (Part 2)

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Millennial loyalty is not a myth; with the right content strategies in place, you can build an audience of loyal Millennial consumers with a high lifetime value.

In May, my new book, Marketing to Millennials for Dummies will be available online and in-stores. (You can also pre-order the book today!) While the idea of marketing to Millennials can be more broadly understood as marketing to a modern consumer, there are certain traits that have been established with the Millennial demographic specifically, and have slowly begun to expand to other cohorts. As such, I am publishing a five-part series discussing the strategic use of content in the pursuit of building loyalty with Millennials (and modern consumers, in general). This series will run over the next few weeks as we prepare for the launch of our new website and the book. In this part, we will take a closer look at how marketers can add value to their audience, and how value drives loyalty with Millennials.

Marketing to Millennials For Dummies Corey Padveen

Providing Value

Value comes in many forms. In some cases – likely the one most marketers immediately assume when they hear the term ‘value’ – it can mean economic value. Examples of economic value are coupons or specials that might be offered to fans, followers, and subscribers. The value referred to in this particular strategic initiative, however, is somewhat different. When you’re trying to connect with Millennials, you’ll want your content to contain some type of value that stretches beyond a one-off deal or offer. You’ll want there to be a sustainable form of value that keeps your audience coming back.

There are several different types of content that offer this sustainable value. Most of these come in the form of knowledge. If you can educate your audience in some capacity that leaves them with something more (and lasting) that they did not have before, you’re in an excellent position to build those lasting relationships that keep Millennials coming back for more. In terms of the kinds of educational content that Millennials are most often attracted to, you’ll want to consider three types: informational, instructional, and inspirational.

Informational content is rooted in the explanation of theories, concepts, and other brand- or industry-related concepts. When you share informational content, you are providing your audience with the stepping stones needed to become their own experts in a given subject. Let’s say, for example, you’re in the gambling business, and you’re sharing information about the kinds of bets that exist in the casino table game of craps. In order to do this in the most effective way to drive continued traffic, you’ll create content (which can be in virtually any form, be it written, video or audio; though, the latter two are worth more of your effort) on an ongoing basis and share it with your audience on various media.

Creating and sharing this content will lead to continued engagement from your most interested targets. An added benefit to this strategy is the fact that it highlights your own expertise in the field, which is a similar benefit derived from instructional content.

In the case of instructional content, you’re providing value by walking your audience through the necessary steps to taking some sort of action. This could be anything from a simple outline of the steps to signing up for a service or newsletter to something more complex, like a do-it-yourself video that provides viewers with the intricate steps involved in building a car engine. Whatever the case, this is a content strategy that once again showcases your expertise, builds trust with your audience by giving them a form of insider information, and drives continued engagement through the sustainable value of the instructions you’re providing.

Lastly, you have inspirational content. In this particular case, the use of the term inspirational doesn’t relate to motivational phrases, but rather the content is inspirational in terms of the elicited actions. You can inspire your audience to try something new and different, and the best way to do this is to provide tips and tricks that might not be particularly obvious when you share, say, the standard instructions involved in a particular act. Again, this is a content type that drives repeat engagement and provides your audience with a considerable degree of value. Of course, there are those pieces of content that provide economic value, such as a deal or offer, but in the case where you’ll want to build a long-term relationship, which is where brand loyalty lies, the types of content the associated value outlined here are the ones to which you’ll want to pay the closest attention.

When you focus your efforts on providing a sustained, long-term value to your audience, you’ll be in a much better position to build Millennial loyalty. Be sure to keep an eye out next week for the second content strategy I cover regarding the personalization of your content efforts. And don’t forget to pre-order your copy of Marketing to Millennials for Dummies on Amazon today!

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