The future of business lies in the digital space. To stay relevant today and tomorrow, brands need to establish a strong Internet presence to keep up with consumers who are spending more time online. There are over 313 million active Internet users in the US alone, and approximately 223 million of those have a social media presence.
Luckily, millennials are taking more decisional roles in businesses. As individuals who are more attuned with the online space, they are the main drivers and advocates of digital marketing strategies over traditional ones. As consumers are more keen and aware of trending news and content, millennial marketers are incorporating pop culture references with their digital marketing tactics to connect with customers more intimately.
Here’s how millennials are using digital marketing and pop culture to connect with consumers better and boost sales.
Making Data-Driven Decisions with Digital Marketing
Gone are the days when mere intuition and crafty hard sells dominate the marketing field. We now live in a world where every click and interaction online can be precisely tracked and analyzed. Leaders today choose to rely on hard data rather than blindly testing the waters when making business decisions.
For millennials, navigating through the digital space is almost automatic. This ability is not surprising considering that they have constantly spent their lives since childhood or adolescence with the Internet and social media. Younger millennials especially had a Myspace and Facebook account before they finished school.
Millennials are mindful of the increasing foothold that the Internet has in the lives of people across all ages today and several years from now. Whether working in marketing departments of large corporations or heading SMEs, especially eCommerce stores, they are harnessing the power of data to run businesses more successfully. With accessible data analytics tools like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics, marketers can understand their target markets better down to the last details and numbers. In turn, businesses communicate their brands more effectively – from their product packaging to their social media personality.
Since millennials know their markets’ demographics and interests more precisely, they can create marketing content that is more tailored-fit and strategical. They don’t have to wing it and waste money on a marketing campaign that doesn’t tick all the boxes with their consumers. Coupled with better instincts of what works best in the online space to increase virality and exposure, millennials can boost sales with digital marketing strategies, from driving organic traffic to eCommerce websites to launching social media campaigns.
With digital marketing, businesses, especially SMEs, can optimize their profit margins without spending thousands to millions of dollars on TV commercials or billboards to reach their target market. They only need to post the right content for free on social media or their websites and offer their customers exactly what they need based on data about them.
Plus, the reliance on data doesn’t stop after launching the marketing campaign. Data analytics is still used to track the success or failure of every digital marketing decision to know what to improve and what to maintain for future business decisions.
For example, suppose you advertise your men’s health supplement through a billboard. In that case, you won’t know with precision how many individuals within your target market saw it and whether the increase in this month’s sales can be attributed to it. But with a highly-targeted Facebook ad, you would know how many males viewed it, their ages, how many sales were converted through the ad, and so on.
All in all, millennials are creating more personalized experiences for their customers. Forging longer-lasting relationships built on trust and loyalty in the online space is crucial. And one of many ways they connect with customers is by integrating popular culture references in their messaging.
Creating Messages that Resonate with Pop Culture
More than ever, people are in the loop with pop culture through social media, whose main users include millennials along with Gen Z. Through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok and other platforms, people can create and talk about viral and trending moments exactly when they happen.
For instance, even social media users who didn’t watch the 2021 Presidential Inauguration were able to enjoy the iconic Bernie Sanders mittens photo and create endless memes about it. Of course, brands did not want to miss out and joined the bandwagon. Companies, organizations, and websites like Amazon, IKEA, Etsy, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra all found ways to share their own Bernie memes in social media that are mostly managed by millennials, who are updated with the rapid shifts in pop culture through the same platforms.
By wisely integrating pop culture references through their content and social media marketing tactics, brands, under the direction of millennials, can achieve the following:
- Be part of the conversation – What to post, where to post it, and what time it should be posted are matters in the digital realm that millennials understand best. By being timely and strategic with content posted online, millennials know how to capture consumers’ attention and become the brand at the top of their minds when the time comes to purchase something.
- Connect more intimately – By inserting pop culture here and there, the brand becomes more relatable, fun and human. It becomes a brand that customers are willing to have a relationship with, rather than a mere entity pushing them to buy products. Especially in eCommerce businesses with no face-to-face touchpoints with customers, building a good relationship with the customer is of utmost importance.
Incorporating pop culture references in a Twitter or Instagram post may not translate to direct sales. Still, it goes a long way to increase brand awareness and eventually become a trusted business for consumers.
Using data-driven digital marketing strategies and creating culturally relevant content are two significant ways of how millennials are changing the way brands are doing business. Adopting a millennial mindset can do wonders for your customers’ overall experience and your company’s bottom line today and dictate whether your business will sink or swim in the future.