Reaching Younger Consumers: A Guide For Marketers

To target and reach a particular demographic, you need to meet them where they tend to spend the most time. For older people, that’s going to be a very different place than younger people. If you’re looking to target Gen Z, (those aged 25  and under) in 2022, you’ll be looking to find where they tend to spend most of their time – both in the physical world and online. This article shares where these places are, and what you can do to target them and do a better job of showing your products, services and business to the consumers who mean the most to you. 

Content

It’s fair to say that younger people love content. They’re forever looking for the latest meme, the most amusing YouTube prank, or other unique and creative forms of video and multimedia that they can share with their friends or simply spend some time being entertained by. If you can harness this passion, you can market effectively to younger people.

Research shows that most young people consume content via their smartphones and on social media, while older people tend to read newspapers and consume more of their content on laptops and tablets. This should already give you pointers on the kind of content you should be creating: short, engaging videos that are optimized for smartphone screens and shared on social media. Now let’s look at how you can best do that. 

Social Media

We’ll start by outlining the types of social media platform that you should consider targeting to command the attention of younger consumers. There’s data out there that can show you the demographic breakdown of different platforms – from older social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter through to more youthful ones such as TikTok and Instagram. You’ll want to target the latter two, plus YouTube, to stand the best chance of being shown to the young consumers you’re looking to influence. 

While YouTube marketing has been a staple of marketers’ efforts for years, the world of TikTok is still a little confusing for those who did not come of age when it was reaching its ascendency. It’s an app that you’ll find the vast majority of youngsters using, with exciting implications for those who want to sell to younger people. If you’d like to learn how to advertise on TikTok, you can do so with expert advice from savvy marketers online. You can also read TikTok’s own guide on how to use the platform as a business. 

Smartphones

If you’re used to creating content for marketing purposes, you’ll know that content has to be optimized for different forms of devices. Usually, these are broken down into three categories: smartphones, tablets and laptops. Larger computers are a separate category, though they’re relatively rare in the modern era, and are usually only used by professionals for work. As we know that younger users tend to consume the vast majority of their content on smartphones, you should create all of your content so that’s it’s perfectly optimized for a smartphone screen. 

That’s relatively easy to do. If you’re a content designer, you’ll know the dimensions that you have to work towards, whether that’s with a portrait format video, or with a square-shaped image that you’ll share on Instagram. Using content-building platforms can help, especially if you’re new to content creation. These offer templates that’ll suit your objectives and the platforms that you’re planning on sharing your marketing content on. 

Videos

What do the three most-used social media apps by young people have in common? YouTube, TikTok and Instagram are all overwhelmingly visual platforms, with fewer words and more videos and photos. That means that you shouldn’t be too concerned about drafting paragraphs of copy to go along with your marketing campaigns, and you should focus on video as the most effective way of capturing the attention of young people. Remember that attention spans getting shorter, so these videos should grab the attention where possible. 

Still, your video format will largely depend on which platform you’re marketing upon. YouTube tends to feature longer adverts that you can pay to have placed in certain types of videos, while Instagram and TikTok are better for shorter-form, faster-paced videos that last up to 20 seconds. As such, when you’re creating a video for marketing purposes, you should try to make each one appropriate for different platforms; this will involve creative cuts and edits that will ensure it’ll work in one form on YouTube and in another on TikTok. 

Mutual Interests

As well as these key features of the younger person’s media consumption, it’s also important to market using some of the key interests that you feel are mutual to young people and also to your business. There’s going to be little point in trying to engage young people in classic cars or stamp collecting, as they’ll see these as irrelevant to their lifestyles. Instead, think about the latest pop tracks, what’s fashionable now, and trending conversations in order to really speak to the younger generation on their level. 

You should hire a young social media professional to help you understand these trends and mutual interests. This will be far more effective than expecting an older person to research trends which they’re not particularly familiar with, and it’ll give you a good understanding of the type of person you’re actually trying to connect with. 

Patience

If you’re new to marketing, or you haven’t marketed to younger people before, you should be prepared to be patient with your first few weeks of campaigning. It can take time to get things right and to get the traction you’re looking for from young people. But once you get the hang of the tips shared above, you’ll start seeing results for your business, including high click-through rates and a higher brand awareness among the young people you see as important for your business’ profits and growth. 

Make your marketing efforts tailored to younger people with the tips shared in this article – all of which can be used by businesses of all shapes and sizes.