5 Tips for Marketing to Millennials from a Millennial

By now, smart businesses realize the Millennial generation isn’t just a bunch of hipsters with smart phones taking selfies but rather a generation of consumers 86 million strong— that’s 7% more than baby boomers—and they’re ready to spend money.

In fact, businesses that don’t start tailoring their marketing to Millennials soon are missing out on a major consumer opportunity from a generation with an expected $2.45 trillion annual spending power by 2015; and that figure will surpass boomers’ spending by 2018. The bottom line: Businesses must connect with millennial consumers now because these young adults are the major consumer group of the present and future.

It’s easy for companies to get lost in a world where the term “social media marketing” is used loosely and the major strategy behind marketing to Millennials is the idea of making something “go viral.” If you want to win big with Gen Y, then you need to change your marketing ideas all together. Here is what you need to keep in mind when targeting a Millennial, from the perspective of a Millennial:

The Numbers Behind Why Millennials are Generation Frustration

I am a Millennial. I have been labeled as having delusions of grandeur, a tendency for being increasingly narcissistic and confidence in abilities I do not yet possess. It has been said that I am part of a generation that thinks we are “special” and therefore unable to be happy with the career opportunities we can attain.

As a member of this so-called entitled and whiny generation, I’d like to address this idea with a simple answer: We are.

But we did not develop these traits without the assistance of the generations who forged the path before us, laying down the groundwork for the development of us Gen Yers. It was simple. We were told to stay in school, we did. To get our high school diploma, we did. To graduate from college, we did. We were engrained with the notion that the key to financial security and success was education and hard work. So we developed dreams, and we followed them.

The problem is, the country wasn’t actually ready for an entire generation to actually do what was asked of them. No longer was a college education and hard work the ticket to success; and now, rightfully, my Millennial Generation is… unemployed and frustrated.

I have had a front-row seat to this reality facing my generation, so I thought I’d lay out the numbers underlying this frustration. Let’s start with a doozy...