By Sharon Tapiwanashe Mapira #THEMARKETER CONTRIBUTOR (Opinions expressed by YOH contributors are their own.)
Over a family braai the other day, I had an interesting conversation on millennial and gen z. We spoke about the general differences of the two, the loss of old authentic values and culture, the seemingly new ethics and open-mindedness of the later generation. It got heated of course as we tried to establish whose way was a better approach to life and business in general. Being a proud millennial myself I can assure you that we sure don’t play minesweeper anymore or dress in your best outfit on Saturday and wait for the camera man’s appointment and isn’t it funny that kids nowadays start a composition with the words “In the late 90’s”? Change has become the order of day. The many differences of the millennials (those born between 1980 and 1995) and gen Z (those born 1996 to 2005) led me to ask, “Is a single marketing strategy targeted at both these generations enough to call it successful?
Charity begins at home therefore lets establish that the environment in which a person is brought up has bearing on the behaviour, preferences and ultimately the products that they acquire a liking towards. When it comes to social media, Gen Z is basically the video generation and according to Think with Google, they log in more to YouTube and their attention span to read through long articles online is very limited. Comparing that with millennials their read through rate is much higher and are more inclined to learn about a product in that manner. Millennials grew up with celebrities advertising their favorite brands whilst Gen Z lean more to social influencers who are selling an experience, a lifestyle that is much closer to home. To answer the first question, no single brush is sufficient to market to both.
Market segmentation becomes necessary to best ascertain a specific group of clients. For full optimization of marketing efforts on each group, marketers need to know the values, ideas, thought leaders of the clients they intend to sell a product to. How do you segment your market? Traditionally in the absence of digital marketing, segmentation was characterized by placing customers into units according to age, sex, income, location etc. This bracketed approached was based on assumptions such as all kids below 12 love candy. Well magic happened and thanks to technology there is a more data driven approach to see if all kids under 12 really love candy, welcome Audience insights.
Using audience insight as a way to leverage your segmentation provides a much more realistic profile of your customer be it an old generation or the new. Google analytics, big data, and artificial intelligence these have become prevalent in today’s world. An audience insight allows you to factor out what personalized consumer trends, what are the millennials reading, do they use more video ads, do they subscribe to newsletters etc. It zeros into traditional segmentation but acts as an eagle’s eye into what exactly makes one individual tick. Audience insights help you to see the relevance of each social network to Gen Z over millennials, who is more likely to make mobile purchases, the content that they looking for and online conversations and opinion leaders of certain groups. Understand the customer, create the content that is personalized to them then get the best return on investment for each group.
Audience insights will help you to build a buyer persona with clearly stated characteristics, behaivours and interests. From this you can personalize your message to your clients and successfully complete your objectives and scale your campaigns to even cross sell or up sell your product because your message is targeted to its intended recipient. Our present world is revolving around big data therefore segmenting your market by tapping into its offering will assure you and your business a fighting chance in the coming years. If you hadn’t started I suggest you find a digital marketer to assist you to get the most out of your marketing efforts. Happy Selling.
SHARON MAPIRA is a seasoned digital marketer with a passion to help small businesses reach their full potential and enhance competitiveness through digital marketing strategies. She can be contacted at the following email: [email protected]
Sharon hail from Harare, Zimbabwe
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