Generational Marketing: How to Reach your Audience via Social Media

Current estimates put Facebook's user base at a staggering 2.3 billion. That's a lot of people and while some solely want to keep in touch with friends, others want to post selfies, play games, and watch cat memes. Connecting with the right people in the right way is hugely important. Generational marketing is an effective approach to help you to forge meaningful relationships with your target audience.

Baby Boomers

Born between 1946 and 1964, Baby Boomers take a traditional approach to many aspects of their lives. With later generations helping them to get to grips with technology, more than 60 percent are active social media users, favouring Facebook's ability to help them reconnect with family and friends. They typically won't, however, make regular online purchases.

• Baby Boomers like to treat themselves
• They tend to be brand loyal
• Meeting and talking with a real person makes them more likely to purchase
• Avoid intrusive Facebook adverts, they're only there to connect with friends

Generation X

Born between 1965 and 1980, Generation X are a small but very important generation. Their current priorities include home ownership, careers, and child care, so it's safe to say they're pretty busy. Around 80 percent are active on Twitter and Facebook and they're happy to shop both online and in-store.

• As lots of large purchases and investments are being made, they love a great discount
• Ditch trend-focused campaigns, they're not interested
• Focus on an engaging email marketing strategy
• Emphasise your social and/or environmental credentials

Millennials/Generation Y

Many Millennials are old enough to remember a time before social media, but to say they have embraced it would be an understatement. Almost 90 percent are smartphone owners and around 35 percent routinely take to social media before making both large and small purchases.

Valuing information learned from online reviews, blogs and social media recommendations, more than half admit to hitting the skip button on adverts as soon as possible. While traditional advertising might not be the way to go, Millennials are trend-focused and influenced by trusted and authentic figures with solid reputations.

• Create content around subjects your Millennial audience is passionate about
• Incorporate testimonials into your content wherever possible
• Consider appointing trusted brand ambassadors and micro influencers
• Ensure you're active and contactable on social platforms

Generation Z

This post-millennial generation are often referred to as the 'Internet Generation'. They're savvy and digital-focused, growing up in a time where the internet and social media has 'always' existed. To cope with the large volumes of content and advertising to which they have been exposed all their lives, they have developed an intuitive eye and will decide within 8 seconds if something is worth their time or not.

As almost half of Gen Z state that social media plays a large part in how they feel, they value empowering and authentic content they can connect with and relate to. For brands, this means ditching celebs and instead focusing on creating campaigns around real people.

• Avoid long-form content
• Utilise the power of engaging video content
• Understand when they are most active online, remembering that the oldest Gen Zers are currently 22 years old
• Authenticity is everything!

As you can probably tell, we're passionate about the potential of generational marketing. Give us a call to find out how we can help you out!