MarketingSherpa Blog

With the plethora of social media platforms out there, each with its own unique features and elements, it has become harder for marketers to leverage these social channels into successful campaigns.

In social media channels, what sets failed campaigns apart from successful ones is innovation.

The millennial generation (people born between 1980 and 1995), is quicker to adapt to new technology than older generations. We are usually the first on new social media platforms and the first to abandon them once something better comes along.

Marketing using social media is a low cost investment that could have a high return. To specifically see this with millennials, focus on valuing innovation over consistency.

Don’t be afraid to end a successful campaign right at its peak. This creates a strong “Fear of Missing Out” emotion. FOMO is a big emotional driver for millennials. It is the same drive that compels a majority of us to stand in line at specialty shops hoping to get our hands on a limited edition item to translate into bragging rights over friends on social media. The mark of a successful campaign is one that not only creates customers but also organic brand representatives.

When using social media, marketers have discovered a lot of wrong ways to market to millennials and just as many right ones. The difference between them is learning how to strike a balance between sincerity and irony, detail and vagueness and new and unproven.

Sincerity and irony

Millennials in general love irony. Campaigns that are self-aware and poke fun at their own calls-to-action, while still sincerely telling you why you should buy their product over competitors, work better in social media than traditional campaigns.

Newcastle beer company recently had a series of ad campaigns that poked fun at the traditional beer commercial featuring beautiful people drinking beer and having a great time. The campaign’s coup de grace was a Super Bowl ad making fun of how much money beer producers spend on Super Bowl ads by trying to put as many brands as possible into a one-minute commercial. The ad has been viewed 1.5 million times in two months and, through that, has probably increased Newcastle’s popularity with young adults.

Details and vagueness

Another difficult balance is the balance between how much detail to give to a customer and how much to leave unsaid, sparking their curiosity.

Millennials love to discover things on their own. Give them enough information to pique their interest and let them do the rest.  Most social media platforms have limitations on how much you can display anyway, so you will need to convey value proposition succinctly.

Have a creative call-to-action that will lead customers to your website, where you will have detailed information ready and waiting for millennials to research.

Something to keep in mind is that, when encountering a new product or service, the first thing a millennial wants to know is what other people have said about the product. A good technique in social media campaigns would be to have your call-to-action link to a page on your website featuring reviews from other customers. No matter how tempting, do not censor negative reviews — a website featuring only positive reviews is suspicious and takes away from the company’s legitimacy.

New and unproven

This balance is quite simple. Use channels that have a sizeable following but have also been proven to be a hot commodity.

Be mindful, though. When choosing social marketing platforms, you shouldn’t always just jump into the latest, greatest social network without seeing if the infrastructure of social users is stable. An app’s use might peak several months after it is released and quickly die off because didn’t satisfy the needs of the user.

Have an employee who is familiar with your customers use and test the app to see if it will appeal to your customers and if it is worth the time investment.

Recently, a marketing campaign for a sci-fi movie attracted a lot of buzz at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. The campaign used a dating app called Tinder, where you can meet local people simply by swiping their picture anonymously left or right. If both parties swipe right, they can immediately start a conversation within the app.

In the campaign, the marketers created a profile for a woman named Ava, who, when matched with a potential suitor, messaged them asking deep questions such as, ‘Have you ever been in love?’ or ‘What makes you human?’

The conversation ended with Ava inviting the user to follow a link to her Instagram account.

In the Instagram account, the user would immediately notice that Ava was actually a bot promoting a sci-fi film called “Ex Machina.” In the movie, an artificially intelligent robot reaches sentience and tries to discover what it means to be human.

The genius of the campaign, despite the moral ambiguities of tricking someone who is looking for love (which is a huge risk, but works for the movie industry), relied on the irony of marketers using a bot to advertise about a movie where a bot could perceivably do exactly the same thing.

The campaign was also vague enough for people to follow the link to Instagram, where there was more promotional material for the product.

This generated a lot of buzz by being advertised alongside limited releases of the movie being shown at SXSW. That buzz increased the product’s following on social media and expanded visibility simply because of the unique and innovative (albeit, risky) campaign.

Millennials are a unique bunch. We crave individuality and innovation over consistency. We enjoy the ironic with a dash of sincerity. We are natural researchers, and if we “discover” something, we tend to be more emotionally connected to it. We will try any new technology but will abandon it if it doesn’t fulfill a purpose or if something better comes along.

You might also like

Newscastle Unveils Its Smorgasbord of a Super Bowl Ad, Featuring 37 Different Brands [From Adweek]

Tinder Users at SXSW Are Falling for This Woman, But She’s Not What She Appears [From Adweek]

Marketing to Millennials: Rebranding hip with irony [From TrendReports]

Categories: Social Media Tags: app, Millennial Marketing, mobile marketing, SXSW, Tinder