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Guest Post: 10 Marketing Tips to Win Over Millennials

The 21st century; what are a profitable market! The millennials represent a significant opportunity for marketers.

However, the millennial market is hard to connect with. As opposed to the traditional market, the millennial market is dominated by changed buying habits.

To sway up this difficult crowd, we have compiled some marketing tips essential to win over the millennials.

1. Make use of Instagram

Instagram is a marketing tool which has magically evolved in the 21st century. The millennials have embraced it as one of the greatest e-commerce platforms.

Recently, this platform has massively grown to offer big marketing force to current the generation.

For those companies who want to connect with this generation, media presence is the badge of acceptance. Instagram offers brand education, awareness and purchase options for the current market.

2. Optimize your social media content

Companies who want to win over millennials mostly connect with them via social media. This strategy is made more effective by the use of SEO. Optimizing your content is critical, as this will give it the opportunity to draw massive traffic. Short brief optimized pieces tend to well in attracting traffic.

3. Focus on customer reviews

The millennial is a crowd that would read up to ten reviews before settling on your brand. Online reviews not only influence buyers but also make your content rank high in Google search engines. If you want to convince the millennial, you have to get the best positive reviews-through offering best services.

To leverage this, you will have to solicit feedback. Ensure that you ask for reviews from your customers. Additionally, ensure that you respond to both positive and negative reviews. Even negative reviews? Yes. Simple follow-up or acknowledging the feedback helps you make the millennials feel heard, humanizing your brand and building trust for your business.

What about negative reviews?

Wow! As cynical as it sounds, a negative review offers a big selling opportunity. You know, people like negative comments. When they converge to react to the review, ensure that you humbly respond to the review, but focus on the catch- selling your brand.

4. Appeal to their values

Millennial purchasing habits come aligned with their social identity and their memorable experiences. This means that brands that appeal to their values will definitely go on top. Why? Well, it serves their appetite.

5. Use their insight to innovate the product

For marketers who want to connect with millennials, they have to investigate their lifestyle, interests, and passions. On determining what’s important to them, and probably their unmet need, the marketers should then try to use their findings into designing their products.

6. Don’t sell the product, but the purpose

The past generation looks into the features of a product. The current market space looks into the “WHY.” What’s your why? What difference does your product bring to the generation? Let your purpose be on the lead.

This trick gets hold of this generation real quick. You need just to spell out your purpose. Talk of solutions that you can offer as a marketer. (They can’t buy the solution without purchasing the product).

7. Make use of posters

Advertising through posters can easily provide the information required about the brand’s awareness. A poster features images, visual design, colors and the copy.

Posters come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. You may design your poster in different standard poster dimensions, according to your purpose.

Here are 3 tips for designing the right poster;

Ø Imagine your purpose for the product and design it with the right intent.

Ø Is your brand loud or understated? You should use the right mix of elements to reflect your brand.

Ø Find the right printer, the one who will allow you to design the poster on their platform. In case you’re design savvy, you can take your ready design to a printer.

8. Authenticity

To win the millennial market, you need a brand similar to a human face. The millennial market can distinguish between the real talk from mere Ads. You should, therefore, focus on giving practical, actionable tips. Make their shopping experience as personalized as it can be, and award yourself with a flourishing business.

9. Make use of social touch points

Millennials are mostly connected to one social platform at once. They are everywhere every minute, looking for useful stuff and enlightenment. No wonder marketing platforms are becoming not only means but ends as well. The development of platforms such as omnichannel marketing provides you with an increased capacity to connect with millennials anywhere anytime.

10. Make use of millennial social influencers

Social influencer marketing is among the popular strategy for marketing to millennials. It involves leveraging the follower base of a social influencer to sell your product.

The followers of a social influencer are always willing and eager to view their content. They believe the content shared by an influencer is not spammy or pushy.

If you make use of the influencers in marketing your product, you are likely to rank high in capturing the millennial market. Instagram and YouTube is the place!

Grabbing the millennial market can be difficult, but possible. When you earn their trust through millennial-friendly advertising and marketing strategies, you can be sure that they will use their social media and iPhone to sing your song.

Susan Ranford is an expert on career coaching, business advice, and workplace rights. She has written for New York Jobs, IAmWire, and ZipJob. In her blogging and writing, she seeks to shed light on issues related to employment, business, and finance to help others understand different industries and find the right job fit for them – Strategics360.com

Guest Post: How to Increase Sales Using Social Media

Learn how you can better market your ecommerce business through Facebook, Instagram, and Pintrest. These 5 simple tips will teach you how to increase sales using social media.

The Power of Social Media

Cherilyn and I were next door neighbors ten years ago. Since that time, we have both moved–she moved to a different state and I moved to a different city. Despite the distance of two hundred and forty miles between us, I know that Cherilyn recently started her own online business selling beauty products.

How do I know? She announced it to me and all of her other friends on Facebook. In addition, I know when she’s having specials on certain products or running promotions. And it has all been done without a cent of her money being spent on marketing.

What’s the secret? The secret is social media. Viewers of social media know you and trust you because you have a relationship. According to DEI Worldwide, 70% of consumers use social media as often as they use firm websites to gather information about products. In addition, 60-70% of people believe that recommendations from other people online are “valuable, credible, and honest.”

Consumers Online

81% of the developed world now has internet access. Essentially that means that of the countries with expendable income, 81% can be reached from anywhere in the world. Global accessibility has never been greater than it is at this time. But with that accessibility also comes an overload of information and products.

Social media can help shoppers sort through it all. Social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, allows business owners to build relationships with their prospects, as well as use existing relationships to turn friends into customers.

Think about how many adults use social media while at work–just to get a mental break from their jobs. They may be on a coffee break, scrolling through their Instagram feed, when they see your business’s post. With every social media post your business makes, you’re reaching prospects during a time or place that television, radio, and print ads often cannot.

A Boost to Businesses

When a viewer sees a post, it can be almost like magic. According to Forbes contributor Jayson DeMers, “studies have shown that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.” And an IDC study released in 2014, found that buyers that use social media have 84% larger budgets than buyers that don’t. That’s a powerful formula!

Most of the developed world has internet + social media users have larger budgets + 100% higher closing rate = success!

Social media can bring you more leads and more sales without investing a fortune in marketing. However, social media marketing often falls flat. So I’ve gathered five tricks to help you successfully connect with your customers.

5 Tips to Increase Sales Using Social Media:

Post Often – By spending at least six hours per week, 66% of marketers saw a benefit from social media in lead generation.
Use Images – Place an image alongside your text on Facebook. Posts with images have 2.3 times more engagement than stand-alone text.
Learn to Pin – Pinners spend 50% more on purchases through the social media channel than users of other social media platforms, yet only 40% of marketers use it.
Photograph People – When posting on Instagram, use photos of people. Studies show that photos with faces get 38% more likes than those without. So place your products with a person for a more positive response.
Make a Video – Close to half of all internet users look for product related videos before visiting a store. Even though you may not have a brick and mortar storefront, put this statistic to work for you. Create simple videos about the products or services you sell and place them on your website as well as Youtube. Shoppers who view a video are almost twice as likely to make a purchase than shoppers who did not view a video.

(Thanks Hubspot for these great stats!)

So next time you are searching for a way to boost your sales, take a closer look at social media. It’s a great way to build your brand and boost your sales.

About the Author: Mike Giannulis

I am an entrepreneur & coach specializing in business growth and digital and direct response marketing. I run a small coaching & consulting firm (OnlyOneMike.com) helping businesses achieve maximum profits. In 2012, I was on a weight loss TV show called Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition.

Guest Post: How to Pick the Right Platform for Your Social Media Advertising

There’s a reason plenty of businesses have embraced social media marketing wholeheartedly: it gives them the chance to reach a wide range of potential customers. Facebook alone had approximately 2.19 billion active monthly users in the first quarter of 2018. Additionally, surveys indicate that people tend to access social media platforms multiple times a day. This gives marketers many opportunities to reach their audience.

Of course, marketers still need to abide by key best practices in order to leverage social media to its full potential. Partnering with experts at a YouTube or Facebook marketing agency can be a great way to learn these practices. This guide will also help you better understand each major platform, and how you can advertise effectively on them.

Facebook

Facebook is one of the most useful social media platforms for marketers, not only because it boasts a high number of users, but also because it offers tools to enhance and monitor a campaign.

Facebook allows marketers to target specific types of people when they run ads, using factors like geography, interests, and demographics to define an audience. Facebook also lets marketers track a wide range of metrics to assess how a campaign is performing.

It’s worth noting that Facebook is helpful because it allows marketers to post several different types of ads, including video ads, carousels, and individual images with text. To start using this platform, create a Facebook Business account.

Instagram

Did you know that 80% of Instagram users say they follow at least one business on the platform? That may be because Instagram lets marketers run visually compelling ads that don’t feel like they’re cluttering a user’s feed.

On a platform like Facebook, where posts can take several different forms, an ad doesn’t always blend into the newsfeed naturally. On Instagram, where the vast majority of posts are pictures or images, ads are more seamless. Brands can also leverage hashtags to attract customers interested in similar products or services.

YouTube

Content marketing is effective because it offers customers genuine value. Video content marketing is helpful because, as long as a potential customer watches a video through to completion, this type of ad lets you maintain engagement for an extended period of time.

Brands can publish videos on YouTube that tell a deeper story or offer more information than a basic image and text ad could. Companies can also monetize their channels with ads from other businesses.

According to some experts, LinkedIn remains the most effective social media platform for marketing a B2B business. That’s because the user base typically consists of professionals who use the platform to post or find jobs and network with others in their industry.

LinkedIn is unique because you can generally be confident a person using it is willing to interact with a business. In fact, that’s what the platform is designed for. This isn’t the case with other social media sites, where users may typically rely on to stay in touch with family members or friends.

Snapchat

Because Snapchat is particularly attractive to Millennial users, it’s a helpful marketing tool for brands that serve younger customers.

Of course, Snapchat content is designed to disappear after a set amount of time. Instead of using it to publish evergreen marketing content, marketers can use Snapchat for more spontaneous and exclusive advertising tactics. For example, you could publish a short video of a behind-the-scenes event related to your brand. Customers will appreciate the innovative form of advertising you publish on this unique platform.

Deciding which of these platforms to focus on involves evaluating what kind of business you run. If you tend to serve other brands, LinkedIn is essential. If you market to Millennials, you need to be on Snapchat. Facebook, on the other hand, can be useful to companies in a wide range of industries.

As always, it’s important to experiment. The more you play around with different social media marketing tactics and platforms, the easier it is to find out what does and does not work.

About the Author: Rae Steinbach is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Rae is passionate about travel, food, and writing (of course)

Guest Post: A Guide to Creating Compelling and Engaging Social Media Posts

Nearly everyone is active on social media since it’s an excellent platform for sharing whatever you want. However, posting for a business is an entirely different story such that you have an objective to reach out to your target market.

There are a lot of things to consider when publishing on social media. You should also understand the different platforms and learn more about your market so that you can attract the right audience at the right time and place.

However, the most important thing you need to concentrate on is to appeal to the emotions of your audience, as connecting with them can help influence them in positive ways.

Below is an infographic to guide you in creating compelling and engaging social media posts on the four most popular social media platforms particularly Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. From this infographic, you can learn about the tone you should use, what content to share, when to share it, and so on.

For each platform, there are ways in which you can maximize all the features that each one has to help you gain the attention of your target market.

Work on improving your social media posts by using this guide for your audience, as well as help your business grow.

Source Page: https://www.microcreatives.com/general/infographic-creating-social-media-posts/

Paula Arce

As she makes her way in the digital marketing world as a Content Specialist, she also makes sure that she’s updated with the latest memes and trends among other things. With her inner rapper, Paula pops those headphones in and listens to her R&B and Hip Hop playlist during her long rides to and from the South. She either gets herself a venti cup or two of her fave iced coffee or a cold bottle of beer on a random day. There’s nothing in between.

Guest Post: Importance of Video in Social Media

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then, by my calculations, a two-minute video on YouTube played at thirty frames per second has got to be worth at least three-million-six-hundred-thousand words. But I’m no mathematician.
For such a pivotal form of media, the art of film is relatively young compared to pictures and written stories; it’s only been around since the late nineteenth century, and at that point it was just a novelty. Back then, there was no such thing as a feature length movie; instead, people would sit around and watch short, silent vignettes, brief on plot and characters and more experimental. Gradually, though, films, and the process of filmmaking, became more elaborate, and soon directors, actors, and writers were coming together to create stories. The camera served as a bulky pen, and movie set was paper.
Now we see videos everywhere. On the big screen, on the small screen, and, recently, on even smaller screens. Right under our thumbs, we have a catalogue of endless information, and included is a wealth of videos, from the six-second Vines, to the hour long lectures found in the more intellectual pockets of YouTube. Video has become an essential part of the time we spend on social media, so businesses and entrepreneurs should take care not to get left behind. Here are five reasons why it is crucial that you utilize video in your social media content strategy.

1. It’s a growing service:

Check your Facebook and scroll through your feed until you reach a video. Odds are, you won’t have to do much scrolling before you find yourself watching a montage of cats failing to mind the gap, or super-imposed Warriors participating in tag-team wrestling. In recent years, Facebook has almost become its own video service; it hosts around four billion video streams every day, and that number is only growing. Other outlets, like Vine and Snapchat, have taken it a step further with a specialization in short, punchy videos generally made for entertainment. People love watching videos, and people love sharing them. Which brings me to my next point…

2. It’ll spread like wildfire

One of the great aspects about social media is its ability to spread anything and everything, from pop culture to breaking news stories. Going viral isn’t as hard as it used to be; with the right idea and a little bit of luck, your idea can become a sensation. And even if it doesn’t go Chewbacca Mom viral, a well-made, well-thought-out video is the fastest way to spread whatever content you come up with. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg himself cited video as one of the most shared formats on Facebook; he’s predicted that within five years, Facebook will be dominated by video.

3. It’s engaging

What catches your eye more? A block of text, or a video? Nowadays people are more likely to click on an embedded video than a link to an article. In the same way that, for better or worse, movies have drowned out books in terms of popularity, videos on Facebook are much more likely to be noticed and picked up than long rants. No one wants to read a novel when they’re browsing through Facebook.

4. It’s easier for the audience to understand

When you need to look up a how-to, odds are one of the first places you’ll check is YouTube. Seeing a step-by-step tutorial is simple and easy to follow, and that sort of simplicity applies to all types of videos. Take a look at Khan Academy, a channel that’s been helping students with their late night study binges for years. Their videos offer great, accessible lessons in all things math, from geometry to applied physics, and while you may not be catering to an audience of college kids studying Calculus III, making use of video will get your point across in a clear, concise way.

5. It can be whatever you want

Of course, that phrase can be said about any form of media–writing, pictures, photos–but I cannot stress enough how flexible video can be. Whether you want to make a formal, no-nonsense business announcement or a wacky, off-the-wall advertisement, video can do that for you. Some nuances can only be achieved with the direction and quick cuts of video editing. It’s an art form, and whether you want to make a quick vlog on life with your laptop camera or dramatic PSA with dark lighting and moody music, oftentimes the best way to get across what you want to say is with video.

Video is all about communicating with your audience, face-to-face. We live in a highly personal age, and video helps break down the impersonal barrier that lines of text often put up. To learn more about creating a social media strategy that doesn’t overlook the importance of video, sign up here: http://www.glowsocialmedia.com/go/learnsocial

Courtney Lane Maki is the Founder and Managing Director at Glow Social Media, where she currently leads a team of 4 to provide agency-based content strategy and content creation, promoted through client branded social networks. Glow Social Media is located in REO Town in Lansing, Mi. Courtney can be reached at Courtney@glowsocialmedia.com.