Many small businesses have begun shifting their customer bases. Many are beginning to target the youngest of the generations, the Millennials (18-29 year olds). As many businesses begin to drop their focus on the Baby Boomers, and their Generation Y business is pretty secure, they are focusing their SEO marketing efforts on capturing the largest of the generations. They are not easy to pin down, however. Here is some recent marketing data on the Millennial Generation that you will need to make a serious effort at gaining their trust and their business.
- They are now the largest generation in the workforce, having sped past GenY and there are about 56 million of them working.
- By 2024, there will be almost 80 million of them and they will be about 45% of the entire workforce in the country. By that time, there will only be about 16 million Baby Boomers left.
- They are digital, period. Almost all of their searches and purchases are being done on mobile devices. They increasingly look to search engines and social media for their due diligence as well as friends and colleagues.
- By far, a Millennial will make their buying decision after consulting social media and a company’s website. Peers and sales personnel carry about the same weight with them.
- Nearly 90% of them have cell phones and nearly 60% of them have tablets.
- They use Facebook as their go-to social media platform and nearly 90% use social media in the course of doing their jobs.
- YouTube is their second favorite platform and Millennials who earn over $100K a year are at LinkedIn.
- Their favorite type of content is video favored by nearly 30% of them followed closely by case studies and white papers. Company brochures and webinars were also mentioned though only about 11% of them use those marketing tools.
- Training and demo videos are huge with them. They actually want to see a product in use before they will consider buying it.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
