Ok boomer…
What do you know about life Millenials…
We hear these terms being thrown around online far too often. And since we’re a marketing agency, let’s look at generations and the role they play in marketing. It’s bigger than you may realise.

We take into account many aspects of a business and its industry when we begin to devise a marketing strategy. Anything from the job title, personality traits, how they talk, and where they go on holiday. While you may have many, many clients. All who are their own person, when you boil your audience down to very specific factors you can see the similarities between them. This is what we call your ICA, or Client Avatar. One aspect of your client avatar you will look at is their age. Usually within a specific age range, so you are already segmenting your target audience by generation. You just may not have known it.

Let’s look at how defining the generation of your audience can really help you with your marketing efforts.

What is Generational Marketing?

Generational Marketing is a particular marketing technique businesses can use when they focus their efforts on one specific generation. As a marketer, you are responsible for understanding the target audience and their pain points, interests, and such. You use this knowledge to drive your services into the areas where your audience is most prevalent.

The way that Generational Marketing is different from other segments, is you focus entirely on the generation and less so on other aspects of your audience. Each generation has their own experiences, and it is your role as a marketer to tap into that lived experience and relate to their audience.

How to define the Generations

Defining the generations is quite simple. Each generation has a specific decade in which they are associated with. There are five main generations currently, with Generation Alpha making its way into the mix in the next ten years.

1. Silent Generation – Before 1945
2. Baby Boomers – Mid 19040’s – early 1960’s
3. Generation X – Mid 1960’s – early 1980’s
4. Millennials – Mid 1980’s – mid 1990’s
5. Generation Z – Mid 1990’s – 2010’s

Each generation has experienced different world events, and should not be compared. Each event has had its own impact on the way things are perceived and understood. Use these time frames to understand what life was like for your target generation and try to get into their head. Use empathy to understand how things might have been for them and use that emotional knowledge to fuel your marketing.

Why should I Market towards Millenials and Gen Z?

When you start to understand which generation begins and ends where you start to realise that Millenials and Gen Z are actually a lot older than you realise. The youngest Millennials are turning 30 in the next year or two, (don’t tell them that.)

Realistically, your demographic by age range should already include Millenials and Gen Z. Excluding them or assuming they are the “younger generation”, will only tilt your marketing content towards potentially the wrong people.

Millennials make up more than half of today’s workforce, that’s a substantial amount of potential clients you are missing out on. Taking these two generations seriously will only help you grow your business as they’re going to be in employment for the next 50+ years.

I don’t want to exclude anyone, why should I pick an audience?

This might be hard to hear, but we are a no BS kinda agency, so here goes.

Not everyone will need your product or service.

We’re sorry, but the sooner we all take that into account, the sooner we can really begin to strategise and create a kick-ass marketing plan. Using these segments really does help target your audience and potential customers, being able to speak to them directly will increase your ROI. It’s simple math. Target the interested buyers and you’ll sell.

You may find that several products or services are loved by one type of client, and then another set of services are adored by an entirely different type of client. That’s ok too. What you do in this situation is really keep those separated and only upsell if there are crossovers of interest. Use those segments to help inform who you send a specific mailer to, or where you post that banging piece of content. That’s how you market, that’s how your strategy works. Generational Marketing is part of this strategy, don’t shy away from it. Don’t dismiss a generation because of their age. Use it.

We’re a little rebellious here, we say it how it is. If you like our style, pop us an email and our team of rebels can help revolutionise your marketing.