9 Must-Know Millennial Shopping

Trends & Marketing Strategies of

2017

It's official: Millennials are the largest and most diverse generation in the US. What's more,
many experts predicted that by 2017 Millennials would become the target consumer to go
after, with this generation spending a projected $200 billion each year. But marketing to the
Millennial is a challenge, partly because this generation is unlike any that's come before
them. In this blog post we take a look at the key traits of a Millennial from a marketing
perspective, answering the question "how can I build my affiliate strategy to meet the needs
of this demographic?" and giving you the tips, insights, and resources you'll need to
succeed in winning these shoppers over.
Table of Contents
1. Millennials Value Authenticity
2. They Expect a Marketing Experience
3. Content Sharing is Crucial
4. A love for Consuming Content
5. Getting Personal: Personalization Marketing
6. They "Go at Their Own Pace" with Adulthood
Milestones
7. Price is Critical, but Brands Matter
8. Mobile is Everything
9. They Use Ad Blockers Everywhere

1. Millennials Value Authenticity

One of the first things you’ll hear about capturing the Millennial market is that they love and
value authenticity, but what does that mean? Authenticity is a broad concept with a
definition that’s hard to put a finger on. Executives from major companies share various
definitions in a Digiday feature, and according to an article in the Washington
Times authenticity is comprised of communication, transparency, relevancy to wants/needs
and care. But in order to simply things, let’s think of authenticity in a simpler concept:
authenticity comes from knowing your customers, their needs, and how to have that
communicated.
 View image on Twitter

Smatt@mdrache
Man, @Wendys has really upped their troll game lately. Well done.
12:11 AM - Jan 5, 2017

58

21 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Brands are starting to catch onto that in several ways. Take a look at the tweet above and
you’ll notice a few things: someone tweeted at Wendy’s with a passive complaint about a
product (French fries and the high amount of calories), Wendy’s responded with
honesty and humor, this interaction was screen capped and shared by another account
offering praise for Wendy’s “troll game”, and people are sharing that and enjoying it even
more. It’s silly, and at a first glance it seems superficial, but it’s all part of a strategy to
create ways for customers to want to engage and share what they’re seeing.

So, how do you bring authenticity into your affiliate strategy? Turns out there’s actually a ton
of opportunity to do this. If you’re an advertiser, look for content publishers and influencers
who can represent your brand or products in a way that’s honest, direct, and meets the
needs of the publisher’s audience. Content publishers should be aware of who their
audience is on a needs and wants level, and work with brands and products that meets their
audience needs.

2. They Expect a Marketing Experience

YOLO (You Only Live Once). FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). These are phrases that
Millennials love to live by, whether it be staying out just a little later with friends on a
weekend night to see what the evening may bring, or take a last-minute vacation
somewhere. The message is clear: Millennials value experiences over owning things.

Not surprisingly, they prefer to have their marketing feel that way too. And make no mistake
– experiential marketing works. According to a survey conducted by Factory360, a shocking
98% of participants felt more inclined to purchase a product when they participated in an
experiential campaign.

Experiential strategies can be brought into your affiliate campaigns. Publishers can offer a
range of things, from live presentations and information (while incorporating products they
want to represent, or having a brand sponsor the presentation), to engaging with
communities and making their buying experience engaging and personal. Likewise,
advertisers can look to partner with active publishers that are looking to do these sorts of
engagements, as well as focus on updating their creative so that it speaks to the
experiences a Millennial can gain from their product/product line.
3. Content Sharing is Crucial
Content plays an important role in the lives of Millennials, but one critical feature stands out
on their various content platforms: the ability to share. Sharing content is as easy as clicking
a button to instantly retweet, repost, or share from one profile to another, boosting the signal
of the content to however many followers or friends the user has. And there’s no prejudice
on what’s shared – Millennials will be just as quick to share a photo from a friend as they
are a branded video they found entertaining. They do this because they identify with the
content, it provides value to them, and it reaches them in an authentic and transparent way.

But there’s a disconnect. Two years ago a study conducted by NewsCred found that 45% of
Millennials don’t see the content being produced as something worthwhile to share. That
same study also found that 60% said they’d share content if it’s thought provoking and
intelligent. But the biggest reason Millennials share content is because it’s funny, with over
70% of respondents citing that as the reason.

Affiliate marketing is a great channel to get a brand or product passed around to people
who will care about it because, on the publisher end, they know what their audience likes
and doesn’t like. Advertisers should be looking to work with publishers who understand who
their audience is, and publishers should be looking to create content that shareable. That
also leads into our next topic: content creation.

4. A Love for Consuming Content

Take a look at those three qualities above: thought-provoking, intelligent, and funny. While
having those three sounds like great dating advice, they’re just as important in content –
and exactly why affiliate marketing is such a beneficial channel for brands. Brands have
products that have a thousand different stories that can be told. Content publishers can
develop that those stories into content that customers will want to share.

Say your brand offers hiking equipment and you want to have a tent promoted. Content
publishers and influencers can take that product and promote it in a number of different
ways – telling a number of different stories in the process. This lends to the authenticity that
Millennials crave, gives them thought provoking, intelligent, or funny content they want, and
provides them with an opportunity to get an experience out of a product, rather than simply
owning it.

The right partners are crucial for this, on both sides. Publishers and advertisers alike need
to make sure they’re making the right partnerships for the same reason: the Millennial
customer. A wrong partnership means you’re reaching the wrong audience, which can
hinder sales and hurt publisher performance.

5. Getting Personal: Personalization Marketing

We know now that Millennials like content, they like authenticity, and they want their content
to have substance before they share it. But we’re also talking about one of, if not the most,
diverse generations of all time, which means their interests are going to be equally diverse.
That’s where content personalization comes in.

Personalization is something that can be done on a number of different scales, and

advertisers and publishers will need to be aware of this. For example, personalization could
be writing very targeted blog posts for very specific types of interests or engaging with
members of the community one on one through social media conversations and forums.
The benefit of this narrower strategy is that it has a much deeper impact on Millennials
because they feel that their needs are being thought of by the advertiser and it reaches
much farther into niche groups.

One avenue for advertisers to consider to take advantage of personalization is by partnering

with influencers who can represent their product and their brand in a way that connects with
Millennials who have very specific interests, wants, and needs. Publishers and influencers
out there who can do this, make sure you highlight any specific groups that are a bit more
niche that might be interested in an advertiser’s product when going to partner with them.

6. They “Go at Their Own Pace” with Adulthood

Milestones

Dating. Marriage. Home ownership. Children. These typical adulthood milestones are being
viewed much differently by Millennials than any other generation before them. For example,
in 2014 a study came out that showed only 21% of Millennials were married – and by
comparison, 42% of Baby Boomers had been married at that point in their lives.

The reason many Millennials and studies will tell you has to do partly with the Great
Recession, partly with the mounting debt from education, and worry about finding a stable,
full-time job. There are plenty of other social elements too – the lack of social pressure to
get married and have kids, for example – but one thing is clear: the need to meet certain
adulthood milestones by certain ages just isn’t a concern for Millennials.

Why is this important to marketing, especially affiliate marketing? Two reasons: first,
Millennials are digital-savvy and resourceful, which means that whenever they do reach
these milestones they’re going to be turning to the digital channel for their research. And
second, because Millennials are so diverse and because they’re reaching these milestones
when they’re ready rather than when they come to a certain age there are more
opportunities to market to different types of Millennials.

For example, say you’re an advertiser that has a product line of cooking ware at a
competitive price. You could look towards wedding planning content publishers to promote
your line of products as something to add to a registry, citing the practicality of the product
at a reasonable price. Or, if you offer financial services, consider sponsoring content with
content publishers on how to purchase your first piece of property. These are simple ideas,
but they can be effective in reaching a wide range of Millennials.

7: Product Importance: Price is Critical, but Brands

Matter
When looking to capture the attention of Millennials, start with the price point. In an article
published by Entrepreneur, it was noted that Millennials are more sensitive to price and that
purchasing decisions are mostly influenced by the cost of the product. This outweighed
other factors like brand recognition, which retailer they purchased from, and whether the
product was in stock or on back order. This is supported by an Adroit Digital research paper
which noted that price point had the most influence on a Millennial (62%), outweighing
recommendations from a friend (55%), brand reputation (47%), and product quality (35%).

But this isn’t the whole story. An eMarketer study from November 2016 found that affluent
Millennials did put a high value on brands. The study didn’t note whether or not brands
outweighed price for the more “well-to-do” Millennials, but it did note that these Millennials
felt that their favorite brands played an important role in their life (70%) and expected that to
continue throughout their lives (64%). Furthermore, 60% of these Millennials felt an
emotional connection to these brands, and that they are defined by the brands they
purchase.

The message to marketers is clear: Millennials aren’t as concerned about where they get
their product or how well the product is made – if the price is right, they’re interested. And
for Millennials who have the money, they won’t mind shelling out more for a brand that gives
them a symbol of status.

8. Mobile is Everything

Mobile, mobile, mobile – it seems like there can’t be any topic talked about today without
the concept of mobile being brought up. And really, that’s not all that surprising when it
comes to Millennials. After all, we’re talking about a tech-savvy generation who has learned
to leverage a mobile device for their shopping needs the same way that coupon books,
shopping catalogs, and in-store bargain hunting used to be utilized.

This is a common topic, so we don’t want to spend too much time on it, but there are some
trends you should be aware of about mobile usage that will impact how you market towards
Millennials in 2017 and beyond. For starters, an eMarketer study from the holiday season
showed that mobile devices were crucial for Millennial mothers to search for the best
possible price on a product (79.4%), read reviews (68.9%), and download coupons
(67.1%). Even in-store shopping was greatly influenced by Millennial mobile users, with
over half (52%) comparing prices to other retailers. With the importance of price Millennials
place on making a purchase, the fact is over half of shoppers were standing in the aisles of
a store, product in one hand, phone in the other, comparing prices to make sure they were
getting the best deal – which could mean they would go purchase that product they had in
hand elsewhere if they found a better deal at another store.

But it doesn’t stop at price research. Millennials are also using their mobile devices to make
payments. 21% of older Millennials (25-34) use their mobile device to make at least one
purchase a week, and another 14% use it to make a purchase once a month. What’s more,
in a study of US and UK Millennials it was found that 25% of Millennials use a mobile device
to make at least one purchase daily, with 15% using their phone to make purchases
multiple times a day.

We point out statistics such as these to stress how important mobile is throughout the
buyer’s journey. A Millennial could research a product, find the product, decide to price shop
and see if they can find a better deal, and make a transaction all from their phone – and it’s
preferable to many of them. Build your affiliate strategy with the buyer’s journey in mind,
and keep that mobile aspect front and center!

9. They Use Ad Blockers Everywhere

Ad blockers have become a common challenge for most advertisers to overcome, and
Millennials won’t make that any easier. An eMarketer study from October shows that 64% of
Millennials use some form of ad blocker, whether it be desktop, mobile, or both. Only 36%
aren’t using any form of ad blocker, but that number will likely shrink as time continues to
pass.

The great benefit to affiliate, however, is how well it’s able to circumvent those ad blockers
with tactics that Millennials do want to see. Influencers are a great way to make sure your
efforts as an advertiser are still reaching Millennials, and the same goes for content
publisher partnerships as well. The fact is Millennials chose to engage with these content
publishers the same way they chose to engage with anything else in the digital landscape.
The ability to control their own marketing is crucial for Millennials, as evidenced by the use
of ad blockers, and as an affiliate marketer (advertisers and publishers) you have a very
natural - and critical - solution.