Want to target a millennial audience? Digiday has some tips for publishers that could apply just as easily to video content.
“I don’t think the case for writing for or advertising to ‘millennials’ is a particularly strong one,” said Jamie Beckland vp, marketing at Janrain . “It doesn’t make sense to think of them all as the same. When you do that, you run the risk of being wrong more often than you’re right.”
The problem may start with the word “millennial” itself, which has been stretched too far to say anything significant about the group of people it refers to. An 18-year-old millennial is, after all, very different from a 34-year-old millennial. And yet, many publishers and advertisers talk about the group as if it’s a homogenous whole. That approach might have made sense when people could only choose from a handful of broadcast stations and magazines, it’s much harder to do so in an era of fragmented cultures and media consumption habits.”
When trying to stretch a marketing budget to capacity, there’s a lot of pressure to try to appeal to everyone, or at least to everyone you market to. It’s easy to forget that audience members are more than just their age, gender, and location. To be successful, we need to remember that we have to appeal to our audience on a personal level, as well as on a business level. We need to reach each segment of our audience with the content they are really interested in, even if it means not including another segment. Marketers can make a bigger impact by fully engaging a smaller audience than they can by producing something that doesn’t really get anyone psyched.
The only thing I would add is that, while millennial audiences are demanding that kind of personal attention, the potential of building distinct marketing campaigns for distinct audiences is not limited to millennials. After all, everyone wants to be treated like a person, right?
Take a look at the full article, it’s definitely worth a read.