It started with a simple tweet.
“Just tested a new product. Believe it or not, this simple button makes texting much easier.”
The tweet went on to say that the button allowed users to text by simply tapping on the screen. Because of its groundbreaking design, Twentieth Century Fox licensed the product and put it on the big screen in their 2020 movie The Monkey King 2.
The 20th century saw the invention of various communication devices that contributed to quicker and easier means of transferring information and connecting people. The 21st century has seen smartphones evolve into multi-functional devices that not only help you connect with loved ones, but allow you to do all sorts of things online. For marketers, this means creating content that will not only engage users, but convert them into customers. These customers can then be nurtured into becoming advocates, evangelists, and even brand ambassadors.
The Evolution Of Online Marketing
In the early days, Internet users would visit websites, look at online product catalogs, and maybe click on a few links to learn more about the products. While this still happens, businesses must now resort to more engaging tactics to stay relevant.
Since the invention of the mobile phone, businesses have evolved to embrace the platform and all that it offers. Between clicks, texts, and phone calls, it is now possible to reach consumers wherever they are – on the go or from home. This has led to a change in how consumer products are marketed and sold.
Thanks to the power of mobile phones and the Internet, marketers can now target consumers based on location, time, and other criteria. Mobile phones provide a glimpse into the future of online marketing, as businesses can access a consumer’s personal information, interests, and hobbies – all without them knowing.
The Importance Of Mobile Phones In Marketing
Mobile phones provide an optimal display surface for content and an optimal input surface for touchscreens. When combined with the allure of mobile games, businesses can gain a significant audience and engage consumers in new ways – especially on social media platforms like TikTok.
On social media, marketers can use various tools to track the performance of their campaigns. With a click of a button, they can generate a report that shows the growth of a particular trend or topic over time. For example, an e-commerce brand may want to promote the winter holidays in the UK by creating content around the theme of ‘winter is coming’.
To engage with their audience and show that they’re paying attention to the trends around them, e-commerce businesses may decide to create memes or GIFs with a winter theme. They also have the option of using tools that can track and analyze the success of their campaigns on social media. With the right software, it’s possible to get immediate engagement and feedback from customers.
Location-based services (LBS) have also emerged in the last few years, with companies like Snapseed expanding the potential reach of location-specific content and offers beyond our shores. With LBS, marketers can target consumers based on their physical location (e.g., where they are), what device they’re using (e.g., smartphone, tablet, or laptop), and even the type of content they’re interacting with (e.g., images, videos, or articles).
As a result, marketers can now target consumers based on gender, age, location, device, and even the type of digital content they’re interacting with – making it much easier to understand who’s listening to what and how to reach them.
Why Market To Millennials?
If we believe the stats, we’re in serious danger of losing the battle of the digital consumer to Millennials. According to a report by US industry body the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), by 2025 Millennials will control $200 billion of the global consumer electronics market.
They’re also predicted to buy more than any other demographic group, leading the CTA to dub them the ‘Generation of Discovery’. What is more, in 2021 they’ll account for nearly half of all consumer internet usage – and that’s only going to increase.
The Millennial generation is often stereotyped as being tech-savvy, digitally native, and comfortable with online marketing. While that may be true, it’s important to remember that Millennials are also the most diverse generation yet, and digitally savvy consumers can be found across all demographics.
What is also clear is that Millennials can be fickle consumers. The CTA report notes that “Millennials are demanding quality content that is easily accessible, and rapidly updating content to keep up with the times”.
If your marketing strategy is stuck in the past, you’ll find it hard to engage with this generation. The good news is that with a little bit of ingenuity, you can find a way to market to Millennials – and other generations – and stand a chance of winning over digital consumers forever.
Marketing To Generation Z?
If you’ve listened to the podcast or watched the documentary, you’d know that Generation Z – those born in the mid-2000s – are a digital generation waiting to shine. And they’re not going to do that with your marketing material, whether you’re a business or brand, unless you make some significant changes.
Just like Millennials, Generation Z is tech-savvy, with 77% using smartphones and 56% using social media. But that’s where the similarities end – while Millennials are keen to try new things, generation Z is much more traditional, with 48% preferring to shop in retail stores and 40% saying they’d rather watch TV than use a smartphone.
However, that doesn’t mean that every business can simply copy and paste their marketing strategies from Millennials and expect to succeed. To truly understand how to reach this generation, you need to delve into their digital world and figureheads – namely, TikTok.
The video-based social media platform has exploded in popularity in recent years, with users sharing short-form videos that are often highly entertaining or informative. While the platform has been around for a while, it began gaining serious traction in the early 2010s and experienced an incredible uptick in usage during the pandemic of 2020.
According to TikTok, there are six key metrics you need to pay attention to to effectively market on the platform:
- Likes
- Reach
- Comments
- Shares
- Views
- And, of course,
- Growth
These metrics can be used to assess your audience’s interest in your content, determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, and even help decide what types of content you should be creating. You can also use YouTube Analytics to get a clearer picture of your audience’s digital world – where they are and what content they’re interested in. Simply visit your Analytics dashboard and select ‘YouTube User Behaviour’ to get started.
Pro-Tip: Measure The Results Of Your Marketing Campaigns On Social Media
While you can’t always directly measure the results of your marketing campaigns, you can analyze the data on social media to get a clearer picture of the impact of your strategy. This way, you can determine whether your efforts are worth it – and, if so, then what changes you should make to be more successful in the future.
If you’ve created or curated content on social media in the last year, then you can track its performance using tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social. To do this, navigate to your social media accounts and click on the gear icon in the top right-hand corner to access your settings. From here, you can choose to show you performances from the previous year or look at the combined results of all your accounts.
These statistics can then be used to determine the effectiveness of your campaign, with the combined results showing the total reach of your content across all platforms. This is good for comparing one campaign to another, but you can also use the metrics to benchmark your performance over time and determine the success of your overall strategy.
Marketing To Generation X?
If you think that your target audience is made up of Baby Boomers and their children, then you’re seriously underestimating the patience and open-mindedness of Generation X. While there are a lot of consumer electronics brands that are struggling, many businesses that market to this generation are thriving. This is primarily thanks to the fact that they’ve been around for a while and have a solid understanding of marketing – and digital content – which allows them to compare and analyze products easily.