Yeah, Right – Marketing to Millennials

Dear House Rules,

My company is coming out with a product that treats a condition many millennials suffer from, according to our data. However, all of our experience to date has involved marketing to the Baby Boomer generation, who respond to quite different tactics. How do we effectively market to a group of consumers that seems to have an inherent mistrust (if our young adult kids are any guide) of “Big Pharma?”

Signed,

How Do I Reach Young Adults Today?

Dear Young Adults Today,

You may not know it, but you’ve already solved half the puzzle simply by recognizing that the millennial target audience responds to different marketing tactics and strategies than do Boomers. It’s important to meet these potential consumers, as all potential consumers, where they are, instead of requiring them to come to you. 

It will come as no surprise that the millennial generation (those born between 1981 and 1996, according to the Pew Research Center) is the most “connected” via social media than any other generation before them. They are also outstanding when it comes to searching for information – and learned in school how to differentiate between a credible online source and a non-credible one. Millennials are skeptics, to a degree, and not easily fooled. As a result, it behooves companies to present their data with complete transparency. Here are a few tips for marketing to this specific group:

• Use social media influencers carefully: Some healthcare marketers think millennials are so impressed with social media influencers that they'll believe anything they read on one of “their” websites. In reality, while partnering with social media influencers is a valuable tactic, the mere fact that there is so much “influencer-generated” content means millennials are savvier and more discerning about content in general. Health and wellness marketers should strive to work with influencers who are sharing transparent and relatable stories in terms of scientific product benefits and how the product fits into the millennial lifestyle.
• Ramp up the efficiency factor with your social media: Rather than being “lazy,” millennials use technology to do things faster. Social media gives them the chance to see more ideas and come to their own conclusions. This tech can be used to power smarter healthcare marketing, as it did for blood cancer charity DKMS' Casting for A Hero, which leveraged the millennial love for Comic Con. These are relevant and simple.
• Make sure you’re searchable: Millennials are super-searchers. There's an ongoing misconception that because millennials are mainly healthy, they're not well-informed about their diagnoses or about health insurance. But with a chronic and complicated illness like lupus, depression, or inflammatory bowel disease, they quickly become experts, both in filing insurance claims and reading up on the disease. It’s important to reach them using the right means of communication (including social media, blogs, podcasts, and more newsy sites if possible. Millennial consumers don’t take a pill just because the doctor suggests it. Google is their best friend – they find lots of information before they make decisions.

At Xavier Creative House, our agency is made up of all age ranges, including a significant portion of millennials. We have the ability to run all of our creative and marketing strategies by this informal “focus group” to make sure it’s relevant to the millennial audience when that’s who we’re targeting. In addition, of course, we do extensive research for every client to make sure we’re deploying our plans for their brand strategically. We’d love to share our expertise with you. Just reach out to us via phone, email, or of course - social media!

Sincerely,

House Rules

Reference: 1. https://www.mmm-online.com/agencies/10-myths-about-millennials-and-their-healthcare-habits/article/740906/. Accessed March 30, 2018.