Remington BeggHere’s a sobering fact for small business owners: Walmart’s 2014 sales were $343 million, Target’s totaled $72.6 million and Amazon’s reached $49 million. Their combined marketing budgets are larger than the GDP of 23.5 percent of all countries in the world. How can a small business like yours compete with the giants, especially during the season of Black Friday and Christmas sales? Easily… if you focus on Millennials. Millennials love shopping at small, locally owned businesses like yours!
But first, who are these Millennials? Millennials, born in the 1980’s and 1990’s, are a huge portion of the adult population- and growing. They are now approaching 80 million members strong and have $2.25 trillion in buying power. They are the segment of the population predisposed to trust their local small businesses and dislike big businesses, due in part to blaming staggering student loans and a floundering job market on these type of companies. Local places would be foolish not to tap into that. So what can you do to attract them to your business?
Optimize for Mobile
A young person glued to their cell phone is so common it’s almost cliche. Use this knowledge to your advantage! A staggering four out of five Millennials shop directly from their mobile devices. Let them purchase their gifts from you instead of Amazon. Just being found on their phone isn’t enough, though. That same research says 68% will not wait more than five seconds for a page to load on their mobile device for closing it and going to a different page. If your website is not optimized to display correctly and load quickly to all devices, you’re turning Millennials looking for Christmas presents away in droves.
Monitor Your Online Reviews
Millennials trust their peer group more than traditional advertising; they want to know what other people say about you, not what you say about yourself. This had lead to the rise of review websites like Yelp, Tripadvisor, Amazon reviews, and more. Have you monitored yours to see what people are saying? Almost all, 90 percent, of Millennials say that positive online reviews influence their buying decision. So if you have bad reviews, you need to do everything you can to fix the situation, ask them to be removed, or bury them with better ones.
Host or Support a Holiday Charity
It’s easier for you to create personal relationships with your customers than the retail giants, so use that to your advantage. Young people want to spend their money at a place they feel is using part of it to give back, and the holiday season offers a lot of ways to show you do this. Here at Impulse Creative, we were a Toys for Tots drop off facility. There’s many other deserving organization to get behind, like Operation Child or Angel Tree, that will show your customers how much you care this season.
Use Social Media
Millennials aren’t only shopping when they’re on their phones. Big surprise: they’re on social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest… Millennials are on all of them. Eighty-nine percent of these consumers say interaction with a brand on social media has an impact on their purchase. So get on social media if you aren’t already there, post interesting and relevant information, and then engage with your followers when they begin to Like, Share, and Tweet about you. Have specials holiday deals going on? Tell them about it!
Studies have found that Millennials’ buying habits include a distinct lack of interest in traditional advertising, and have a strong loyalty to the brands their peers like, help the common good, and a driving need to interact with these brands via social networks. That all ties in perfectly with inbound marketing! If you’re ready to take the next step toward attracting the right customers and delighting them, instead of annoying them, download our free eBook The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing today.
