How to Use Customer Experience to Market to Millennials

Providing a good customer experience is important for keeping buyers of any segment, but it’s especially important for those who cater to the millennial age demographic. Millennials are those born between the early 1980s and the year 2000, so right now they are young adults under the age of 35. As one of the largest generations in history, millennials are vital to our country’s economy and equipped with exceptional buying power, spending $1.3 trillion annually. As their incomes and investable assets grow, this powerful generation will command significant changes within all industries- even yours. So if you’re not doing everything you can to attract, convert, close and delight these potential customers, now is the time to start.

Think Beyond Facebook and Twitter

Millennials are also referred to as “digital natives”, as they are the age group that has grown up with technology and not had to adapt to it like older generations. It’s no secret that this age group loves social media. Use this knowledge to your advantage! To be found by millennials, you need to be on the platforms they enjoy. That means expanding your social media strategy to the platforms they regularly use, like Instagram. Instagram is a key channel for your store to seem accessible to digital natives, so you should have an active profile has the very best photography your business can provide and be easily findable & identifiable with targeted hashtags.

Create Video Content

This crowd loves watching videos online. Create video content on your products, your stories, your customer success. Then, post these videos on your websites and social media channels, as long as they aren’t too lengthy. You can even create a YouTube channel to put them on. This makes you more visible and provides a more intimate “backstage pass” as to what you guys are about, and millenials will love this experience.

Acknowledge Customer Frustration on Social Media

Digital natives don’t typically pick up the phone and dial customer service if they’re upset. Quite often, they take to social media platforms like Twitter to tell their tale. They may directly try to contact you via your social media platforms or just vent to others about their frustration. Millennials trust their peer group more than traditional advertising. Don’t let this go unchecked. Responding quickly and taking the heat out of the situation is a great way to turn their problem into a good customer experience. If you can’t get a handle on the situation and it becomes a full-blown crisis, you’ll need to switch gears and go into crisis management mode.

Offer Rewards to Inspire Loyalty

Most millennials are brand loyal, but you have to win them over first. This makes them the perfect candidates to be enrolled in a reward program. Starbucks, a brand that has come to be synonymous with millennials, offers benefits such as free music and app downloads for participating in the rewards program. The catch? To be a part of the My Starbucks Rewards program, all purchases must be accounted for on the Starbucks app. Your reward program doesn’t have to be quite so technologically advanced though; it can be as simple as a loyalty card to get the 10th purchase free. Millennials will enjoy feeling like they’re part of a cohesive group of loyal fans of your business, and will definitely getting free stuff every once in awhile.

Millennials are too big of a group of potential customers to ignore. Take advantage of this crowd, relate to them, and provide the type of customer experience that will convert them to evangelists. Remember when it comes to this age group, it's important to be authentic and relevant, without being pushy. In fact, the inbound methodology works extremely well with this type of consumer. Download our free eBook The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing so you can start attracting this lucrative group of potential customers today.