Studies over and over again indicate that the Millennial generation is harder to reach as a potential customer or client than any generation that came before. They largely eschew trusting traditional advertising and rely, rather, on the opinions of friends or from strangers found on the web or via social media. In addition, they largely distrust the professional classes such as doctors, lawyers, and financial planners preferring to use online resources to figure out how to get the job done on their own when possible. As a result, connecting with the generation must be done using nontraditional means that foster trust and show a personal understanding of the real life effects of any service being offered. Social media and other modes of communication that allow for personal references should be used in addition to the traditional advertising in order to achieve maximum outreach across all generations. While engaging the emerging dominant generation does not have as a simple a playbook as before, it can still be done by closely examining the trends among millennials and identifying what methods allow the greatest outreach while still meshing well with the ideals of the young ones.
See April Rudin, Don’t Miss the Millennial Marketing Revolution, Wealth Management, November 20, 2015.
Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse for bringing this article to my attention.
