Targeting Millennials Requires Different Influencer Tactics

Influencer marketing is still a major key in marketing, despite cries of “adpocalypse” coming from several major YouTube figures. Influencer marketing also resonates well with the millennial market, which measures just over 80 million strong. That's a lot of target, and advertisers want a piece of that action. But influencer marketing to millennials isn't as easy as you might think, and there are some important things to know before trying.

First, there are two big targets in mind with influence and millennial. First, remember to go for social media. Those various platforms—Snapchat and Instagram, and even Twitter and Facebook—are huge targets for millennials. A 2016 Fluent study showed 41 percent of millennials were using such tools every day, so not having a presence here is a big loss to influencer tactics. Second, go mobile. Mobility is big with millennials, so having a mobile presence—or even a mobile social presence—is a good way to tap the growing millennial market.

Content is also vital to the millennial market. Forget what you've heard about longer videos getting more views or the search engines favoring longer content. Maybe the SERPs like it, but millennials do not. Short and to the point is the order of the day. Yet content is also the leading factor; creating content for each platform requires different things; Instagram is often image heavy, and Twitter needs to do its damage in 140 characters.

Finally, focus on collaboration. Not just in your content creation or in spreading that content, but also in collaborating with the viewer. Giveaways, sponsored posts, contests and other matters are a great way to start that collaboration, and potentially even reflecting collaboration in your content. If you're selling cameras or travel packages, focus on helping the target have an adventure. There are a lot of ways to do this, and the better a collaboration you can offer up, the better it will likely be received.

Millennials are a different market from the ones older marketers are familiar with. A little cynical about advertising, but willing to pay attention to an attention-getting prospect, the use of influencer marketing allows advertisers to cut through the increasing noise of advertising. Ads are everywhere, so they're often censored by memory, just part of the background sound of life, like a fan running in the other room you don't notice for a couple hours.

Breaking through that noise is crucial to marketing, and influencer marketing can be a big step here. Just keep a few basic points in mind and you'll be that much more likely to come out ahead.