Chapter 4

Finding Millennials on Traditional Media

IN THIS CHAPTER

Leveraging the power and reach of television

Recognizing opportunities in print media

Using email to connect with Millennials

Television and other traditional media has had a great impact on prior generations. With the advent of new media technology comes new uses for these traditional channels. While they no longer function in the same way that they once did, traditional channels can still be valuable assets in your outreach strategy. This is particularly true when you leverage the ways that Millennials use these channels to enhance your new media strategies.

In this chapter, you get a better understanding of where traditional media fits when it comes to reaching Millennials. At first glance, traditional media doesn’t seem like something that is of much interest or readily accessible to a Millennial demographic. After all, this audience lives online and engages with brands primarily through more conversational channels, like Twitter and Facebook. Even though this is true, traditional media still has a place in your Millennial outreach and engagement strategy.

Taking Advantage of Television (With or Without the Budget)

For most marketers, television is far out of reach of their budget. Advertising on this once-prized medium and, to be fair, still prized medium, remains important for a lot of reasons.

Television is just valued today in a different way. The barriers are significant, and for small- and medium-sized brands, the risks of potential overspending and undermeasurement generally outweigh the benefits.

What’s more, when you compare the metrics associated with television and social media, television is far more limited. If your goal is to reach and convert Millennials, then your natural inclination will be to invest your money online so that you can track it from start to finish. However, you can still track your investment if you leverage television strategically. The following sections look at how you can do so.

Looking at Millennial TV viewing habits

It’s hardly a secret that Millennials are watching less traditional TV than any generation that has come before it. MarketingCharts (http://marketingcharts.com), a company that provides insights and charts related to the world of marketing, has analyzed Nielsen television viewing data, and aggregated the information shown in Figure 4-1. You see that since 2011, the amount of weekly time that Millennials have devoted to watching traditional TV has steadily decreased.

MarketingCharts.com.

FIGURE 4-1: Millennial viewing habits have decreased.

The term traditional TV takes the average of live TV viewing with recorded or time-shifted viewing. It doesn’t take into account new media, such as streaming, and doesn’t factor in connected devices.

If you compare television viewing among other generations, Nielsen reported that in 2017–2018

• The number of GenY and Millennials (ages 18 to 34) TV watching has dropped 15 percent from 2014.
• Compare this with a 2 percent drop in 2017 among Baby Boomers (people 55 and above).

You can see that Millennials are definitely not the most engaged when it comes to television, so marketers need to take some creative measures, such as the use of the second screen, covered in the next section, to effectively leverage TV.

Reaching viewers with the second screen

Have you ever watched your favorite team play your favorite sport, while all the while you’re tweeting about a play or reading tweets about that last missed call by the ref? If you have, then you’ve engaged in what’s referred to as second screen viewing.

According to research from Accenture (www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-digital-video-connected-consumer), a global professional services company, 87 percent of consumers use a second device while watching television. For Millennials, that second device often means a smartphone.

Essentially, you can take advantage of second screen viewing through three primary methods:

• Scheduled events, such as a national election or the Olympics: Considering the nature of scheduled events or times of year, planning your second-screen strategy around this kind of an event is pretty easy. You know when the event takes place, so you can develop and prepare your content well ahead of time. Of course, because scheduled events are often live, you need to leave room for adjustments and modifications. However, you can lay out your content strategy in pretty robust detail before these kinds of events begin.
• Spontaneous events, such as breaking news: When breaking news strikes, members of all generations tend to be glued to the television. For Millennials, this fascination is largely accompanied by ongoing updates on social media, particularly Twitter. With a proper strategy in place, your organic reach and engagement can skyrocket, thanks to the second screen viewing during these events.
• Regular programming: While Millennials may not be watching as much television as the generations that have come before them, they still watch about 20 hours of television every week. By identifying the tastes and preferences of your audience through a data analysis, you can effectively reach these viewers while they’re engaged with specific programming.

You can significantly leverage organic reach and engagement by using two types of second screen viewing: scheduled and spontaneous events.

Capitalizing on planned events

To see how you can capitalize on planned events, take the Olympics as an example. The Olympics consistently draw significant online engagement from Millennials around the world. The games provide an ideal setting in which you can leverage the second screen for both conversions and brand awareness. Users regularly share thoughts about the events across a multitude of social platforms. The development of a comprehensive content strategy that plays into the popularity of this conversation can lead to strong results.

When it comes to scheduled events, you can take a series of actions that will help ensure that your campaign generates the kind of success you want to achieve:

• Identify an event or series of events that significantly engages your audience. In the example of the Olympics, it can be something as small as identifying the events and sports that are talked about most.
• Establish main conversational topics around which to base your content strategy. Several conversations will undoubtedly be taking place during these major events. While some of these conversations may be spontaneous, you can certainly predict others. Do your best to figure out these probable conversations and draft a content strategy outline that hits on these main topics.
• Determine the channels on which your target audience of Millennials are most likely to have these discussions. Generally, when it comes to the second screen, the most popular conversations will be on platforms like Twitter that they can access from their mobile devices. That said, there is always a chance that your audience is engaging on Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook while watching an event on television. It will be up to you to determine the best platforms on which to execute your strategy and invest most of your effort and resources.
• Determine the tone that you’ll adopt during engagement. Everyone participating in the conversation has at least the event in common. This means that it truly is a conversation with a common theme. That means that you need to predetermine the level of familiarity you use and maintain it throughout the event.

Capitalizing on unforeseen events

Unforeseen circumstances are always a factor during live events. However, you can use some strategies to capitalize on the second screen. Here are a few tips to keep top of mind:

• Build a list for absolutely every scenario you can think of. That way, you can limit surprises as much as possible.
• Determine the kinds of stories that you want to engage with and those that may be too sensitive. Too many marketers and brands have made the mistake of inappropriately weighing in. One such story, for example, took place in 2015 when, for International Women’s Day, Bic South Africa shared an ad that stated, “Look like a girl. Act like a lady. Think like a man. Work like a boss.” The ad drew international criticism, and Bic was forced to rethink its strategy.
• Develop an easily revisable content template that you can use in most of the cases that you expect to encounter. Again, creating content for an event that hasn’t taken place yet is fairly difficult, but in the meantime, you can work on image files, video templates, and other basic design work so that you can react quickly to big news.

Targeting Millennials with Print Media

For centuries, print media was the primary way to reach the masses. Most people got their news from newspapers and magazines. The development of new low-cost and readily available technologies means that print media has suffered. Nowhere is this truer than with the Millennial audience.

Now Millennials use real-time mobile apps. In fact, Pew Research (www.pewinternet.org) has reported that more than 80 percent of Millennials say that they use social media as their primary source for news.

However, you can still use some tactics to leverage print media to attract Millennials.

Reaching Millennials in magazines

Of the various types of print marketing and advertising that exist, leveraging the content in magazines can be the most readily accessible type for Millennials. Surprisingly, the level that Millennials read magazines falls very closely in line with those of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, according to research from JWT (www.jwt.com), an advertising company based in New York. This means that there is a real opportunity to capitalize on the popularity of magazines, particularly when you know which magazines your audience is reading.

One benefit of using Facebook Insights is that you can identify some of the print publications that your Millennial audience is reading. You can find this information in the section of liked pages in your audience analysis, where print publications populate as distinct pages. Identifying the magazines that are of interest to your Millennial audience will initially help you narrow the avenues to consider leveraging on print magazines. For more about Facebook Insights, see Book 7, Chapter 2.

After you determine the publications you want to target, you have a few options worth considering:

• Advertorials: Consider writing an advertorial to showcase your brand through written content. Unlike an ad, an advertorial is a sponsored piece of written content that highlights a product or service, but in the form of an editorial. Of course, advertorials aren’t free, but in some cases, they can be very cost-effective. They offer you more space to truly define your product or service and showcase why it’s better than the competition.

  In some smaller industry or trade publications, an advertorial may only cost a nominal amount, if anything at all. Some trade publications are more concerned with gathering as much content as they can for a given issue and will forgo the cost to place one. If you can find a magazine that will offer you this option, it can provide you with a pseudo-advertorial, which isn’t an explicit sales-focused advertorial but still has a self-promotional subtext. Inquire whether this option is available. It may not run you anything more than the time it takes to draft the article. But don’t approach this tactic with the assumption that it will be free; if it is, think of it more as a pleasant surprise.

• Inclusion in an article: Reach out to existing publication editors and staff writers in an effort to have your product or service included in an article about the topic. Unlike advertorials, your relationship with specific writers and editors largely influences your success. Reaching a point where a writer will be willing to feature your brand in her next article may take some time. But the fact that this mention is entirely organic, and therefore genuine, means that the audience reading about it will be much more receptive to what the writer is saying.
• Display ads: Opt for display ads in smaller publications. Large, internationally distributed publications will simply be too expensive. Smaller publications will be more affordable and receptive to your business. In these more local or targeted publications, the audience you reach may be exactly the audience that you’ve defined — rather than a very large audience that also includes your targets.

Connecting with Millennials through the use of newspapers

According to the Newspaper Association of America (www.newsmediaalliance.org), 68 percent of Millennials ages 18 to 24 react to advertisements in print newspapers. This is especially true of coupons. So, while newspaper readership among Millennials may be down, engagement and responsiveness to sponsored content is still strong. So how can your brand leverage sponsored content?

Effectively leveraging newspapers in print form can be a little trickier, but one area with potential is in the use of coupons in place of your ads. Advertising in local publications can be much more affordable, and the data surrounding Millennials highlights the fact that they do respond well to coupons in newspapers. While the volume may not be significant, there is potential in small markets. If your coupon also has an online tie-in as opposed to something that people can only redeem in-store, then the potential is even greater.

When working with a coupon that connects to your online store or online offer, make sure to use a specific code that tells you the link is from a newspaper. This will come in handy when measuring the results of your various marketing efforts and will help you determine the return on your newspaper investment.

You need to evaluate whether you’re willing to even make an investment in newspapers. Yes, you have ways of measuring return when using the coupon offer strategy, but there is still risk involved. Some Millennials are simply not reading newspapers at all. With that in mind, you need to carefully consider the decision to invest in newspapers. If you can measure all aspects of the campaign and you can justify the investment based on the potential you identified in your research, then go for it!

The case for investing in print media

Print media still holds an important place in the world of marketing to Millennials. While online media has become a Millennial hotspot, this audience is still active on a variety of print platforms. This means that investing in a presence in print media is a viable option for several reasons:

• You can increase your exposure on an ongoing basis to a Millennial audience.
• You can tie your offline efforts to your online efforts.
• You can reach new prospects that your brand may not have reached online.

The case for abandoning print media

While Millennials are still using a variety of print media, it’s not their preferred set of channels. Millennials have grown up with the technology they use. They have evolved as consumers at the same rate as their technology. With this in mind, you need to ask yourself, “Do I want to invest in a channel that may not be viable for Millennials in a few years’ time?”

For brands and organizations that have larger marketing and advertising budgets, the question is an easier one to answer. When a large budget is readily available, the decision to invest in all viable media options is clear: It has to be done. But for smaller organizations, it may not be as simple a decision.

For small- and medium-sized operations, where budget allocations are made sparingly, cutting print media out of the equation is often all too easy. Print media can be cost prohibitive, difficult to measure, and hard to predict. Those problems don’t exist nearly to the same extent when it comes to social and new media. Essentially, you need to run an analysis on your available budgets and determine whether you have additional budget to allocate to traditional media.

Your priority should be to choose the more cost-effective channels of new media, where you have significantly more control over the specifics of a campaign.

Incorporating Email into Your Strategy

It may seem a little strange at first, but as far as Millennials are concerned, email isn’t considered a new media. Email is the digital side of what is now categorized as traditional media. Millennials, therefore, use email very differently when communicating with brands. Knowing what these idiosyncrasies are and tailoring your Millennial email marketing strategy to them will help you maximize the potential of this platform.

Creating messages specifically for email

Email messages targeted to Millennials won’t necessarily align with the content you create for Millennials on other channels. Instead, you need to pay close attention to the responsiveness of Millennials to specific types of emails and build your content strategy around them.

Research from email marketing company Adestra (www.adestra.com) found that the most popular reason a Millennial wants to receive an email from a brand is to receive a coupon or a discount. This preference mirrors what was seen regarding newspapers. Millennials are extremely price sensitive. (See more about the Millennial mindset in Book 4, Chapter 2.)

With this in mind, you need to ask yourself how to capture the attention of Millennials to both justify your investment in email and keep your Millennial audience engaged. These two tips may help you capture their attention:

• Leverage email as a component of your overall strategy as opposed to thinking about email in a silo.
• Build subject lines and headings that capture the attention of your audience right away.

Tying email into your traditional and new media strategies

Receiving an email or an email address from an audience member is often the first indication that he wants to take the relationship with your brand a step further. While someone may like your Facebook Page or follow you on Twitter, nothing is quite as intimate as signing up for your newsletter or providing you with an email address. Personal information is seen as a form of currency by Millennials.

Email can and should tie into your Millennial marketing efforts in several ways:

• Segment your Millennial email lists as narrowly as possible. To target your messaging to the specific behaviors and tastes of Millennials, narrow your segments. Millennials respond to personalization, and the best way to drive conversion rates is to keep your lists segmented, and your messaging highly targeted.
• Leverage diverse types of email campaigns. Of course, Millennials respond to coupons and discount offers, but email list-building tools like Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com) provide many variations of email campaign types, as shown in Figure 4-2. Run a campaign that collects survey data or asks for some sort of action that Millennials can take within the email. You may even sell tickets or products directly from the email. These examples are both readily available and mobile-friendly, which is most likely where Millennials will be checking their email.
• Cross-match email addresses on Facebook and Twitter. You can cross-match email addresses on different platforms to better target your ads. Improving the targeting of your ads by performing this task leads to higher click-through rates, lower cost-per-click, and ultimately, increased conversion rates.

FIGURE 4-2: Different types of campaigns available in Constant Contact.

Building subject lines and headings that generate opens

When you consider how much content Millennials are bombarded with on a daily basis, it’s easy to understand why Millennial email open and click-through rates have been steadily declining. (Open and click-through rates are defined as the number of your total audience that opens your emails and then clicks through to the URL they find.)

Increasing open and click-through rates starts with the subject line. That is the first thing your audience is going to see, and it can really be a make-or-break moment.

To see your open rates shoot up among Millennials, here are a few tips worth keeping top of mind when crafting your next subject line:

• Keep your subject line as short as possible. The majority of your Millennial audience is checking email on a mobile device, which means less screen space for your subject. It also means that a novel-length subject line will be cut off before you even hit the main point.

• Personalize your subject line with personalization tokens. A common theme across all marketing channels is the desire for a personalized experience. Personalization goes for email as well. If you have an option to personalize the subject line using a token in your email software, take advantage of it.

  Personalization tokens are small bits of code found within your email software that automatically populates a designated space either in your subject line or the email body itself. It pulls out certain personal elements from the profile of the user receiving the email. So, John’s subject line will read something like “Hey, John! Collect Your Reward Now!” and Mary’s subject line will swap out John’s name for her own.

• Be clear about what recipients will see in their email. Don’t be vague or mysterious about email content and don’t send emails to people with which you have no prior relationship. This is a quick way to get your email sent to the trash. This technique of enticing opens and clicks from your audience may have worked when email was in its infancy, but smarter, busier, and often passive Millennial users aren’t interested in mystery email. Everything they need to encourage them to open the email should be in the subject line.
• Use action or intent-oriented verbs in your subject line. Much like the subject of clarity noted in the previous tip, use an active verb, such as buy or register, in your subject line to highlight what your audience members will need to do after they open the email.