Marketing to Gen Z
Gen Z. What do you know about them? Have you built in a demographicspecific marketing component to your marketing campaign for 2023? If not, drop everything and do it now. These are students at Cal Poly Humboldt and our high schools and 98% have a smartphone and use it. If your business doesn’t sell to them, you probably employ them, since soon they will make up over 25% of the workforce, so you need to understand them.
They are under 26 years old, are the first true digital natives, using as many as eight screens at a time and have very short attention spans (8 seconds). They are the biggest group of buyers in the U.S. at more than 86 million people. They don’t like to be marketed to by email, their preference is social media.
As a group, they are very attuned to social issues, sustainability and are concerned about racial equality. This makes sense since their cohort includes the largest percentage of mixed-race people ever in the U.S.
They are also concerned about the environment and sustainability. Their greatest fear is climate change. Gen Z wants to know that your company shares their values and are really doing something for the issues they care about like the environment and ecofriendly products.
Gen Z people typically don’t trust ads! 97% of them learn about services and products from friends and influencers on social media! So your brand has to create a strong word of mouth online on your brand pages, your CEO’s pages and with influencer campaigns.
There are clues how to market to them by looking at Mad River Brewery, Los Bagels and Blue Ox.
Your Gen Z marketing focus will need to be authentic. Tell the stories of your staff, your satisfied customers and the nonprofits you support. You will want to explain how your business recycles all the office paper and buys lunch for kids at the local school.
The good news is that since the attention spans are short, your content, posts and messages will need to be quick and informative. Think Instagram stories, a few slides with clear messages of real people.
Generation Z is a group of values-centered individuals that desire equality, seek recommendations for products from their social network and demand authenticity from the company selling them. It is in your best interest to find a way to keep that at the forefront of your marketing to successfully interact with them.
Emanuel Rose is the founder of StrategiceMarketing.com, author of “AUTHENTICITYMarketing to Generation Z” and has over 20 years of business experience in sales and marketing, including how to use LinkedIn and Lead Generation. He has extensive experience designing, managing, and optimizing marketing campaigns to generate sales growth and is driven to achieve results by focusing on the customer first. Along with being obsessed with your marketing results, Emanuel is a fly fisherman.