Marketing to Gen Y, don’t go mobile

Saturday, 9 May 2009

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 5 seconds

Generation Y associate themselves (whether they know it or not) deeply with reasons of belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. They grew up at the same time the Internet grew up. And they were the people who kicked off social media. Because of this, 22 year old college graduates walk into their jobs with the assumption that there will be utter transparency. And why not? Gen Yers have performed everything else in their life transparently up until this point, including their social life thanks to Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter (this is where they differ from previous generations).

So what can we learn from this?

1. Relationships – Social media spoiled Gen Y. They want to know who they work for, who is marketing to them, who they’re buying from.
2. Skepticism – Years of being marketed to so heavily that they now suffer from banner blindness on websites have led Gen Y to be very skeptical of any new forms of marketing. Literally, we are blind to change because advertisements have become a part of our natural world. That’s slightly disturbing.

As such, they expect literally everything to be transparent, including marketing towards them. And when it comes to mobile marketing, don’t even think about advertising to them on their cell phones.

The first hurdle is that not all Gen Yers have unlimited text messages, and so you’re literally using up a precious resource for them. So, unless you’re texting them to say they won $100, don’t bother.

The second hurdle, as the MediaPost article above points out, mobile marketing is still push, and not pull. If you send a Gen Yer a mobile marketing text, they’ll know instantly whether they opted in for it. If they didn’t, expect not only anger but blowback. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, that’s where Gen Y go to complain: the social web. Not only will you have lost that one potential customer, but potentially hundreds of others who follow that person.

The third hurdle is that Gen Y constantly adopt new technologies at a rapid pace. By the time marketers learn how to listen before leaping, the bar has moved. This will eventually smooth out, but the important thing here is to remember that marketers need to listen first, before reacting.

Be serious about your engagement with Generation Y. They’ll give you the time if they feel you’ve earned it, and when they do it’s much more precious and inherently valuable than any attention you’ve gotten before.