Marketing to Millennials: Online Habits You Should Know
In this day and age, accessibility of content is at the forefront of Millennials’ minds. This demographic has been noted to “disrupt trends” as the consumer-provider relationship has shifted to the power of the consumer. There is now more importance than ever to understanding the habits of Millennials as they begin to age and move into their spending years. This interactive infographic from Goldman Sachs illustrates telling data from the generation. Millennials carry more importance than ever, especially regarding how the digital landscape should be. Here are three of their notable on-line habits:
1. A majority of Millennials are almost always online and connected.
On average, Millennials check their phones 43 times a day. They spend 5.4 hours per day on social media. As digital natives, they are constantly consuming media. Some of the most popular activities include email, texting, social media, and streaming entertainment. Constant enjoyment with technology is a hallmark of the generation.
2. They’re not as concerned about on-line privacy.
Only 26% of Millennials worry “a good deal” about privacy, identity theft being the primary concern. Other concerns are schools and potential employers using social media accounts against them, and strangers learning their exact locations. This applies to brands marketing to Millennials because they do not seem to show concern about big companies collecting their information and selling it or using it for marketing purposes. In fact, Millennials more than any other generation understand these on-line relationships: they get information from companies, and companies collect information from them.
3. They seek user-generated content.
Studies also show user-generated media is more memorable to Millenials than traditional media. User-generated content includes social media postings, blogs, emails, texts, photos, and talking to others about media. New research reported in this Entrepreneur article indicates that individuals ages 18 to 36 spend an average of 17.8 hours a day with different types of media. Those hours represent a total across multiple media sources, some of which are consumed simultaneously. Information gathered through user-generated content is trusted 40 percent more than information from other media – including newspapers and magazines. Millennials also find user-generated content 30 percent more memorable than other sources.
The inundation of media in the lives of Millennials creates a generation that heavily values connectivity, accessibility and instant gratification. This is reflected in the hours they dedicate online, either building relationships or seeking user-generated content. After all, with the average attention span only clocking in at 8 seconds today, content that can be easily and quickly ingested is valued. New formats of media and technology production will be sought once patterns of Millenials become increasingly understood.
Interested in reading more? Check out our blog post about 5 Key Concepts for Marketing to Millennials
