The Data You Need to Market To Those Under 25

Do you ever read a statistic that just messes with your head? For example, I recently read that by 2022, 41% of the world’s population will be under 25. Which is crazy!! And creates an interesting marketing challenge. How can you effectively market to a generation who has grown up online and is constantly inundated with content and advertising?

Under 25 Stat 1

People under 25 not only take up a large share of the world’s population but they also make up a disproportionate amount of online and social media users. However, those of us in this age group statistically have shorter attention spans and tend to make decisive decisions about whether or not to consumer content or ads. A study in 2019 found that 64% of 18-24 tune out content from cluttered environments. Leading to 46% of advertisers saying that they have issues getting their content to stand out! Also, a third of advertisers say that it’s a challenge to find effective ad placement sin all the online clutter. What can you do to cut through all the online noise and reach this massive market?

#1 – Find Shared Passions

The sheer amount of product, companies, and information available is staggering. It is not enough anymore to have a good product available anymore, your brand ideals and personality need to match with the personality of your consumers. 56% of Gen Z consumers say that having shared passions and perspectives is a major factor when it comes to their engagement with a brand. However, Gen Z’ers are fantastic at sniffing out inauthenticity. Your brand personality and ideals need to actually be what you say they are. Actions speak louder than words!

What are the advantages of having a well-defined brand personality and ideals? Giving your company a personality makes things like content creation a lot easier. Knowing who you are also can help you make decisions about the direction you want to go in the future.

Under 25 stat 2
And 49% of young consumers say they will evangelize a brand they feel represents their values, likes, and personality.

Don’t be afraid of incorporating causes you care about into your brands personality! 72% of consumers want the brands they care about to be positive contributors to society. We’ve seen in recent years that many brands (especially smaller companies) connect their core brand to a charity or cause they care about. Younger consumers are 69% more likely to buy from a brand that contributes to a cause.

#2 – Choose Quality Locations

Younger generations are big on authenticity, brand trust, and quality. 74% of 18–24-year-olds believe that brands are responsible for where their ads are shown. Which is true! There’s very little excuse for having your ad show up on a website that doesn’t believe in the same things as you. Programmatic advertising and digital display ads give you a lot of control over your ad placement. Nearly 40% of advertisers have faced some backlash for having ads appear near low quality content. 54% of younger consumers say that ads placed near premium content inspires more trust in the ad itself!

#3 – Use Innovative Technology

From AI and AR driven content to native and contextual ads, technologically advanced are advertisements are becoming more accessible. The stats on their effectiveness across the entire marketing journey speak for themselves!

Of the 18–34-year-old’s interviewed:

63% pay more attention to advertisements with innovative formats

70% will consider a brand more if they associate them with innovative and immersive formats

71% say innovate ad formats are more engaging

62% feel like innovative ads formats tell them more about the product or service

63% are more inclined to purchase from brands that create content with innovative tech

#4 – Personalization

Personalized ads are effective for every age group. Gen Z’ers and Millennials are less tolerant of ads that aren’t personalized. Most younger consumers have in innate understanding of how their personal data is used to create targeted ads. Being targeted (or retargeted) based on their interests and past activities are expected. Thankfully creating effective personalized ads are easier than ever to make.

  • What can you do to create effective personalized ads? Start with the information you have about your customers. It’s difficult to know what your customers want if you don’t know who they are. Look at your 1st party data. What are your most common demographics? What are their interests? How would they most like to be communicated with?
  • Use the tools available. Marketing automation platforms and CRMs can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to segmenting data. Many of them are designed to help create simple, personalized messages.
  • Have a well thought out plan. Do you have a mapped-out customer journey? Knowing where in their journey your customers are makes a big difference in the types of personalization that will work for them. Think about nurturing. Pay attention to the details. Make sure that there aren’t little annoying things such as, getting an abandoned cart email even though you’ve already come back to purchase it. Get rid of triggers that are connected to repurchasing products commonly only purchased once.
  • Know when to walk away. Keep your data clean. If someone has never opened an email it might be a good idea to take them off your list. Their data could skew your demographics and could make understanding what personalization your active customers need difficult.

Is it effective?

Is it effective? Yes! From that survey of consumer between the ages of 18-34, 58% said that a personalized ad helped them make a purchase decision. 42% also said that they had clicked on a sponsored ad in the last 6 months!

In my experience, a lot of companies panic when thinking about marketing to young consumers. They feel like they need to be relatable or “cool.” That often comes off as disingenuous and is easy to see right through. It’s far more effective to instead focus on building a relationship with them. Make it easier for them to see who you are and what you stand for. Chances are they care about the same things you do!

 
 

Let’s Talk: Digital Display

Digital Display

We’ve talked a lot about specific types of Digital Display Ads but what are the differences them? And how do you what type of Digital Display (Or online ad) is the best fit for your business?

What is Digital Display?

Digital Display Ads can be split into 5 main categories:

  • Digital Audio Ads
  • CTV (Connected TV)
  • Video Ads
  • Static Ads
  • HTML5 Ads

What do Digital Display Ads do?

Digital Display Ads encompasses just about every type of online ad. Each type of Digital Display Ad has its own strengths and weakness. Effective campaigns are often the ones that know how to best utilize each type of ad.

Digital Audio Ads

What is Digital Audio Advertising? It’s all the ads you get that are just sound. For example, any podcast, Spotify or Pandora ad is Digital Audio. It’s expected that Digital Audio Ads from just podcasts will surpass a BILLION dollars in 2021 and that the average American will spend nearly 90 minutes a day listening to streamed music or podcasts by 2022.

Digital audio ads are a great way to connect with consumers through a channel that they enjoy. And it is very cost effective, because the ad only plays if they are listening to music or a podcast.

CTV (Connected TV)

Connected TV advertising refers to ads that are delivered to internet-connected TVs – for instance, via Hulu or Roku. CTV is increasing in popularity for marketers! Consumers are embracing these platforms so more and more ad inventory is becoming available. In fact, CTV advertising spend is expected to grow from $6.94 billion in 2019 to $8.88 billion this year, a 28% increase.

The specifies depend on what you need your funnel to accomplish. Some of the processes used are A/B testing, improving user on-page experiences, usability tests, and optimizing existing content.

Video Ads

Video Advertising fits into 2 categories: The ads that play connected to streamed content, such as Youtube ads, and display ads with video content. Those are the ads that start playing a video when your cursor scrolls over it and native video ads.

Video ads are extremely effective. Video content is more eye catching and engaging than static images or text and they are easier to remember. They are great at story telling and promoting brand messaging. Studies show that almost 75% of consumers prefer Video Ads over Text Ads.

Many Video Ads on social media platforms are re-sharable like native content, which makes it easier for consumers to promote your content for you.

Static Ads

Static Display Ads are probably what you think when you think of online ads. Static Display Ads (or Banners) are the ads that are a solid image of various sizes in designated areas of a webpage or app.

Static Ads are very effective for generating general brand awareness, retargeting, drawing attention to a specific sale, targeting location based traffic, and much more!

HTML5 Ads

HTML5 Ads are attention-grabbing, interactive (or responsive) ads optimized for Google.

HTML5 allows a lot of flexibility and creativity with ads content and formatting. Video, text, imagery, and audio files can all be used. More imaginative ads create more engagement. HTML5 ads tend to have much hight click-through rates than static ads!

HTML5 ads are rendered in code. You are sent to code itself as well as the MP4 video.

What’s the best fit for you?

Every business and situation is different! No one type of ad is best for each business but usually a combination of the 5. Online advertising can be touchy so it’s important to have a strategy.

What’s your favorite type of Digital Display Ads to use for your business?


Are Digital Audio Ads Worth The Hype?

Digital Audio Ads have exploded this year. It’s estimated that advertisers will spend $3.72 billion this year on digital audio advertising. So why all the hype?

What is Digital audio advertising? It’s all the ads you get that are just sound. For example, any podcast, Spotify or Pandora ad is Digital Audio. It’s expected that Digital Audio Ads from just podcasts will surpass a BILLION dollars in 2021 and that the average American will spend nearly 90 minutes a day listening to streamed music or podcasts by 2022.

What’s the advantage of using digital audio ads? They are a great way to connect with consumers through a channel that they enjoy. Due to the nature of podcasts and audio ads, it’s easy to target consumers that are likely to be interested in your product. And it is very cost effective, because the ad only plays if they are listening to music or a podcast. Digital Audio Ads are also a great addition to omnichannel campaigns!

Do you think you could incorporate Digital Audio ads into your campaigns?