How To Market to Millennials
In any business, evaluating your marketing from time to time to ensure that you’re striking the iron while it’s hot is imperative. The wedding planning business is no different. You need to be acutely aware of your audience so you can position your business as their ideal solution.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average woman gets married after the age of 27. This makes her a millennial. Defined as anyone born between 1981 and 1997, more than 90 percent of all brides (and presumably, couples) you work with will belong to this misunderstood generation. Prove that you understand them, and the bookings will flood in. What’s the market like?
What You Need to Know about Millennials
Compared to the previous generation, millennials have a superabundance of choices when it comes to their weddings and whom they will hire to help them make their dreams a reality. You will have to do more to stand out. Marketing is the single metric that will make or break your business. Here are a few other things that make them different:
• They love multi-tasking, so they’ll use multiple devices at the same time.
• They are more diverse, so one size fits all marketing strategies don’t work well on them.
•They can see through shallow attempts to make connections and prefer organic methods.
• They prefer good storytelling vs. ads, and don’t care if a product or service is branded, it just needs to appeal to them.
As you read those four points, you may have considered ways your current marketing can be refined to reach millennials better. For example, how is your website? Do you have enough information on it, and does it create a seamless experience across all devices for visitors? Those are some of the questions you need to ask yourself. If you need more specific help, here’s an actionable breakdown with some strategies and tips you can start using as soon as you finish reading this article.
What Makes the Difference in Marketing to Millennial Brides?
Based on what we know, we can create specialized marketing plans that will target millennials. Here are a few of the steps we can take:
• According to Google, 60 percent of millennials prefer to book on mobile devices, so your website’s online portal needs to be set up to accept bookings and payments for consultations online.
• Millennials often make decisions based on social media presence, so your social media accounts are your “storefront.” Invest time and money into making your storefront attractive and the returns will blow your mind.
• If you’re considering what social media network to start working on first, consider Pinterest. Millennials use Pinterest to plan most aspects of their weddings. If you can funnel traffic from that social media site to your website, the conversions happen almost by themselves.
• Information is the new currency, and millennials were born in the middle of this shift. They are hungry for information on wedding planning, and if you provide it to them they’ll stick around and become clients.
• Sixty-five percent of grooms are involved in the wedding planning process in the millennial generation. When you include them in your marketing efforts and ditch marketing to just brides, you’re more likely to make an impact.
• Be early with your marketing, and don’t wait until the engagement. For millennials the wedding planning often starts before they are officially engaged. Reach them early with targeted content marketing.
• Millennials are more sensitive to price tags than the previous generation, so being transparent when it comes to pricing will always help. Consider adding even a starting range on your website.
• Value is big on the minds of millennials. They want their weddings to look good and expect to get value for their money but aren’t over the top like previous generations.
• The fact that millennials have a shorter attention span isn’t a bad thing. Video marketing is extremely effective with them. Videos can be used on social media and even on your website.
• By incorporating fun DIY elements into your wedding planning packages, you can stand out more to millennial brides. They are big on DIY for their weddings.
• Communicate that you love breaking the mold in your marketing, since more and more millennials are shying away from traditional weddings and want to have a ceremony that is more modern, and reflects their individuality.
Start small and work your way up
Implementing just a handful of the tips mentioned above can take your wedding planning business far. By integrating these concepts into your core marketing message, you can attract more millennials. With the youngest millennials turning 21 in 2018, it’s safe to say that millennials will be your clients for years to come.
- Devonnie Garvey, www.Devonnie.com, Ochos Rios, Jamaica
