I recently read this article about marketing titled 5 Winning Strategies for Millennial Marketing. It has some great ideas, and I thought I’d share them and add some librarian-ish thoughts to them.
Here are the strategies and my thoughts:
1. Stay mobile. This makes perfect sense. A good 85% of millennials have smartphones and use them frequently. So make sure everything your library does works on a mobile device. I mean everything – for example, does your library REALLY want to spend $25,000 a year for that amazing article database if it doesn’t work on a mobile device? Maybe not.
2. Create peer brand evangelists. The idea here is that instead of bombarding people with ads, work on creating partnerships with online influencers already trusted by your millennial customers. So in a library’s case, you might contact your better-known Facebook or Twitter users, and see if you can get them interested in something your library does. Because if they think it’s cool, they’ll share it on their favorite social media channels. And you have just created a brand evangelist.
3. Be socially connected. To do #2 above, you need to have this one in place. You need to have active social media channels, and be connected to your customers who use these channels. I love what the author says in this section:
“When done correctly, your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram channels should make each and every customer feel special.”
Easy to say, hard to do, huh?
4. Create authentic content. This point is why I talk so much about how to create content on your digital branch and in your social media channels. When done well, your content will connect to your millennials. Which means you will have connected the library to them. Definitely something to work on!
5. Give them a say. Reach out to your customers and have them help. In the article, the examples are things like Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor” campaign, where people helped create weird chip flavors. In a library setting, this might be as simple as a list of great books to read, created by your customers.
So go read the article, and figure out how you can better serve (and reach) your millennial customers!
Image from the Blue Diamond Gallery