Are you figuring out a way to engage with the coolest kids on the block? Are you daunted by the idea of marketing to Gen Z? Who is Gen Z?
For many brands and businesses, Gen Z is an unsolved puzzle. Young, tech-savvy, socially minded; it’s the generation stranger to life without the internet. Born and brought up in a digitally connected world, Gen Zers are a force to be reckoned with and their impact on the economy will continue to grow. It’s now time to tap into the Gen Z audience with strategies tailored to suit their life narratives of clear values, inclusivity, and sustainability.
Understand who Gen Z are
Born between 1995-2012, under the blanket of internet and digitalization, Gen Z is the generation that knows everything at their fingertips. From being multi-taskers to less focussed in comparison to the millennials, from the eCommerce perspective, what they expect the most is brand loyalty towards them. Maintaining the checklist of conscious and ethical issues, they care about the choices they make.
Break It Down: Heterogeneity & Personalization
Embracing the strong suits of diversification and individuality is what these digital natives expect to be reflected in the brands too. To maintain that it is pertinent to focus on further sub-groups within the generation. In market segmentation, the target audience needs to be broken down based on demographic as well as behavioural aspects to identify distinguishable motives. It is these distinct motives that can be used to lure the audience to engage in the surveys and business activities. By digging deeper and drawing a parallel of the key characteristics of the target audience, the same can be leveraged to build personalized strategies. This gives your business an edge to keep your Gen Zers engaged.
Keep it short, fun, and entertaining
We now live in a world with diminishing attention spans and Gen Zers are a distracted genre with an average attention span of 8 seconds. Connecting with them in their language (digital) with entertaining and attention-grabbing content is key. Music, humour, social issues, witty captions, and more are some entertaining ways to pique the interest of the Gen Zers. To capture Gen Z’s interest, a combination of creativity and interactivity goes a long way.
Go where they are
It’s all about mastering the art of the right time and right place. The key is to know where your audience spends the most time and exploit the same for the brand’s advantage. Besides the physical and geographical presence, discover and explore all the online and in-device platforms where they are available.
Feed their Purpose
Gen Z proclaims to be very purpose-driven and aligned with things that add value. Though the purchases that they make are a bit impulsive but will surely be conscious and ethical. What a brand and business prosper extends their inclinations towards the company, beyond the purchase. It is important for them to understand what and how the company does what they do as that has a huge influence on their purchasing decisions. Embracing social stances and demonstrating social responsibility goes a long way for the new digital generation.
Additionally, building an incentive program for the surveys can support the proof that their participation matters. Having a company offer something tangible in return for participants’ time is a clear message that a company cares. However, make sure those incentives align with your value and the purpose of the survey.
From binge-watching web shows to Instagramming the summer updates, the audience on the digital platforms has witnessed a paradigm shift. Taking advantage of the fierce Gen Zers with strong purposes, the top fashion brand HRX [1]gauged the pulse of the audience in sync with the main pillars of the brand, namely fashion, fitness, and technology to build a community. While all the brands talk about building a community, HRX walked the talk towards being community-driven.
Offering their Gen Z audience, the chance to be the face of the brand by recreating the reel as made by the actor, Hrithik Roshan, the campaign transported them from reel to real. The masterstroke delivered an organic reach of more 4.6Mn, 45 lakh views on the reel, more than 17,000 shares and saves and ultimately making them feel a part of the brand.
Leverage tags for engagement
With social media platforms being the ‘It’ thing, the use of tagging on diverse platforms plays a major role in marketing right to the Gen Z. Not only does tagging manifest the importance of having a hashtag for followers to boost but something on-site worthy of snapshotting. As part of promotional campaigns, simply asking consumers to tag is enough to motivate a meaningful response and interest.
Respond to followers in a timely fashion
While leaving your friends and family on ‘read’ can be catastrophic in the social media world, imagine what that might do to your consumers. Giving your full attention to the new generation of consumers goes hand-in-hand with stimulating your brand’s loyalty. Being responsive to your consumer base not only nurtures loyalty but enhances second purchases and commitment to your brand. So being on the toes with your consumer feedback/grievances and helping them with their issues is a strong and legitimate strategy.
Jump on their love for influencers
Blogging is the new marketing language! From sharing the pros and cons of a makeup brush to gadgets, they have been convincing people and giving them a middle ground to make the right purchase. From using pictures to videos like reels and TikTok, the influencers have been dominating the marketing scene for a while now. While collaborating with the A-list influencers might seem like a costly affair there are many others available with decent followers. Nano (~1K-5K followers) and micro-influencers (~5K-20K followers) usually interact more with their audience, which leads to an engaged following. Influencers have a big influence and wield unmatchable power, so using them as a marketing tool can be a unique experience.
To resonate with the Gen Z, boAt[2], rolled out a campaign promoting its Alexa Built-in smartwatch, boAt Xtend, that shed light on GenZ and how they like to extract the most out of every hour, every day. Well labelled #MoreInEveryday, the campaign conclusively brought out the diverse smart features of the watch that accessorizes well with the GenZ way of life. Not only did the brand rope in influencers like RJ Kisna and Divija Bhasin but also collaborated with Filter Copy, a digital channel with millions of viewers to push out a series of influencer-led videos.
Conclusion
Though marketing to the hip generation might involve a lot of finesse, by being attentive to their choices and what makes them distinctive in comparison to other generations, brands stand a chance to build valuable relationships that benefit all parties involved.
Just like we have got you covered with the ways to reach your Gen Z audience, we also have your back to reach them for feedback and opinions on their favorite digital locations. Xcel Online Survey is your one-stop destination for all your online surveys. Xcel Online Survey [3]is a reliable platform to reach your target audience at any time, any place. If you think you have more inputs and examples that can add to the above tips to connect with the digital natives, let us know in the comments below.