- June 7, 2022
- Posted by: Featured
- Category: Blog
How can you reach Gen Z through marketing?
To help your marketing initiatives reach the Reach Gen Z audience, we asked marketing professionals and social media enthusiasts this question for their best tips. From activating FOMO to drive action to using the best friend marketing tactic, there are several marketing strategies that may help you reach and build trust with Gen Z audiences.
Here are nine marketing tips for reaching Gen z audiences:
- Activate FOMO to Drive Action
- Create Short-form Content
- Hop on TikTok Trends
- Create Brand Personality
- Post Authentic Snippets to Drum Up Trust Quickly
- Be Aware of Social and Environmental Issues
- Partner With Influencers on Top Social Platforms
- Humanize Your Brand
- Use The Best Friend Marketing Tactic
Activate FOMO to Drive Action
Increase Gen Z engagement by using time-sensitive marketing hooks that activate FOMO (fear of missing out) and drive action. Obvious examples may include flash sales or early bird bonus buys, but excessive discounting may put your brand at risk of devaluing your product or service.
Non-obvious examples of time-sensitive outreach that support your business both now and later might be tied to a one-time event or a subscription-based service that supports recurring revenue. It’s critical your messaging communicates urgency and action in a way that resonates with your audience so your business can best serve, and time-sensitive marketing will help deliver on a relevant call to action.
Benjamin Meskin, Cabrella
Create Short-form Content
With much of marketing moving toward social media in the form of Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and even YouTube, the need to create advertisements in short-form content is ever increasing. It may be difficult initially to create meaningful content that is less than 10 seconds, but luckily it becomes second nature once you start to put it out on a consistent basis. This short-form content is more engaging to Gen Z and is the language they speak when it comes to marketing.
Rich Rudzinski, Oversight
Hop on TikTok Trends
Getting Gen Z’s attention through marketing is tricky. The Gen Z generation doesn’t fall for the typical marketing strategies that have been used in the past decades, as they find them too corny. One good way to reach the Gen Z generation is through TikTok trends.
Take a look at the Ocean Spray “Cranberry” frenzy that happened after one user uploaded a video riding down the street on his skateboard while drinking the aforementioned beverage. The company saw a spike in its sales all thanks to a short video on Tik-Tok.
The same is happening with other companies such as Duolingo and Scrub Daddy. Their online presence has become so popular that now these two are household names.
Rich Rudzinski, Tragic Media
Create Brand Personality
Aware, revolutionary and ballsy are just a few of the adjectives that describe the Gen Z generation. They’re everywhere: Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube shorts, you name it. And, to succeed in Gen Z marketing, you need more than just goods to advertise.
Gen Z isn’t afraid to do their homework. To learn more about a business, they will pore through its website, peruse its social media pages, and the feedback left by other customers. If you want to establish and maintain relationships with Generation Z, ditch the Generation Y style of flawlessly selected content.
It’s simple – create brand personality. Not through a face or a catchy slogan, but focus on the “why” of your organization. Forget about clean and minimalist graphics; Gen Zs are looking for companies with character, a strong presence, inclusiveness, open-mindedness, gender neutrality, innovation, exuberance, and a commitment to doing good. They will only invest in a brand that gives them a reason to.
Lisa Stewart
Post Authentic Snippets to Drum Up Trust Quickly
Instagram Stories are an excellent way to communicate your brand story quickly. Research shows that Gen Zers have an attention span of 8 seconds—a few seconds less than Millennials. This makes concise and snappy short-form content a game-changer in attracting this younger generation of consumers.
Instagram Stories provide small, digestible snippets of visual content, from promotional photos and videos to interactive polls and quizzes. And because they’re available to viewers for 24 hours, Stories make FOMO a reality. But authenticity is the key to succeeding with this strategy.
Behind-the-scenes videos of your daily operations, snapshots of customers using your products, CSR tidbits, and brand-relevant games are sure-fire ways to catch Gen Z’s attention fast. And posting content that’s genuine instead of stylized is a much better way to win their trust.
Maria Shriver, MOSH
Be Aware of Social and Environmental Issues
Members of Gen Z have a preference for being spoken to through the themes at the forefront of their generation. Marketing material has the potential to resonate with Gen Z consumers when it addresses inclusivity as well as has an awareness for social and environmental issues. Many members of Gen Z have a conscious attitude towards consumer behaviors and how they impact the larger world. They want to buy from brands that have identified themselves with a responsibility to society and the planet. Effective marketing strategies for GenZ align a brand with social inclusivity and environmental awareness.
Katy Carrigan, Goody
Partner With Influencers on Top Social Platforms
Our tip for marketing to Gen Z audiences is to partner with influencers where Gen Z audiences predominantly consume media. One of our brand partners on TikTok, QCP, has a predominantly Millennial and Gen Z audience that we can reach by organically integrating our products into his video content. QCP’s content is fitted for a broad audience, from 18 to 45, but appeals mostly to viewers under 30.
Partnering with content creators positioned like him helps us diversify our reach as a brand while honing in on the demographics we want to market towards. Ideally, your business should partner with influencers who share overlap with your target audience but have their own following of potential prospects for your brand. Gen Z audiences are the trend-setters of most viral media right now, so appealing to them in the content they consume can offer versatile benefits for your marketing goals.
Jason Panzer, Hexclad
Humanize Your Brand
I think when most people hear “Gen Z Marketing” they immediately think of one social media channel or a certain type of content. In reality, there are a lot of places you can meet this new generation, but they all have one thing in common. Gen Z consumers want to interact with brands that have a strong identity.
Don’t be afraid to show a little personality in your ad copy, or create interactive video content with staff members. Adding a human element and voice to your brand will help this generation connect with you, even if they have never heard of you before! Keep this identity consistent across all marketing, and the results will speak for themselves.
Marissa Whisman, Shop Priceless
Use The Best Friend Marketing Tactic
The best marketing tactic I’ve come across that resonates with Gen Z is authenticity. However, I don’t mean genuine authenticity- I am talking about the manufactured kind.
Emma Chamberlain is one of my favorite examples to use when showcasing the effects of what I deem ‘the best friend marketing tactic’. Being authentic as a brand does not mean having to continually post behind the scenes, hopping on every micro-trend, or even showing genuine hardships your brand may face. Rather, it is choosing what authentic moments to share with your audience because the fact of the matter is: reality is ugly and consumers do not want to be reminded of that, especially not by brands or public figures they deem “have it all”.
Emma Chamberlain may post videos of her crying but they are strategically chosen in order to illusion her followers into believing they have a private, intimate connection with her-and therefore her products- which is how she has, and brands can, transcended into A-list status.
Autumn Jerez, RM Warner Law
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