82 Million Reasons to Do Content Marketing Right

As we often point out, knowing who your customers are and what they want is critically important, because your content marketing—actually ALL of your marketing—should be extremely targeted to those needs. According to eMarketer 201 millennial roundup 82 million millennials (young folks currently in their late teens through late 20’s) are consuming content online each month in the U.S., and will be commanding more than $1.4 trillion in spending power by 2020. As a result, millennials are an attractive target customer for many if not most businesses. The problem is, those millennials are NOT impressed with the content most content marketers are producing. Why? Because the marketers are not speaking their language.

In 2014 NewsCred published the findings of a survey of 501 millennials in The Millennial Mind: How Content Drives Brand Loyalty. The research study sought to understand how millennials view content today, and discovered that “62% of those surveyed feel that online content drives their loyalty to a brand—yet the content they’re receiving is turning them off by not helping them navigate their everyday problems, being too long, sales-driven, or not tailoring messaging to individual cultural interests.”

The report goes on to identify the following five reasons why your content is failing with millennials (and how to fix it):

1. Your demographic was too broad to be hyper-relevant.
   Millennials respond positively to content when it is:
   1. Tailored to their age.
   2. Tailored to where they are.
   3. Tailored to their cultural interests.
2. You decided you didn’t want to be useful or helpful.
   1. They respond positively to content that is useful.
   2. They refuse to read content that doesn’t either entertain or educate them.
3. Your content was boring and stupid.
   1. They will only share content if it is thought-provoking and intelligent—and the sharing of content multiplies its value.
   2. They abandon content if it’s too long.
4. You didn’t want them to get all emotional on you.
   To reach them, content needs to be:
   1. Related to a cause they believe in.
   2. Interesting.
   3. Funny.
5. You texted a link to your Myspace profile.*
   (*Not a real thing)
   1. Facebook and Google are still the top places Millennials search for content.
   2. Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram rank next (LinkedIn, not so much… and Myspace? Let’s be real.)

The report is an excellent read, and gives some examples of companies that are doing it right. Doing it right in the context of content marketing most importantly means knowing your audience, and developing content that is significant to THEM. Stop telling them about things that are important to YOU. If you can produce amazing persona-savvy content that addresses their needs and interests, “82 million” could just be the tip of the iceberg.