Every generation of people has certain personality characteristics. Their collective identity is a result of the type of exposure they have had during different stages of life. The millennial generation was born between the years of the early 1980s to mid-1990s. They are the most racially and ethnically diverse cohort of people compared to previous generations. Their everyday life includes using social media, smartphones, and other advanced technology devices that are essential to them. The generation also believes in making their individual decisions, rather than as part of a group of people.
According to internalresults.com, B2B lead generation services targeting millennials need to be unique to their collective identity and characteristics. The millennials might not be the best targets for traditional marketing channels such as television advertisements. The overall strategy would revolve around mobile phones, the internet, and other more advanced marketing channels. Here are a few channels that should be considered for B2B lead generation when targeting millennials.
Creative cold emails
Emails are an integral part of the digital eco-system of millennials. They have access to email on their smartphones and receive a notification as soon as they receive an email. The subject line is crucial as that is the first thing they see and a large percentage of recipients are going to make up their mind on whether they want to open the email based on the subject.
The subject line has to be relevant and authentic. It needs to communicate the value of opening the email. For example, if you are a B2B company that offers healthcare IT solutions for clinics, then your subject line could say “Reduce patient wait times by 30%”. The email should have a call-to-action towards the end of the email. For millennials, you want to include clickable links such as “Schedule a Demo”. The attention span of the millennials is shorter than the older generation so keep your emails short and precise.
Social media
Social media is a defining aspect of the daily life of a millennial. Whether it is Facebook or LinkedIn, a typical millennial spends the majority of their online time on social media. They are different from reaching out to them on social media. For B2B professionals, LinkedIn is extremely useful. You can pitch your product through messages or build your network through invites or better use Klean Leads where you can quickly and easily extract any email address from any connection or profile you come across.
As the millennials grew up with social media, they appreciate professionals who are social media savvy. This generation can often be found commenting or following pages on different social media platforms. It is a good idea to have a holistic approach to social media so you don’t miss out on any individuals that are limited to certain social media platforms. Social media is a big world and might require specialized skills offered by B2B lead generation companies.
Leverage from FOMO
For those not familiar with it, FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out. It is a big thing for millennials. One of the characteristics of a millennial is that they want to be part of everything. They grew up with social media which alerted them of everything that was going around. That want to check-in to different locations, they want to be part of the most trending hashtag on Twitter, they want to post pictures from the crazy party they had last night. You get the picture. B2B companies can use these personality characteristics to target them with FOMO.
There are several ways to do that. You can use social proof to highlight that they are missing out on something that others are doing. This will generate interest in them. You can make your offer time-sensitive, encouraging your customers to accept the offer before time runs out. Another technique is to highlight missed opportunities by sending out the email once a discount promotion has finished and then send out a new promotion ad. The disappointment of missing out followed by the opportunity to grab the deal can be enticing.
Invest in video content
Video content might be the most underutilized lead generation channel. In lead generation, you want the video to spike the interest of the viewer who would want to get in touch with you and know more about your product or service offering. A short video can deliver a lot of information in a short time. Given the “busy life” of a millennial, you have limited time to communicate your value proposition to them.
That means a video has a higher capacity to demonstrate this value to the potential customer. Make sure to keep your videos short and to the point. Use an eye-catchy thumbnail that entices the viewers to click on it and try to personalize the video as much as possible based on location, type of prospect, product line, etc.
Go mobile
The need to focus on mobile for B2B lead generation is crucial. Most millennials are going to be using their phone for most of their online activity. Every year the mobile phone evolves into something better. The screen sizes, processing power, battery life are just some of the thing are getting better with each new version. In some ways, the mobile phone is replacing the laptop as sending emails, browsing the internet, social media posts are all getting easier to do on the mobile.
One of the first things you need to focus on is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your website and social media. As millennials use the search engine for anything and everything in life. Landing up higher on the search results could be the difference in generating a sales lead or getting lost in obscurity. How to improve on SEO depends on several factors such as using the right keywords.
Along with SEO, the website should be optimized to be viewed on the mobile phone. The cell phone screen is not able to cover the same level of information like a website, so the text has to be more concise and the call-to-action has to be simpler. SMS marketing, using QR codes, or getting an app developed are other ways to target mobile phone platform for lead generation.
