Marketing to Young Consumers? Make Sure You’re Doing These 3 Things

Marketing a local business can be challenging. You might have a limited budget or be catering to a very specific target audience, for example.

Things get even tougher when that target audience includes millennials and Generation Z.

Millennials are more tech-savvy than ever: They’re always on their smartphones and over 54% of them shop online. So marketing a local brick-and-mortar business to someone who loves to shop online can require creative techniques. 

As the owner of a popular millennial blog, I learned a thing or two about what tends to work for this age group.

So what type of marketing techniques should you use to promote your local business to young consumers, including millennials and Gen Z? 

In this article, I’ll present some of the leading approaches to help market a local business to younger consumers.

Provide a professional website

Even in 2020, it’s not a given that all local businesses will have a website. And even if you do have one, if it isn’t well-maintained and professional, you could be losing out on potential customers. 

Even if you prefer to use offline marketing techniques, investing time and money in building a user-friendly website is important. Let’s face it — it’s a digital world and we’re just living in it.

A professional-looking website is the first thing that a local business should have.

Why?

In 2016, BrightLocal research found that 40% of young consumers are more likely to contact a local business if it has a website. Meanwhile, 14% will never buy from a local business if it doesn’t have a website. 

In a more recent study, BrightLocal uncovered that the first step taken after looking at a company’s review profile is to head to their website.

Another study showed that more than half of consumers trust a business’s website above and beyond their Google My Business listing. So, even if you have the most exciting, well-optimized profile on Google, having a website is still vital to build trust with your audience.

It’s also worth building up as much of an online presence as possible, given how frequently young consumers use the internet to find local businesses. In 2019, 51% of young people used the internet to find a local business on a daily basis.

In an increasingly digital climate, it’s vital you have a website that’s well-designed, optimized, and has great UX. 

According to BrightLocal’s studies, young consumers look for the following features in a local business’s website:

1.     Information about the business
2.     Business proximity to the searcher
3.     Address and contact details
4.     Quality design
5.     Customer reviews
6.     Clear photos

The same survey asked respondents about features that stop them from using a local business. Here is how young consumers responded:

1.     Poor quality content
2.     No phone number, contact information, or contact form
3.     Unavailability of pricing details
4.     Slow website

Not only do you need a website, but it has to be an easy-to-navigate, professional website with business details, contact info, an About section, and photos. It should also be technically sound and must load quickly.

Arguably most importantly, all information should be easy to find. 

How often have you found yourself struggling to locate a business’s phone number on their site? And if so, did that affect what you thought of the business in question? I’m guessing your answer would be “yes”.

Unfortunately, there are some things you can’t change quite so easily, such as business proximity. 

Luckily, there are also some quick fixes available to us to solve the other potential issues:

Page speed

Check your “PageSpeed” score using Google’s PageSpeed suggestions and then implement the suggested changes to make your website faster.

If you’re using WordPress to host your site, install a plugin like Imagify that compresses image files automatically (or manually compress your images before uploading them to the CMS of your choice). 

Easy-to-find NAP

In addition to having a dedicated contact/information page, you can boost NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) visibility by adding it to your page’s footer so it’s accessible on every page.

Know your audience

TargetMarketingMag suggests asking yourself these four questions to ensure you tailor your website to the user’s journey:

• On what page(s) do millennials most often land?
• For how long do they stay on those landing pages?
• Do they exit your website on any specific page(s)?
• What page(s) have the longest session duration?

Making these changes and analyzing the data can do wonders to your business’s site and is a key step to winning young consumers’ business. 

After all, the internet is how most young consumers find local businesses and what represents you better than your own website?

Increase visibility in SERPs Organically

Unfortunately, having a well-designed website for your client’s local business isn’t enough. It needs to be optimized for search engines, too. 

What’s the point of having a website if it isn’t mobile-friendly, if it’s buggy, or if it has poor navigation?

Research shows that 68% of young consumers use their smartphones to conduct research online. They prefer using a search engine to find what they’re looking for, compared to social media. The search engine is the first place a millennial will look for when searching for a shop or service.

Source: Search Engine Land

This is why it’s essential to work on your client’s website and optimize it to rank in organic search results. Here are a few practical pointers to improve your SEO:

1. Research and target relevant local keywords in your content. 
2. Improve on-page SEO — link internally, set up H1s and H2s correctly, use schema markup.
3. Publish quality informative content that targets long-tail keywords, young consumers’ interests, and relevant local events or news.
4.  Improve website load time as it’s one of the most important factors that is directly related to UX. 
5. Acquire relevant backlinks naturally. The number of backlinks from unique domains is still one of the most important Google ranking factors.

Locally

These days, if you want to get found in search results, you’ll need a Google My Business (GMB) listing. Along with your professional website, you should ensure your GMB listing is fully completed and optimized. 

Once you’ve provided searchers with the basics (namely, your NAP) you can begin adding extra features to woo young consumers, including:

• Photos
• Videos
• Q&A
• Offers
• Posts

The more relevant, useful, and exciting information you can provide, the more likely Google is to trust you as an appropriate source, and surface your GMB when searchers are looking. Making use of features like photos and videos is also a great conversion tactic.

Why not offer a video tour of your business? Photos of happy customers or the behind-the-scenes team? Or share your Holiday offers through posts?

If you’re hoping to get found via Maps or Search, you’ll want to keep this listing up-to-date and active, ensuring any reviews or questions are responded to in a timely manner.

On socials

If you’re hoping to be found by young consumers online, it’s absolutely vital you have up-to-date accounts set up on the major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and — depending on your vertical — Instagram.

That said if you don’t think you’ll have the time to keep these channels active, reply to customers, and share updates regularly, it’s probably best not to set them up at all. The only thing worse than having no online presence is having an outdated, inactive one. 

Plus, if you have a presence on socials, you need to be prepared for young consumers to contact you through those channels with support issues and other queries.

Acquire authentic online reviews

Online reviews are essential for any business. But when it comes to young consumers, they’re in love with online reviews. According to BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey, more than half of 18-34s always read reviews before making a purchase decision, while 81% of them trust online reviews and consider them equivalent to personal recommendations.

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