For marketers looking to sell their wares to millennials and their younger siblings, Gen Z, social media is an indispensable channel.
But according to a new study conducted by Harris Poll for Lithium Technologies, marketers that are using targeted social ads to reach members of these groups may be shooting themselves in the foot.
Thanks to technology and the internet, marketers have access to more data than ever about consumers and their customers and it’s widely accepted that data holds the key to customer-centric marketing.
For a website or digital product to be truly ‘user-centric’, we need to determine who the ‘user’ is.
Each person will approach a website, system or app through their own, unique mental model, applying how they think it will be organised to each new one they encounter.
Although each individual’s mental model is unique, users can be ‘grouped’ to determine their digital (dis)abilities.
Generations share key aspects of their mental models, as people who live in the same period are influenced by societal values and culture, the emergence of new technologies, and experience similar events to some degree.
Similarly, they share age-related elements, such as physical or cognitive (dis)abilities.
According to a new report, members of Gen Y are less entrepreneurial and more risk averse than their older siblings, parents and grandparents. So it stands to reason that Gen Y, hard particularly hit by the turbulent economic environment of the past five years, probably isn’t eager to invest.
But that may not be the case.
When you hear the word startup, chances are images of twenty-somethings hacking away at Macs in a loft office with an open floor plan spring to mind. And for good reason: head to sunny California, home to Silicon Valley and some of the today’s prominent internet startups, and you’re bound to find that a lot of startups do look something like this.
But that doesn’t mean that one should jump to the conclusion that Gen-Y is the generation with the greatest entrepreneurial spirit. According to a new survey released today by Monster.com and Millennial Branding, members of Gen-X and the Baby Boomer generation actually consider themselves to be more entrepreneurial than their younger siblings and children.