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If your business is focused on growing your millennial target market, there are a couple key business practices you need to have in place to make sure you’re marketing correctly and you’re engaging and attractive to the under-30 crowd.
As Simon Sinek pointed out in his latest interview regarding Gen Y and millennials, attention spans are getting shorter, communication is more digital than ever and marketing rules have changed again. If your business serves these generations, you need to make sure you can speak in their language to stay relevant and accessible.
For businesses that have relied on phone calls to book appointments and contact customers, this is a crucial time to change that process. Millennials avoid phone calls and will choose a different business, solely on the fact that they can’t book or order online. This simple change to your business can be the difference between a full calendar or an empty one. Online marketing efforts can be completely lost if the final step to confirm or purchase is not available to be completed online. Adding an online booking option to your website can be as simple as signing up for a free, user-friendly service and opening your available time slots to the public.
Why do millennials love online booking so much?
It’s easy, doesn’t require talking on the phone, it sets up an automatic event in the calendar and it takes less than 30 seconds!
That’s it, in a nutshell … but let’s dive a little deeper! If you want to learn how to really attract and retain your 18 to 30-year-old clients and customers you need to create systems that ensure they find you and keep coming back.
To ensure your business is “millennial-friendly”, make sure you are found online and you allow your searchers to read and leave reviews. Online research and crowd opinions matter. If you don’t have reviews, it’s a definite warning signal. Make it easy for your customers to leave reviews, add a link in your electronic receipts and take the time to do a review collecting campaign – this can become your most powerful marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tool yet.
And finally, if your target market is millennials and Gen Y communicators, make sure you remind them of their appointments with text messages! They are depending on text reminders and calendar events to manage their life. They won’t answer reminder calls, they want to be able to see, schedule, re-schedule and even cancel their appointments all from a link on their phones. (please note, you need to set your cancellation policy too, otherwise you may get last minute cancellations in their busy lifestyles).
The great part about adding millennial-friendly features is that they essentially automate processes for you and will mean less work for you once they are set up. Adapting your business to reach your customers is how you stay IN business.
