As the weather here begins to get colder, I get ready for
another retail season. Sure, it’s not the retail season that I particularly
care for. The only plants that get sold are Poinsettias and the occasional
potted house plant. However, I’ve found that you can learn a lot about sales,
marketing, trends, and culture in general by just observing what happens during
the holiday season. If the upcoming retail season proves to be anything like
the rest of 2013, we will see businesses pour millions of dollars into marketing
geared to entice Generation Y. Some of that marketing will help to generate
millions of dollars in holiday revenue while a most of those efforts will miss
in some fashion. Companies will hope to break even, or possibly realize that those
marketing efforts were costly risks.
It feels like every business magazine that I’ve flipped
through in the past few months has at least 3 articles aimed at getting
Generation Y involved. Everybody wants to get their hands on those Gen Y
dollars! In the horticultural and agricultural industries it seems to be at a
peak. We not only want to get these “Millennials” or Gen Y-ers to buy our
products, but we are also looking for better ways to incorporate these people
into our companies. There are THOUSANDS of articles out there offering what
seem like miracle cures for the plague, and sure they have probably helped a
lot of businesses make a few more dollars, but has anyone out there really hit
the grand slam yet? Is anybody really bringing in this new demographic in
astronomical numbers? The answer is: No.
This would be such a terrible post if I just ended it there.
It’s like in college where the professor would hand you a test back marked with
the questions you got wrong, but he refused to let you see the answer key to
see what the right answers were. If no one’s truly getting it right, what is
wrong? Are our industries just that unappealing to Gen Y-ers? Are plants
irrelevant to society? Have we seen the last of the pretty flowers? I would say
the exact opposite is the case. Plants are really freaking cool, and when done
the right way, even young people think so! The problem lies in our assumptions
of this mass of people. We have taken the most diverse generation ever and put
them into one clump. Generation Y includes far too many different subsets to be
placed into one group. It’s like putting all the kids in high school in one
clique and trying to sell them the same c.d. We spend our marketing efforts
trying to reach this general audience and it doesn’t always work. Even if the
research suggests that it should work, sometimes we come out empty handed. How
can we change that?
I’m sorry if you were hoping that this blog post would offer
you a solution to your Generation Y conundrum. It will probably leave you with
more questions than answers. However, in this case, I assure you, questions are
better. The first step to taking a better look at this Generation Y is to take
the image that you have of the typical Millennial and forget it. Start over. We
no longer live in a society where one or two model citizens sum up an average
generation. Your marketing campaigns can no longer target the whole of
Generation Y. You have to dig deeper than that. You have to find your target
demographic within that demographic, and if you want to reach multiple audiences,
it might require you to develop different strategies.
Who are you trying to cater to? Stop thinking of what the
average Millennial looks like, and think about what your Millennial customer
looks like. Then once you’ve identified that target audience, make sure it is
real! Do your homework! Does this idealized person even exist in the real
world, or have stereotypes clouded your judgment? Only once you have found your
realistic target segment can you begin to develop a strategy to expand your
customer base into this Generation Y.
Don’t worry, I didn’t plan to leave you hanging for too
long. If this concept of a multifaceted generation interests you, stay tuned
for my next post highlighting some of the key faces of the generation.
As always I hope everyone is doing well! I’m all over the
social media scene, you can find me anywhere from Pinterest to LinkedIn. Let’s
connect!
