Marketing Home Products

Generation Y (the Millennials) has been getting a lot of attention lately. As the most recent consumer group to enter the housing market, many believe that the nation’s economic recovery rests largely in the hands of this generation. And buying homes is just the beginning. These young, enthusiastic couples and families need things to fill their homes and companies have taken note, launching new ad campaigns targeted directly at Gen Y.

A few weeks ago, I talked about the importance of design to Millennial customers and touched briefly on the idea that Millennials like sharing things with others. The Pew Research Center did a study over this very topic and found that Millennials not only like sharing things now, but they plan on continuing to share as they age. This love of sharing explains why social networks have become so popular among this generation.

Millennials enjoy helping others and building relationships. Helping someone solve their problem is a mutually rewarding interaction to Gen Y. Receiving credit for answering a question is reward enough for these individuals. They enjoy sharing things with the people they know because they want to be the first person to tell their friends. Being first gives them credibility and elevates their status among their network. And speaking of networks, helping each other and sharing new ideas is amplified through social networks. Not only can someone answer a question on a discussion forum, but that question and answer live on to benefit future users. Sharing new ideas is quick and easy on social networks, where information travels at light speed. And as people help and share more online, the number of people they reach increases, their network grows, giving them exponential opportunities to interact. . These types of online activities are just what Gen Y has been looking for – a way to share and help people taken to the extreme.

And of course we can’t forget about doing things for the common good. Not only do Gen Y-ers want to help one another, they want to help society as a whole. Wikis that rely on the efforts of many individuals to survive, attract these types of people. Increasing world knowledge on Wikipedia helps everyone and satisfies the user’s need to share. The crowdsourcing phenomenon feeds off this enthusiasm as well – why leave a decision to one person in a company when there are thousands of online participants, willing to help you out for free? The concept of open source platforms also has become popular with Millennials because a brand’s willingness to share and accept advice from users is what Gen Y looks for. They want to have a say in what a company does, and they want to help you improve.

So why ignore them? If your customer base is willing to give advice and help you make decisions, why not let them? There is a wealth of knowledge that exists in the crowd just waiting to be tapped. And Millennials don’t require much: they don’t need payments, they don’t need shiny bells and whistles… they just need you to be as open and honest with them as they are with you. They need you to trust them. Share with them, and they will share with you. Solve their problems, and they will solve yours.

What does online content and social media participation mean if you’re not measuring it? Sure, it gets your name out there, you may notice the number of your followers and fans increase, but as a brand marketing its services or products, what’s it really producing?

For consumers, social media is the medium through which information is gathered. These networking sites are used for expression and for opinions… especially when it comes to certain products or brands. Companies are influenced by what customers are saying on social networking sites and can therefore expand their businesses by establishing a larger customer base, providing information and offers of interest to them.

How are brands able to determine if the use of social media is actually benefiting business? According to the article “Social Media Marketing on the Rise, but Companies Failing to Gauge its Value,” if brands aren’t successfully (and regularly) monitoring their ROI, the benefits of social media become unclear. Monitoring and measuring social activity can determine what catches a customer’s eye and what doesn’t. A certain product may generate more views than another, and regularly monitoring this activity can be greatly beneficial. Tracking social network activity allows for companies to better understand what their customers are looking for. Companies are able to see what type of customer base they are attracting and can subsequently make proper adjustments to expand that customer base. Social networking allows for “chatter” among customers, which may benefit a company in the sense that buzz is being created about its brand. The ability to gather this type of information allows for companies to improve upon their business strategies which will ultimately lead to profit.

As customers voice their opinions using social media, brands can – and should – listen and engage in order to improve and strengthen their business strategies. When customers are spreading the word about a certain brand, companies have a much greater chance of creating more business opportunities for themselves simply through engagement. Companies are constantly thinking of ways to promote their brands. When “The Roommate” came out in theatres, ads with a picture of the lead actress Leighton Meister were placed across various destinations in the U.S. The ad stated “Roommate Wanted. Must be willing to share…everything. Killer personality a plus.” The ad also displayed a phone number which lead to a voicemail from Leighton Meister expressing the need for a roommate. This ad is an example of how companies are digging deeper in creating unique and clever ways to promote their brands. This ad also allows for Sony to calculate the number of people who actually called the phone number.  Yogli Mogli, a popular frozen yogurt eatery, comes up with clever ideas to keep its customers coming back. By simply “liking” their Facebook page on a specific date, fans can enjoy free frozen yogurt. By promoting these different ideas on social networking sites, companies see what gets their customers in the door and buying their products. Adidas has also come up with a clever concept by creating the Facebook shoe. The shoe displays the network’s logo and the slogan “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” Brands are taking greater risks to see what will create a reaction. 

Social networking allow for companies to branch out their ideas and see what their customers think.  Creating clever ads, promoting contests, sharing videos/pictures are some ways that companies use social networking to keep their customers engaged.  While social networking gets the word out there, being able to monitor activity allows for a more accurate representation of who your customers are, what they are saying and how you can strengthen your business.

Some believe that Google is God – a company that can do no wrong. Others feel that the company has seen its fair share of failure. The same opposing opinions go for the new Google+, Google’s more sophisticated version of a social networking site. I, for one, was excited to check it out, but our intern, Tracey, had her own opinions. And we’re not the only ones. It seems that many are torn about whether Google+ is worthy of being compared to Facebook or Twitter… or if will even survive the battle.

There’s big hype about the “Circles” capability, which gives users the ability to separate friends, coworkers and family into different groups (a noticeably absent function on Facebook). Still in testing, nobody knows the fate of Google+, but we can speculate about Google as a company and whether the popularity of Circles is enough to create a solid group of followers.

According to SearchInsider’s “Is Google God?” by Gord Hotchkiss, the world has strong faith in Google. Hotchkiss asks “But is our faith in Google unshakable?” It’s hard to believe that in 2004, Google was just getting used to being called the top search engine. Back then, the “start-up” glow was still very much alive. By 2007, it was apparent that Google really could do no wrong; however, this all changed in 2010 with the learned failures of Google Catalog, Google Answers and Orkut. Now, most regard Google in a less remarkable light according to a large-scale ethnographic study of search usage done by Microsoft every three years since 2004. At the start, people said that knowledge lives within experts and these experts help them make decisions. But today, knowledge lies with people suggesting that search engines never really had all the knowledge in the world. Is Google now known as merely a search engine? Possibly.

Will Google+ end up like Google Catalog or Orkut, or will it stroke the egos of Google executives and supporters alike? Only time will tell, although the excitement for Circles is promising. According to MediaPost’s “Multiple Personality Order” by Cori Ferman, all of us have been living with multiple personalities for years, especially Millennials – the top users of social networking sites. Before, some tested their multiple personalities on AOL Instant Messenger and in chat rooms, but in today’s world, we’re able to create and utilize parameters that enable us to filter multiple versions of ourselves – our family, work and friend self – more than ever using Facebook, Twitter and now Google+. Ferman says, “the filtering capabilities show just how modular we actually are, always have been and how we share different pieces of ourselves with different people. We have work personas, family personas, friend personas and so on.” Google boasts that Circles is the answer to the often frustrating aspect of censoring, and many agree.

Will Circles be Google+’s claim to fame? Maybe for Millenials, but others are still skeptical. Are you on Google+?