How to Market To Millennials In Singapore

How to Market To Millennials In Singapore

Looking for accurate information on how to market to millennials in Singapore? Just like anywhere else, Internet marketers in Singapore often target millennials. This is because they have the biggest online spending compared to other segments of the population. Research indicates that more than 80% of millennials own smartphones, and also spend a significant part of their day on social media. The heavy presence of millennials on the Internet and social media is something that digital marketers should leverage to market their goods and services to millennials.

Any serious business that intends to have a successful digital marketing campaign cannot ignore millennials. Even though marketing to millennials is quite tricky because they are more tech-savvy and informed compared to other segments of the population, penetrating this market is the surest way of succeeding in your industry. Here are some helpful strategies that you can use to reach this lucrative segment of the consumer market.

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How to Market To Millennials In Singapore

1. Upload Engaging Content

When seeking to reach out to millennials, it is advisable that you use engaging content, which is relateable to them. This means that whatever content that you choose must resonate with them besides communicating the exact message that they want to hear. When marketing to millennials, you should also use a language that they understand best. Your posts should be engaging in the sense that it allows them to provide the response and air their feelings about you. When chatting with them, make it a point to mention your brand.

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You also need to recognize that millennials like expressing themselves. In today’s dynamic digital marketing industry, self-expression is akin to branding your business. This highlights the significance of ensuring that your target market (in this case millennials) relates to your products that match their style and personality. Similarly, ensure that you connect your brand to the image that the millennials want. This will attract their attention, thus ensuring that they either purchase your products or choose your services.

Since the purchasing decision of millennials is heavily dependent on peer influence and word-of-mouth influence you should ensure that your brand and its marketing campaigns focus on enhancing the user experience. Come up with marketing content that not only increases brand awareness, but also the purchase intent among millennials.

Millennials often want to be occupied with high-quality and engaging content. They tend to find themselves immersed in a whirlwind of entertainment. This means there are numerous opportunities that you can explore to put together engaging content for your marketing campaigns.

2. Target Specific Groups of Millennials   

When marketing to millennials in Singapore, it may look tempting for you to lump the entire target market into one homogenous group. In as much as this can work in general marketing campaigns, you won’t realize desired results in all marketing campaigns. You have to keep in mind that Singapore itself is a highly homogenous city nation. 42% of its population was born outside the country. With millennials forming a considerable chunk of the population, it is apparent that they have different life experiences and preferences.

Do not make the mistake of developing stereotypes about millennials. You should look at the diversity of this market as a springboard for diversifying your reach. You cannot target millennials using a streamlined strategy since they are at best spontaneous and unpredictable. Millennials will go for things that are in fashion and those that their peers recommend to them.

Therefore, you must reach out to specific segments of the millennial market in Singapore for your marketing campaigns to achieve the desired results. This highlights the significance of conducting in-depth market research to pinpoint the purchase journey and specific digital usage patterns of millennials.

Singaporean millennials are connected and highly-informed shoppers. Therefore, you can only market to them by anticipating their future needs, converting them into browsers, and thereafter, converting them into buyers. When selling to millennials in Singapore, you must know what exactly they seek and enjoy. This will help you drive loyalty thus enabling you to penetrate this lucrative market.

How to Market To Millennials In Singapore

3. Focus on their Needs and Wants, Not Yours

When engaging with millennials, keep your content short yet precise. Millennials don’t love reading long content since they find it boring. Since most of them access the internet using their mobile devices, ensure that your content precisely communicates what they want to hear. Often, millennials desire to feel connected and involved in their purchases. Traditional marketing doesn’t encourage this kind of connection. You need a marketing campaign that focuses on what millennials need.

Millennials are more enticed by and demand personalized and customer-driven campaigns. Therefore, you must avoid company-focused and impersonal campaigns since, in the minds of millennials, these are void of substance. Use a mobile-first approach since most millennials use their mobile devices to make their decisions.

Millennials are likely to buy from brands whose campaigns promise spontaneous and unique experiences. They are also likely to work with brands that fulfill their desire to look sophisticated before their peers. You can entice them using branded VIP parties, particular influencer-only events, and exclusive sneak picks. Such events make them look and feel like trendsetters among their peers besides appealing to their sense of fun and adventure. Incorporating such strategies in your marketing campaigns will go a long way in helping you penetrate the millennial market in Singapore.

4. Ask Them to Talk About You

Word of mouth has been an effective method of advertising for years. You don’t need to capture the imagination of all millennials for you to market your products to them. Often, millennials’ purchasing decision is influenced by what their peers are talking about services and products that are being marketed to them. For this reason, you should provide top-notch services and products as you seek to penetrate the market. This will stir positive conversations about you. As they engage their peers, they are likely to refer you to them. Therefore, you should not just market to millennials, but also encourage them to talk about you on various platforms due to the influence that they wield over each other.

Generally, millennials define themselves by the kind of products that they use. Most importantly, they will talk about these products to their peers. Needless to say, when millennials develop a liking for a product, they will surely tell the world about it, be it on social media or in their face-to-face conversations. Millennials who fall in love with your products and services are the best marketing tools at your disposal. If well utilized, they will sell your products on your behalf. You only need to give them the means and a platform to do so.

Millennials are mainly are influenced by people that they relate to, especially their peers. For this reason, you should leverage the power of influencer marketing to reach out to them. You miss out on a great business opportunity if you fail to use influencer marketing to market to millennials in Singapore. The increasing popularity of influencer marketing is no fluke. Millennials are more likely to base their purchasing decisions on what influencers on YouTube and other channels say. Leveraging the power of influencers can help you market to millennials in Singapore.

5. Give Them an Active Role in Your Brand

Millennials value transparency. This could perhaps be attributed to the fact that they came of age in a period characterized by social and economic uncertainties. They cannot trust businesses that do tend to ignore feedback or companies that are cagey when it comes to their business dealings. You can only gain the trust of millennials if you are open about whatever you are trying to market to them. Since they also love being heard, the surest way of gaining the confidence of millennials is through direct engagements with them.

An easy way of making inroads into the millennial market is by making them feel like they are part of your business process. Keeping them in the loop will make them feel like they are partners and co-creators rather than just spectators. In this regard, you should endeavor to create a relationship that goes beyond the business engagements that you have with them. Millennials value the connectedness that comes with relationships. This does not just apply to brands but also people. They are often looking forward to feeling connected to companies that they buy from.

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6. Incorporate a Warm and Human Touch in Your Campaigns

Millennials often get misinterpreted and misunderstood as being self-centered. However, the reality is that they are a group-oriented and civic-minded generation. Most millennials are apprehensive about companies that use traditional advertising methods. This is understandable considering the fact that they came of age at a time when the Internet and social media are the go-to sources of information.

Millennials tend to lean towards brands whose marketing campaigns have a human touch, and also reflect personal values. To market your company and its services to this segment of the population, ensure that your campaigns have a human touch. Besides this, you must show that you operate ethically and sustainably and that you have a serious commitment to giving back to society. This way, you will easily attract millennials’ support.

How to Market To Millennials In Singapore

7. Use Event Marketing

In as much as the use of social media, search engines, and partnering with other sites is a good way of reaching out to millennials; it won’t help you exhaust the market. Besides the use of digital platforms to reach out to millennials, you should branch out to event marketing. This could entail hosting events in conjunction with like-minded partners or even attending millennials’ events. During trade shows, you should also look at attracting millennials. If you are starting out, those that you will draw during such events will form the basis of your market and act as a springboard for you to rope in their peers.

8. Offer Experience-Based Shopping

Millennials have changed the way brands do business. There has been an industry-wide shift in such a way that e-commerce businesses have replaced outmoded retail models. Technology-driven modes of selling, which are experimental, have also gained popularity. As a result, you need to offer millennials an experienced-based shopping experience since it will help your customer loyalty as well as build your brand awareness.

Millennials love experiences, and there’s no better way to offer this than using experiential marketing. This is an excellent way of targeting this brand-savvy segment of the population. You should aim at building your business around the concept of allowing clients to experience the brand more instead of just selling your products.

9. Be Creative in Your Advertising

To enter the lucrative millennial market, you should use innovative marketing strategies. Millennials are fed up with traditional advertising methods, which merely feed information to them without engaging them. Whereas they want information, they still want to select what suits them rather than having it forced on them. Simply put, millennials consume information how and when they want to.

Rather than choosing a campaign that targets the entire market, it is advisable that you segment your target market. You should keep in mind that millennials do not respond to the same message in the same way. Grouping the entire population into one huge marketing demographic won’t give you the desired results.

Consider segmenting your campaigns into different campaigns for your target market will make it easy for you to respond to your inquiries besides making their campaigns resonate. Even if it seems desirable to target age demographics to an extent, your targeting should also be granular. For this reason, you should directly look at the actual attributes of your customers.

Millennial Characteristics on the Internet

Today, most digital marketers are underestimating the power of email marketing on reaching millennials as they did with the past generations. However, there are many reasons to suggest that this is a false perception. 

Studies show that millennials use email differently than older generations did, and they still want to get news from brands they love regularly. To make a difference, as a marketer, to the millennial generation, you will need to understand the various marketing strategies that best apply to them. 

Each generation has several characteristics that they display when they go online. Before you kick-start your email marketing campaigns targeting millennials, strive to understand millennial characteristics on the internet.

Keen Blog Readers

Blogs contain helpful information that no other platform can offer. Millennials are fervent blog readers and trust this source of information before making a choice. 

Experience shows that brands that focus too much on social media do not get as many conversions from the millennials they are targeting. They will need to know the context of the campaign and will judge you on the information you are spreading online.  

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Depend On Social Proof

Social proof is a crucial determining factor on conversion rates as it gives real testimonials from past clients. This has been a successful marketing approach for decades, and millennials are no exception. 

They rely heavily on social proof to understand the value of a brand. So as you create your email marketing campaigns, add a link to your customer feedback page. Social proof is one way of increasing your conversion rate once your subscribers click on your call to action.

Have a High Curiosity

Millennials have a high curiosity for something they do not know. This is best described by various trends where millennials have created trends by continuously surfing the internet for information. However, this leads to quick boredom since they rely more on instant gratification. 

On the other hand, you can benefit from this by creating valuable and unique content for both your email and content marketing plans to capture their attention.

Hate Overly Salesy Campaigns

Most people do not mind sales campaigns, but they do not appreciate a pushy salesy campaign. Moreover, millennials hate being forced to do something they do not want by marketers who do not understand what they want.

Salesy campaign is impractical when targeted at millennials, and it will also leave a wrong impression of the brand. This is why modern marketing strategies do not invest in being pushy to get more customers.  

Why You Should Care About Millennials

The elephant in the room is not whether you should care about millennials but how you will care about them. Our research has several figures that will make it clear that you cannot ditch email marketing when trying to reach out to millennials. 

A YouGov study showed that 25% of young people aged between 18 and 34 check their email before opening any other online platform every morning.  

After that, the email tab remains open for the better part of the day, where they constantly check their emails. Another study by Adobe shows that millennials spend at least 6.4 hours checking and scrolling through their emails every day.  

Moreover, 98% of the respondents to the Adobe study admitted to checking their email inbox every few hours while engaged in other activities such as using the restroom, eating, or commuting. 

According to Neilson Surveys, millennials are spending over $65 billion, and this means that you have to find a way to reach this demographic with an exponentially growing purchasing power. For starters, brands need to be authentic, respectful, and valuable if they are to win the hearts of the younger generations. 

12 Of the All-Time Best Email Marketing Tactics to Win Over Millennials

Millennials are a technologically perceptive group, but they are not susceptible to the sleazy marketing tactics of yesteryears. Today, we will go over the figures that show email usage by the millennial generation and 12 email marketing strategies you should employ when targeting this demographic that is quickly becoming the group with the highest purchasing power. 

As you develop an email marketing strategy, keep the following best practices in mind while pursuing potential millennial customers.

1. Use the Right Voice in Your Copy

In today’s highly connected world, we spend the equivalent of a full day per week on smartphones. Unfortunately, the digital space has become notorious for being cold and devoid of empathy. If you are to win over the hearts of the younger generation, you need to give your brand an authentic voice.

For starters, start speaking to your email subscribers as though you are having a one-on-one conversation. By this, we mean that you write your email to a specific person. Moreover, this will increase the chances of the emails being opened. 

As a rule of thumb, you should use this type of voice or tone in your blogs, product descriptions, social media, et al.

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2. Go Big On Personalisation

The results of an Accenture study found out that 75% of customers will purchase from a brand that knows them by name and sends them content based on their previous purchases.  You have to move on from the old ways of personalisation where we only used to customise the subject line. 

Instead, thanks to technological advancements, you can choose from a wide range of data such as behavioural tracking to provide millennial subscribers with acutely relevant content to their interests and needs. 

The trick here is to learn as much as you can about each of your subscribers. Only then can you send customized emails that they cannot wait to open and read. 

3. Optimize Your Emails for Mobile

Over half of the emails are opened on mobile devices Millennials use their smartphones for all kinds of tasks right from online shopping, finding a ride, chatting with friends, work, looking for food, and more. 

To improve your email marketing, you need to optimize the emails for mobile browsers. For example, there is over a 70% chance to be deleted in less than five seconds of receipt of the emails that fail to render n smartphones. 

For this reason, you need to look for an email provider that offers mobile-friendly templates that you can customize to ensure that your emails look amazing on all devices. 

4. Highlight Brand’s Values and Transparency

Customers across the world today consider themselves as “belief-driven” buyers, where they use their purchasing power to either punish or reward brands based on their values.  Millennials today want to be associated and spend their money on brands who they share mutual social beliefs.

However, this does not mean that you try to fit into a specific mould. You only need to identify your values and express them clearly. You could also take up a pet cause that is relevant to your brand and industry.

For example, Toms Shoe Company has incorporated social change throughout its corporate ethos. For each pair of shoes bought, they donate a pair. This has increased their standing with the millennials who flock to their shops to get the latest designs. 

5. Reward Loyalty

A recent report by Net Imperative showed that 38% of customers consider themselves loyal to the brands they love. There are many ways that customers show their loyalty, with a majority participating in customer loyalty programs. Others will recommend a brand to family and friends. 

Unlike popular belief, millennials are very loyal, and all you need to do is reach them with timely and valuable content in the proper context. You can show your appreciation by sending special messages, VIP access, coupons, discounts, and more.  

6. Incorporate Interactive Content

Interactive content is another of the best tactics to help in creating revolutionary email marketing campaigns. Start by creating unique emails that tempt the recipients to play a game. Then, ensure that you encourage the readers to click on various email sections by using an interactive menu. 

However, this does mean that you compensate with a shouting colour palette and buttons all over the email. You can always incorporate interactive elements into a minimalist design that engages the readers by guiding them instead of overwhelming them. 

7. Get to the Point

Millennials today are juggling many things, including school, work, and adult responsibilities. There is no point in beating around the bush. It would be best to get to the point right from the subject lines to the email copy. 

It would be best if you kept your writing succinct by using the least words possible. With the attention span for humans currently at eight seconds long. The chances are that your readers will not have the time to read your 300-word block of text. However, they might click on the link to a blog post you have provided in the email. 

The danger of giving your subscribers too many options is that they might not take any action at all. For this reason, you should include a straightforward and intentional call to action.  

8. Avoid Overly Promotional Tactics

Millennials are oblivious to aggressive sales tactics and misleading subject lines because they have seen them before and do not appreciate them. They feel like it is akin to insulting their intelligence. 

Instead, always focus on how you can help your subscribers improve their lives. You can do this by offering valuable content and demonstrate that you are worthy for them to give you their business. 

Since they know that they have limitless choices, show – not tell – them why they should choose you over your competitors. 

9. Include Different Types of Multimedia

Email marketing has changed drastically over the past decade, and for this reason, there is no excuse to limit yourself to text and static images. Instead, ensure to incorporate different types of multimedia to keep your subscribers interested and engaged with the content. 

You could use custom GIFs to add a bit of motion to your graphics and explain complex concepts. Infographics and video are other best tactics to elicit information from your subscribers without asking them to read your 1000-word blog post.

10. Test your emails and landing pages for the User Experience

While you might have emails and landing pages that look amazing, you need to ask yourself if they are user-friendly. The best way to get this done is to enlist the help of third party observes to click through the emails and landing pages.

It would be best to charge the observers to report any frustrating, confusing, and unclear elements. Nielsen Norman equates a terrible user experience to the final nail in the coffin that pushes potential customers to your competitors.  

11. Integrate With Other Channels

Most of your subscribers have already integrated their browsing behaviour, but have you integrated your marketing efforts? Everyone has their preferred methods for communicating with their preferred brands. Some will prefer engaging them via social media, while others prefer brand apps and others on WhatsApp. 

To create the best email marketing strategy, ensure to optimise yours with other channels. You can do this by including links to your app and let them know about your live chat as well as providing a link to your Facebook newsfeed.  This way, you will allow the subscribers to choose their own path to interacting with your brand. 

12. Make Support and Troubleshooting Easy

There is growing distaste among millennials to call customer service centres. The calls are riddled with long wait times with annoying hold music and annoying automated prompts. 

To make troubleshooting and support accessible, create a comprehensive FAQs section based on the user-provided feedback. You could also add a live chat to your website. Moreover, you should create videos and blog posts that thoroughly explain how your customers can self-diagnose and troubleshoot common problems.

This small effort will go a long way in ensuring that you make your subscriber’s life easier, and they will appreciate it. 

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Conclusion

Most brands term millennials as a demographic that is disrupting the way usual way of doing business. However, they are oblivious to previous marketing tactics of old. Moreover, marketing should evolve to cater to new-age groups. On this note, millennials know what they want and what they do not. 

To ensure that you relate to your millennial customers, stay authentic, and uphold your brand’s values. Take the time, research your audience, and provide them with useful content to ensure that you develop lifelong loyalists. 

Do you need help with your email marketing campaigns targeting millennials? Contact us today for the best email marketing campaigns and the best tactics to use when targeting millennials. 

Conclusion

Marketing to millennials to Singapore can seem like a daunting task as this segment of the population is highly unpredictable. As a result, you may feel confused and unsure about what to do when developing your brand strategies. Tapping into this market will go a long way in helping you establish a firm foothold in your market.  We can implement the above tips on how to market to millennials in Singapore by creating digital marketing strategies for your brand. Get in touch with our team of experts for a free consultation and more details about our services.

About the Author

tom koh seo expert singapore

Tom Koh

Tom is the CEO and Principal Consultant of MediaOne, a leading digital marketing agency. He has consulted for MNCs like Canon, Maybank, Capitaland, SingTel, ST Engineering, WWF, Cambridge University, as well as Government organisations like Enterprise Singapore, Ministry of Law, National Galleries, NTUC, e2i, SingHealth. His articles are published and referenced in CNA, Straits Times, MoneyFM, Financial Times, Yahoo! Finance, Hubspot, Zendesk, CIO Advisor.

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