The anxiety of writing a blog post is immense. What should you write about? Oh…the burning question! And often a paralyzing one, delaying the first, or next, blog post for months. Deciding what to write about is important, right? Yes and no.

Your Blog Topic is Important…Or Not

Yes, it’s important that you write something, but no, it’s not worth agonizing over. Some people say “What should I write about?” and what they really mean is; “What’s the perfect topic I should write about?” And that’s when paralysis sets in

Not every blog post has to be an award winner. Not every blog post has to make the reader say; “That could possibly be the most amazing thing, I’ve ever read.” The only criteria for your business blog should be: “Is it useful?” And I’m betting most of what you have to say to your customers and potential customers is useful. What should you write about? Sometimes it’s as simple as the next thing that pops into your head.

That doesn’t mean you don’t’ need a plan. Over time, you will want to cover the important things your customers want and need to know. We’ll cover how to do that below. But for today, right now, just write something.

“If you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.”
~ Steven Pressfield – The War of Art

Finding Your Blog Subject Matter

The reason I’m writing this blog post is because graphic designer Jeffery Shirley asked the question on my Facebook Page. Jeffery understood the value of blogging, “buuuut… I have no idea what to say!”
Thanks, Jeffery, you provided me with a blog post idea!

Source #1: Scan your Facebook Page, or your competitors’ Facebook Pages, for customer questions and concerns.

As the conversation with Jeffery progressed, he realized that he didn’t have to do much brainstorming for blog content, his customers could do it for him! “I would say half my time is spent educating my customers, I could create a dozen blog posts from last weeks emails.”

Source #2: Emails and direct contact with customers. What questions do they ask? What concerns do they have? What mistakes do they make?

Next, you can turn to Google. What are people searching for on Google? There are a couple of techniques here. The first is using Google’s instant search, which automatically predicts what you are going to type based on the most popular search queries. For example, I started typing “marketing” and Google suggested “marketing mix.” To which I added a space and Google suggested “marketing mix definition.” As I continued Google finally suggested “marketing mix definition 4 p’s.” That’s a possible blog post.

You can also use Google’s Keyword Tool and type in a search term, such as “marketing mix,” and see related keyword popularity. When I did that, I noticed that “what is marketing strategy” gets a lot of search activity, but has low competition. Therefore, “What is the best marketing mix for your marketing strategy?” is a possible blog post.

Source #3: Material people search for on Google.

I asked my friend, Judy Dunn, blogging coach and copywriter extraordinaire, to weigh in on finding subject matter for your business blog:

Judy Dunn
CatsEyeWriter.com

“Don’t be afraid to put yourself into your post. If you are writing a how-to post, turn the camera on yourself. You have ways of looking at an issue or problem that the next blogger can’t duplicate. Ask yourself this: How can my own life experiences relate to a post topic in story form, in a way that drives my point home in a unique way?

Ideas and topics are right in front of you—if you watch and listen. When I was a marketing-focused blogger, a trip to a grocery store for a box of cereal gave me an idea for a post on customer service. Once we lost power for an extended time on our island. As we pulled together and formed a circle of support, it occurred to me how much we islanders were functioning like a well-built online community. I wrote a post on that. Carry a notebook and record what you see and hear. You might be surprised at what you dig up.

Bloggers should be avid readers. It improves your vocabulary. It helps you find your voice. It shows you how to touch the senses and emotions when you write. And it helps you tell your stories better.

And write, write, write. I am a big fan of stream-of-consciousness writing because it brings me some of my most unique ideas. Try journaling for fifteen minutes a day and see what happens.”

Source #4: Ask your friends for ideas.
Source #5: Your personal experiences.

It Will Get Easier

When I decided to start this blog in 2007, I was in the exact same place as Jeffery. What do I write about? I agonized for one good idea to write a month. Six years later I have written more than 750 posts, and I have a list of 39 ideas for unwritten blog posts. The more you write, the more you will write. You will get tuned in. But you have to start.

So, get in the game, get tuned in. Just blog. Don’t wait for the perfect post, or the topic everyone is dying to hear about. You are going to write some stinkers, but you are going to write some incredibly insightful posts too.

Write, learn, write some more.

Then One Day….

You will get a call from a customer who says they want to buy from you because they were reading your blog post. Or you will Google something and your post will be the top result, or you will receive your first insightful comment. And you will,

and know that it was worth it.

…Oh, but one more thing. You will at some point, still wonder “What do I blog about?” I don’t think that ever goes away.

What do you blog about? What are other sources of blogging content?

You may find these posts helpful in your blogging journey:

8 Ways to Collect Enough Blog Post Ideas for the Next 100 Years
How to Write a Blog Post, Step-by-Step
31 Tips to Writing a Better Blog Post

No alternatives, no apologies, it’s just not performing. The decision leaves millions of customers wondering what they should do, or to just accept the fact they are screwed. Google could have turned it over to the open-source community, they could have sold Reader to someone, but nope, they’re just closing it down.

How does this make me feel? Pissed. I’ve used Reader for at more than five years now, all my blog subscriptions are neatly organized and collected, and they are very important to me. This act tells me exactly what Google thinks about its customers: nothing. It’s also a danger message about relying on free services.

That danger message has made me think that I need to wean myself off all Google products and I will definitely not start using any new ones.  Google Plus and Hangouts? No thanks. What if they decide to ‘sunset’ those? “See ya, thanks for playing, buh bye.”

Buh Bye Free Services

Google’s not the only offender. One day I logged into my Viddler account and most of my videos were gone. Some of those were webinar videos, and unfortunately, I was not bright enough to back them up. So they are gone. Viddler altered their free service and shut down those commercial accounts that were using the service for free. They did notify me by email, but the notification was captured by my overzealous spam filter. I’m not blaming Viddler, it’s the danger of using free online services.

Exhibit B: Posterous, a popular free blogging platform is closing down at the end of this month after having been acquired by Twitter. To their credit, they are helping users retrieve all of their past information. But all the links? Gone.

And then there is, or was, LinkedIn Answers, which unceremoniously shut down back in January. I know marketers who spent hundreds of hours building credibility by answering questions on LinkedIn. All their answers? Gone, “Buh bye.”

This is the problem with free services, they’re free. How much value is there to the provider of free services? In the cases listed above, it seems not enough. And if they have no value, they have no value. Eventually people have to make money. All this has changed my thinking of the free services I use.

Return on Investment

I firmly believe in the law of return on investment. You can cannot receive a return unless you actually invest something. You can invest your time and you will definitely receive a return. But if it’s money and income you want in return, I believe you need to invest some of your own. It’s a lesson I know, but sometimes need to be reminded of. Thanks for that Google.

The result is that I’m trying to migrate from all of my free services to services I’m willing to pay for. I’m willing to pay for a service, because a company that charges for its service sees the value of the service it’s offering. I just recently moved to Evernote premium, even though I could probably get by with the free version.

You get what you pay for. If you want to live on free services then you have to expect that you can die with free services. Someone has to make money.

How do You Use Free Services?

How heavily do you rely on free services? What value do you get from them? And how much would it hurt if they went away?

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The Customer is Not an Event.

Because we want customers to make a decision instantly we apply that logic to our marketing. Therefore, most marketing analysis is flawed because we view marketing as an event: Click-through-rate on the email blast last week, or the number of people that mentioned the special in our TV ad.

But that’s not how your marketing affects customers. The customer is on a journey and your marketing is a miniscule percentage of their day. For your marketing to be able to affect the customer purchase decision you have to understand the complete journey.

It takes time from the moment a customer thinks they might want to buy your product until they actually do. That time period may be a one-day stroll, or it may be a six-month sojourn. Whatever the time frame, many factors come into play, both internal and external, that affect the decision. While you’re worried about whether your Facebook post will generate 20 clicks to your product page, the customer may be worried that their kid has strep throat.

So, the question is not, “Does TV work?” …or “How is our Google Adwords campaign doing?” instead the question is “How does all our marketing work together to influence the customer journey?”

For example:

Let’s say you run a promotion this month with a $10 off coupon for any service for your plumbing business. You will judge the effectiveness of this promotion by how many coupons you received this month, and compare business to the same month last year. Did you do as much business as you thought you would? Did customers use the coupon? Answer those questions and you believe you can make a decision about whether a promotion worked or not.

But that’s just not the way the real world works. You are missing several important pieces of information, some of which may be: (1) How the customer makes the decision to purchase your product. (2) Where was the customer in the decision making process before being exposed to your promotion? (3) What influence did your promotion have on the customer’s purchase decision in the future? (4) What other marketing will work in tandem with the promotion to assist it? (5) Does the customer even like coupons?

Understanding the Customer Journey

There are outside influences over which you have no control: personal finances, fear or confidence in the economy, the weather. But you need to understand what they are so that you can account for them. By diagramming and understanding your customer’s journey, you can then arrange and optimize your marketing mix to allocate your limited marketing budget where it will be most effective.

Start gathering the journey information:

- How long does it take your customer to make a decision?

- What forms of media and entertainment do they consume?

- What are the factors they consider when buying your product?

- What are the possible outside factors that influence their decision?

Rebuild Your Marketing Strategy

With this new information you can now re-shape your marketing mix into something that escorts the customer in their journey. Each channel and activity should be built to assist other marketing activities, not stand alone in isolation.

You also need make allowances that different customers are in different stages of their journey. Most marketing is created to address the end of the journey, ignoring the road that leads to the purchase decision.

This brings us to your marketing message, the most influential piece of your mix. Potential customers go through a brand discovery process in deciding where to buy. Remembering that there are multiple stages in the customer journey, you should craft several messages that influence each of these stages. Tie all these messages back to your brand story and you will have a cohesive marketing mix that travels with the customer, not one that sits at the end of the road waiting to give your pitch.

Going Deeper

Now it’s time to diagram your customer’s complete journey. Start with your intuition and any hard data you may already have. But I also suggest you begin doing post-sale interviews with your customers and clients, or better, have a qualified third party do it. You want to know what the customer was thinking, and the personal influences that affected their decision.

Here are some broad categories, use them as a guide to compile a list of things you want to know about the journey:

• Time to Decision: How long does it take your customer to make the decision to buy when they realize they might want to buy?
• Decision Factors: What the most important 2-3 things that drive your customer’s decision to purchase?
• Media Usage: What traditional, digital, and unconventional media do your potential customers use?
• Time using media in potential marketing channels: Where do they spend their time with traditional, digital, and entertainment media channels?
• Personal Factors: Such as job security, confidence in the economy, problem children, etc.
• Market Conditions: What is happening in your industry market right now that influences the decision to buy?
• External Factors: Such as the weather, economy, politics, peer pressure, etc.
• Your Influence: Marketing, sales staff, service personnel.

Plenty of businesses are lining up to meet the customer at the end of their journey. That leaves a lot of open road for you to help them to choose you along the way. Don’t you think?

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You will almost never hear an entrepreneur confidently say “I know exactly what to do next.” At least when it comes to marketing. You may find books or blogs willing to tell you, but those are misleading, because what you should do next is unique to your business. Your unique answer is a product of two things:

1. What you want people to feel about your business.

2. What you know about marketing.

What do you want people to feel?

This is a tough one to grasp. Usually the focus is on what you want people to know about your business:

“Let’s give them more knowledge. The more they know about us, the more they will want to do business with us.”

Load them up with features and benefits and they will line up at the door. But if that were true, whoever had the most to say would win the most business. Yet we know that people make decisions emotionally, and later justify them logically.  When customers make a decision to purchase from you, you want that decision to be emotional.

First, flip your paradigm to one of sparking emotions, instead of one of a creating bank of knowledge. You have now opened up an entirely new set of answers to the NEXT question.

What do you know about marketing?

Here we also need a bit of a paradigm shift, from tactics to fundamentals. It’s unproductive (and costly) to jump into tactics without first knowing the fundamentals. A sense of urgency to “do something” often leads an entrepreneur to try the latest tactic because she hears that Pinterest works, or that email marketing gets results. This chasing after tactics is precisely the reason why we have to continually ask the question: “What should I do next?” Because the previous next thing we did, didn’t work.

What is really needed is a strategy based on what you want people to feel about your business, combined with your knowledge of the fundamentals of marketing. And that brings me to my point (yes, I did have one).

An Informal (Free) Course in Marketing

The mission of TheMarketingSpot.com is to turn entrepreneurs into marketers. If you don’t want to hire me or another marketing consultant, or you just want to do it yourself, you need fundamental knowledge of marketing. So I’ve collected articles and features from my blog into an informal course in marketing.

First, start with a broad explanation the fundamentals: The Four Essential Marketing Spot Explained

Next, read these articles based on each of the Four Spots: Branding, Experience, Conversation, Promotion. There are about 10 articles per Spot: The Marketing Spot 101

Then, you can dive in and shore up your knowledge with these webinars: Free Marketing Webinars

If you can make it all the way through, you will have enough knowledge to confidently market your business. You will be a marketer who has no problem answering the question: What should I do next?

Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.

The two questions that then get asked are “Why?” and “What can I do about it?” The first question is usually answered with a myriad of reasons that the business idea itself just won’t work. The second question is usually answered with “change.”

In response the first answer, I believe the responsibility lies squarely on the entrepreneur, not on the idea. My response is to the second question is that change is not usually the answer. Transformation is. The video below is my talk at this year’s State of Now Smalltown conference in Hutchinson, Kansas. It explains how I arrived at these answers and what I intend to do about it.  Please note: The Marketing Spot is not going away (I think), but with God’s grace is will look different at the end of this year.

If you would like more details about the talk below, I have summarized them in detail on my transformation website here: X:FOURi

Video streaming by Ustream

If what I say resonates with you I invite you to accompany me on your own transformation journey. Please visit X:FOURi.com

Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.

One-Click Social Media Management

While the face of marketing has changed drastically over the years, its core principles remain the same. That is, targeting your audience and learning what they want, letting them know you have it, and building relationships so that they trust you and come back to you in the future. Whether you’re doing that by hanging up a sign and decorating your display window in a one-horse town or by regularly posting status updates to all of your social media friends, it all comes down to the same basic concept.

Today, social media marketing is leading the charge on global marketing, with sites such as Pinterest driving online sales and Facebook leading in business/customer relationships. In fact, when General Motors chose to withdraw $10 million in advertising from Facebook this past May, they still asserted that they would continue spend about $30 million to maintain their Facebook pages as it “…continues to be a very effective tool for engaging with our customers.”

For small business and single owner establishments, however, keeping up with social media seems to be a fulltime job. Not only do best business practices recommend posting on Facebook at least a few times a week, Twitter feeds can disappear so quickly that posts probably need to go up at least twice a day. Pinterest posts should probably be included as well if you want to feature the visual appeal of your product, and LinkedIn makes sure you’re keeping up with others in the industry and making the right local connections to get more people coming to your store and/or visiting your website.

With all of this connecting online, it seems like there’s barely time to actually run your business. Fortunately, there are options out there for streamlining your online experience and cutting down drastically on your social marketing time while still maintaining your presence on major social networks.

Manage Your Time with Social Media Management Tools

Social media management tools have been around for a few years but they’ve only recently started to gain in popularity; and for good reason. The monster that is social media is becoming harder to tame, and people need to find a way to do more networking with less individual posting. Social media management tools make that possible by providing a single platform from which the user can post to multiple social media sites at once. Following are several popular social media platforms, but there are plenty more out there to choose from. If none of these sound like they’ll fit your particular business, dig around a little and you’re sure to find a platform that more closely matches your needs.

Hootsuite: Arguably the most popular social media platform out there, this program can handle anything from a single-owner business to a mega-corporation. In fact, it boasts PepsiCo, Sony Music, McDonald’s, and the NCAA as customers. By integrating with a growing number of social media and networking sites such as Google+, FourSquare, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Constant Contact, HootSuite allows simultaneous posting and viewing, as well as analytics for a wide range of sites. It even offers in-office features for more streamlined campaign efforts between multiple social media managers. HootSuite includes a mobile app for on-the-go updating. Cost: free version and $9.99 per month for the Pro version. The Enterprise program is priced separately.

VerticalResponse: This platform is designed specifically for the busy business owner. It allows you to choose the top social sites you wish to post to and gives you the option of scheduling a regular campaign for up to a full month in advance. VerticalResponse offers suggestions for posts specific to your industry and includes a mobile app that lets you post simultaneously to all of your social media sites at once, or change/update your scheduled campaign. Cost: $18/month.

TweetDeck: As per its name, this platform works best with Twitter, but it also works with LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and FourSquare. By using a side-by-side column display, you can see all of your friends, messages, feeds, etc. at once and update all simultaneously. You can even schedule posts in advance. Cost: free.

SproutSocial: This platform is geared a bit more toward those who prefer clean graphs and engaging visuals of how their social marketing campaigns are progressing. SproutSocial allows cross-posting across several platforms including Foursquare, Gowalla, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others, and is available in a mobile app. This is great for companies that need to show fast, accurate reports on social media marketing progress and who need to keep a constant eye on how well they’re doing with any number of campaigns. Cost: from $39 per month to $99 per month.

How much time does social marketing take for your company? Have you tried a social marketing management tool in the past? If so, what worked best for your size and type of company?

As a key member of the team at Extra Space Storage, Tim Eyre helps customers care for their cherished belongings that must be put in storage. Extra Space has multiple Dallas self storage unit locations, including Fort Worth Avenue.

Podcast Episode #84 – Rob Fugetta on Branding and Differentiation

Now that all businesses have websites and social media, where is word-of-mouth marketing? About the same place as it has always been. Word of mouth has never been about the platform, it’s been about the messenger. How do you get people to talk about, and recommend, your business? In this episode of Power to the Small Business, Rob Fugetta, CEO and founder of Zuberance, and author of Brand Advocates, will share how we can tap our most enthusiastic customers for a simple word-of-mouth marketing plan.

Guest: Rob Fugetta, Zuberance, San Carlos, CA.
Length: 24 minutes

You can listen any time if you

Brand Advocates Show Notes:

What are Brand Advocates?  – Highly satisfied customers, or others, who are willing to recommend your brand or product without pay or incentives. They are your most engaged, most enthusiastic, most loyal customers.

How do you find them?
Start by asking the ultimate question for customer loyalty:

“On a scale from 1-10, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends or colleagues?”

Those who score your business with a 9-10 are considered advocates. On average, about 50% of people say they are highly likely to recommend. About 50% of your customers could be brand advocates.

BUILDING A BRAND ADVOCACY MARKETING PLAN

FIRST: Build a data base of brand advocates by asking the ultimate question. Do it on a systematic basis across a variety of customer touch points and communications channels.

SECOND:  Energize and make it easy for your brand advocates ways to recommend you and share your content.

• Create Ratings and reviews for your products
• Provide you with advocate stories and testimonials
• Share your content and offers with their social networks.

Selected quotes from Rob Fugetta on the show:

ON HOW YOU GET BRAND ADVOCATES:

“The way a company can create advocates is to provide compelling and unique customer experiences.”

ON BRAND ADVOCACY:

“True advocacy cannot be paid for or manufactured, it can only be earned.”

ON YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH BRAND ADVOCATES:

“It’s really not about marketing to your advocates; it’s marketing through your advocates, and with your advocates.”

ON MARKETING:

“Marketing is about more than clicks and impressions; it’s about building a movement around your brand.”

Show Links:

Rob Fugetta – Zuberance
Rob’s Book:
Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force

If you enjoyed this podcast, consider subscribing to this blog and let future podcast episodes and articles come to you: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or Get The Marketing Spot in a blog reader.

The Event is free and you can register here:
Successfully Market Your Business Online

The forum will focus on your website as well as Google and social media.

That has been my biggest lesson in 11 years of business as a marketing coach and consultant: most businesses don’t want to let go so that they can be something different. And I throw myself into that heap of entrepreneurs who really believe they want to change, but just can’t turn loose of their current identity..

It’s exciting to think about transforming a business, and it’s so much fun to plan it. But it’s the implementation phase that gets in the way. To have a free hand to pull the trigger on a new idea, you have to release the old one. And those old ideas just seem to stick to your hands (really your heart).

How to Differentiate

Moon’s book is built on this premise: The ability to compete is based the ability to differentiate. Differentiating an existing business means transforming it, and that means letting go.

Is Different the book for you? I’ll let you decide. Below I share 11 quotes, takeaways and lessons from the book. If, after reading, you think you might want to let go, enjoy the book.

Take-away: Once you consider yourself to be part of an industry, or to have competition, you will lose your opportunity for differentiation.

Quote: “True differentiation is rarely a function of well-roundedness, it is typically a function of lop-sidedness.”

Lesson: Product augmentation leads to commoditization.

Quote: “You could …boil down the entire function of marketing to this – the process by which businesses try to make us picky about what we consume”

Eye Opener: True differentiation is a place where customer expectations are irrelevant, and a business resounds in an unanticipated way.

Take-Away: When consumers are drowning in choices, they feel liberated when someone takes them away.

Lesson: Breakaway brands birth an entirely new sub-category that alters the complexion of an industry.

Heresy: Differentiated brands are sometimes hostile brands. They are not afraid to declare: “This is who the brand is NOT for!”

Lesson: Look at industry norms and choose to be different than those norms. Create different norms.

Quote: “We cannot expect (customers) to tell us how it might be possible to surprise them.”

Big Idea: Differentiated brands… 1) Offer something that is hard to come by, 2) Reflect a commitment to a big idea, 3) Are intensely human.

Buy the book from Amazon here: Different by Youngme Moon

**Note: There are affiliate links in this article.
Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.

Marketers spend millions of dollars each year in an attempt to seize Millennials’ attention. Sometimes that marketing works, and other times it fails fast. So, why is it so hard to market products and services to this generation? It may have something to do with the fact that Millennials are impossible to pigeonhole.

The Millennial generation encompasses a surprisingly broad age range. Depending on the article or research you read, anyone born between 1978 and the early 2000s may belong in this category (or, at least overlap somewhere). I’ve seen research arguing for a number of ranges, including 1980-1995, 1980-2000, 1981-1999, and even 1978-1999.

To put these ranges into perspective as of today: A 30-year-old would have been born in 1982, when only the super elite had access to computers and consumers received the majority of their advertisements from traditional means, like television, radio, or newspapers. A 12-year-old would have been born in 2000, when technology and the Internet boomed and grade-school kids started asking for personal computers and cell phones as Christmas presents.

You can see the drastic difference between two of the age groups contained within the Millennial generation. How could a 12-year-old’s interests align with a 30-year-old’s, when there’s little in common on the surface? Both would have experienced radically different surroundings and both would hold diverse opinions about the world around them.

A Conflicted Generation

Perhaps this wide age gap is why I find myself reading so many conflicting articles about Millennials on a weekly basis. Some studies claim to reflect that Millennials are obsessed with technology, but others claim that we’re sick of it. Some articles say we’re selfish and lazy, while others convey our dedication to working and giving back to good causes.

Why are these studies so convoluted?

Marketers are missing the big picture. They’re surveying a small number of Millennials for data and assuming that we all think alike. We’re not as easy to peg as previous generations, because we’ve all grown up in radically different environments. The world is changing – fast – and sampling a couple thousand of us isn’t good enough. There are 80 million of us out there, and counting.

Even I’m confused about the Millennial generation, and I’m technically a member. I was born in 1983, which apparently makes me a Millennial, just like someone born in the year 2000. But I don’t feel like I belong there.

Who am I, and where do I fit in?

If there’s one thing harder than marketing to a generation you don’t fully understand, it’s marketing to a generation that doesn’t understand where they belong. I see this as a huge problem, not only for marketers but also for those of us who are facing possible existential crises.

The bigger question is, though, how can marketers pinpoint what Millennials want if we’re not even sure what we want? How is it possible to target an age group with such diverse life experiences, tastes, and preferences?

I won’t say the answer is simple, because it’s not. In fact, I’m afraid there will never be a straightforward answer. But regardless of the arguably vast differences between members of the Millennial generation, we do have a few things in common.

Understanding a Generation

First of all, we don’t want to be scoffed at, criticized, or looked down upon because of the stigma attached to Millennials. We’re tired of hearing about our supposed indifference to the world around us. I assure you, not all of us are ungrateful slobs who coast by and expect opportunities handed to us on silver platters. Anyone who says differently is wrong.

Also, in regard to marketing, we want to follow innovative brands that know what we want before we even know we want it. We want to connect with peers who care about the same topics. We want to have creative input on trends that are supposedly geared toward us in the first place. We want to work our butts off for forward-thinking companies that will grow with us instead of leaving us in the dust of a stiff, corporate world.

But most importantly, we want marketers to listen to our ideas, and we want to see them in action. Is that too much to ask for? Maybe. However, I’m going to go bold here and ask for it anyway.

What Millennials Want From Marketers

In short, if you want to market to the broad spectrum of Millennials, then start by giving us the benefit of the doubt. Thoroughly research your market before spending millions on “hip” ad campaigns. Instead of blindly following random studies that sample a small number of us, try coming directly to us via crowdsourcing or social media.  We want to be heard, so we’ll do some legwork for you to spread the message.

By the way, Millennials hold over a trillion dollars in spending power, which is nothing to sneeze at. If you want any portion of that, then you need to take action now. Don’t get caught up in the generational buzz and assume we’re a lost cause! Whether marketers like it or not, we’re a major part of the customer base, and we’re not going anywhere.

What do you think Millennials want? Do you agree that this generation’s age span may be too broad to derive relevant marketing data? Any more generational insights to add?

Jill Tooley is a content nut who plays with words and manages posts at the Quality Logo Products Blog.

Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.