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Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Millennials Are Driving a Shift in SMB Marketing (Report)

Small and midsized businesses have the potential to be the most agile marketers online. However, with tighter budgets, they don’t have money to waste on ineffective marketing strategies. Indeed, according to data from video-editing application maker Magisto, there’s a shift happening among SMB marketers.

Magisto surveyed 550 SMBs in the U.S. about their approaches to marketing. Millennial-led businesses reported almost completely switching from traditional marketing to online and social campaigns. This group was 84 percent more likely to invest in social rather than print, and none surveyed use TV advertising, compared with one-in-three baby boomer-led SMBs. Additionally, baby boomers were 112 percent more likely to invest in radio compared with millennials.

Magisto SMB Survey Image 3

The findings also indicated a strong preference toward video content, particularly because millennials seem to have a greater understanding of how to really connect with viewers. Millennials are more likely to create video content than baby boomers, and the video content they create is very different. 58 percent of millennial businesses lead with branded lifestyle video stories, while 61 percent of baby boomers still focused on traditional product overview videos.

And this kind of shift toward story-based marketing could help deepen engagement among viewer bases. These sorts of campaigns are going to feel more personalized, meaning that millennial SMBs will be able to target more incisively and reap more benefits through their digital campaigns.

Magisto SMB Survey Image 1

Millennials also seem to have a much better idea of how to access their audiences, while baby boomer campaigns spread wider and hope to find the target audience. Millennials are more likely to post video to Instagram, and one-in-four post video content to company blogs and mobile apps, while none of the surveyed baby boomers did the latter.

Perhaps the clearest statistic that demonstrates the direction SMB marketing is taking is the fact that 92 percent of millennials lead with social, and 79 percent of baby boomers lead with traditional word-of-mouth campaigns. The problem with that approach is that social media is the new word-of-mouth marketing.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.



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