Targeting Millennials With Your Public Relations Campaign – 10 Yetis Insight

Millennials. We’re a difficult, often fickle breed of people who are usually wrapped up in a panic about how a) we’ll never own a home, b) we’ll never pay off our student debt or c) stressing about trying to keep our social lives afloat when our professional lives take over.

Not to generalise too much (although the majority of this blog post will be doing just that) but millennials believe that their time is precious and unless something is truly breath-taking or they’ve used and decided to trust a brand, most campaigns will go unnoticed.

If this statement scares you to your very core and you want to ensure you’re correctly targeting millennials with your digital public relations campaign, gather round and pay attention as you’re going to be learning five scorching tips from an actual real-life millennial.

Utilise those social media platforms

Millennials are one of the most active groups on social media channels. You’ll struggle to find one that doesn’t have a profile on at least one of the main platforms.

These channels, especially Instagram, are perfect for monitoring your potential audience and seeing what it is they are into. What are they liking? What do they interact with? Can you replicate this for your client?

Your public relations campaign should focus on gathering ideas on these channels which are over-saturated with young millennials that could easily be turned into your clients’ customers, with the right kind of pushing.

It’s important to ensure you don’t overdo it by using ‘young’ lingo as this can come off as incredibly cringey and will have the opposite desired effect.

As well as taking inspiration from social media channels, remember to still include your own flair to everything. You still want your campaign to stand out amongst the crowd of other, less cool, campaigns by competitors.

Influencers are everything

You can’t talk about attracting millennials to a public relations campaign without mentioning influencers. Taking into consideration these internet stars is unbelievably important when your target is attracting a younger audience.

The rise and recent development of the internet has allowed ‘regular’ people to become famous for blogging, recording videos on YouTube or even modelling on Instagram and millennials love them.

They’re relatable and far more easily accessible than celebrities who became famous using more traditional channel. This has led to many young audiences becoming absolutely infatuated with these people which is exactly why you need to be reaching out to them and asking whether they want to be part of your PR campaign.

They aren’t always cheap - in fact big influencers can ask upwards of £10,000 for just one Instagram post – but it definitely a discussion you and your client need to be having.

There are many up and coming influencers who will be happy to collaborate at no cost. Just ensure they’re relevant to your client and their readers and that their followers are engaged.

Keep it snappy

Millennials are busy people; along with the constant worrying about our finances, we have a career we want to strive to master, a house we want to save for and maybe even travel on the mind. This means attention spans are short. Microsoft has determined the average attention span is just eight seconds.

All campaigns you create should be able to be easily summarised in a snappy paragraph (at the very most) so that when you are outreaching to publications with the demographic you want to attract, they won’t automatically assume you have no idea what you’re doing, that you don’t understand their target audience, that you’re basically a bit of a fool and then go on to completely ignore your email.

Include interaction

If you’re brainstorming for the most perfect public relations campaign that will definitely appease the millennial age group, look to include some interactive content. As mentioned previously, millennials don’t have much time on their hands and they certainly won’t be wasting it on a boring campaign that’s all writing no action.

If budgets are tight, creating a relevant interactive widget or tool is a great way of getting users involved without it feeling too promotional.

If you have some cash to splurge, think bigger. Why not set up a stunt in a busy city and get young passers-by involved? Or better yet, a giveaway wherein users can submit their own material to win prizes, preferably prizes that cost a lot of money or are cash-related.

Remember, they do their own work

The final piece of insight I want to give you is that it’s important to remember that millennials will often do their own research. They are technologically savvy; search engines are used regularly and they usually love to prove people and brands wrong.

With this in mind, it’s imperative that any research you use in your campaign is accurate and that your brands online presence is positive and trustworthy.