by Aseem Bhandari, Business Unit Head

Move over Millennials, it’s time to make way for Gen Z – the first truly digital generation to walk the earth. This tech-savvy lot, born approximately between 1996 and 2014, is very adept to communicating on social media, with high-speed Internet as their birthright (and a basic necessity).

Interestingly, Gen Z is now called ‘moneybags’ as many of them have entered the job market, giving them access to disposable incomes. It’s a scenario that has forced marketers to spend millions across all the major social media platforms to gain followers and increase brand awareness. But this strategy just isn’t cutting it anymore. Competition is stiff, making it tougher to stand out in a saturated market.

So, what can be done to grow your audience, increase brand awareness, and turn online users into leads without spending a fortune?

Think young, think fast
On average, Gen Z spends between 6 to 9 hours per day consuming media using an average of five screens – smartphone, TV, laptop, desktop, and tablet, compared to millennials using three screens on average. This could be why they lose interest very quickly, no matter how good your content is. If it takes more than two steps, you’ll lose the attention of younger people which means, they won’t opt in, they won’t share your post, and they may not come back to visit your website. So, the goal is to make it easy for them to engage and share.

Gen Z is always in a hurry and typically don’t spend much time reading an entire email or article. That’s why it’s important to keep headlines, titles for blogs or webinars, and offers, clear and catchy to grab the attention and let readers know exactly what they will get for investing their time.

It’s time to look beyond Facebook
Only 10% of Facebook users are under 24 years old, so if you are trying to reach the Gen Z consumer, Facebook would not be your best option. The younger generation is on several other social media platforms and websites, well known and otherwise.

Pinterest is a great platform for marketing to a younger audience because one image can keep working for you time and time again. You can also head over to Quora, a site where people ask questions about anything they want to know and it has proven to be a great way to not only gain followers, but to also instill trust in the brand. The key is to analyze many different social networks to determine where your target customer spends their time and develop a strong marketing strategy for that platform.

Optimize your content the right way
There is so much content pumped into the internet these days, it’s important to optimize that content so it gets widely read. In fact, you should spend 80% of your time promoting your content, and only 20% of your time actually creating it. There’s no point in publishing content if no one ever engages with it. Make sure you are driving traffic to your site or blog through all available means.

Spend more time analyzing what your potential is looking for in order to optimize your content. Once that’s done, use the search data to come up with long tail keywords, which are three or more highly targeted words, and optimize your site for those phrases. This will aid in getting more web traffic, and as a result, more potential clients. That is the right and only way to utilize the power of Google to your benefit.

Gen Z, unlike previous generations, does not differentiate between real life and their online existence. When marketing to this generation, who are high on likes, it is important to consider their unique upbringing and relationship with social media. The irony is that you will need to do all that and hours of data crunching to successfully deliver a marketing message that resonates in about 5 seconds or less!