Millennial Marketers Disrupt Balance of Marketing Power


2. Failing For Success
It is important that all marketers take a page from Millennials’ marketing book and embrace Silicon Valley’s “failing fast” mantra. For many, the notion of even uttering the word failure in the halls of the workplace makes us shiver. Millennials inherently understand that “failing fast” is the most effective way to successfully build products, brands and marketing campaigns. And, when it comes to creative optimization, uncovering what works and doesn’t work to reach their target audience quickly has very little risk and tremendous benefit. As testimony to this, Millennials are three times more likely than baby boomers to test their digital ad creative and/or optimize ROI performance.

3. The Video Marketing Will Not Be Televised
The role of video marketing is one of the most interesting conversations in marketing. Traditional marketers use TV as the reference point and many in the industry still see digital video marketing as an extension of TV, a 30-second pre-roll is just a digital way to run a TV spot.

Millennials, however, start with a different reference point in which video comes in many shapes and sizes, is a form of social conversation not just a broadcast medium, and where experimentation, creative testing and ROI rule the day. For Millennials, video marketing is a hybrid medium that sits somewhere between television and display advertising and combines the flexibility and efficiency of performance marketing with the culture of social video.

Millennials understand and leverage the power of video marketing and are constantly testing variations of their marketing creative. Nearly half (42%) of Millennials create and test more than 10 variations of their marketing creative compared to only 7% of baby boomers, according to the report. This underscores Millennials understanding of the importance of creative agility and fast iterations, in order to communicate effectively and efficiently with multiple audiences and across use cases. Ironically, 60% of baby boomers sight cost as the barrier to test marketing creating.

Millennials inherently understand the changes afoot in marketing. SMBs led by Millennial marketers are defining a new world order that is digitally native, social-first, and driven by video. They see a clearly defined and unified customer journey across a highly fragmented landscape and build marketing teams and strategies aligned with the customer experience. Fortunately, the approaches and strategies Millennials leverage and execute have proven successful; leaving legacy businesses that might be wondering how they can do the same with a breadcrumb trail to success. The first step? Stop looking at marketing through a dated lens and borrow the lens Millennials use (I’m sure they would be happy to share their Warby Parker glasses with you).
Reid Genauer is the CMO of Magisto.

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