The Millennials is the trillion-dollar market that most brands are dying to attract. However, marketing to Millennials is tricky and is something that every marketer struggles with.

Here we give you five secrets to what Millennials want that would help with your viral marketing campaign.

 No longer is having the latest products attractive to many Millennials. According to a study conducted by PWC, 52% of Millennials would rather spend experience-related purchases.

Millennials want a product not solely for the tangible product itself, they crave the intangibles and the experience that comes with it. Oreo nailed it on the head with their Oreo Colourfilled campaign in 2015 during the holiday season. They allowed fans to fully customize their Oreo packaging online, add a holiday greeting and have them delivered straight to the doorstep.

88% of millennials say that they get their news from Facebook (American Press Institute). With so much content online, your content has to be delivered fast, if not, your brand will be scrolled away with just a swipe of a finger.

Whether it is a video, a picture or a Facebook post, it has to be short and to the point. It has to catch the attention of the millenniums instantly because to them, there is so much more content to look at.

Strongbow’s use of visual content and a short humorous caption effectively captures the spirit of the brand in a glance.

The internet is saturated with so much news and your business has to know what the Millennials care about. This can be topics related to school life, relationships with peer, social issues or a health. By injecting current topics millennials are talking about into your marketing ideas will garner more attention.

Jolly Shandy shares visual content on common situations and problems young people face in their everyday life, effectively engaging their audience who share the same sentiments.

Source: Jolly Shandy Facebook

Millennials will only engage with the content if they can relate to it. So, whether it is the element of surprise or shock or a touch of humour, triggering some sort of emotion will then make the message (and your brand) stick.

Millennials hate the hard selling. Why should they buy your product when there are so many of the same thing everywhere else? What makes the difference is the brand-customer relationship.

64% of Millennials feel an immense urge to make a difference in the world they live in (Intelligence Group). There is an increasing emphasis on supporting companies who are socially responsible and care for their consumers.

Always, a feminine care product brand seeks to empower females worldwide by educating young girls. Their #likeagirl video was a social experiment that showed the drop in self-confidence of young women after going through puberty. This sparked off a chain of social media buzz with many young women posting pictures of them breaking the status quo and gender stereotypes, further reinforcing the message of female empowerment.

Source: spotmegirl.com

Building trust with your consumers and showing them you care for them too differentiates your brand from the rest. Yet, remember that Millennials grew up with technology and research everything before buying. If a brand is unauthentic and doing public stunts just for the sake of it, they can tell.

As computer becomes much smarter now, there is artificial intelligence company in Hong Kong leveraging chatbots to interact with customers and build personalized customer experience. It is also a great way to build better relationship with the target customers.

Finally, as with all marketing, content has to be easily shared. Millennials want to share their life and want their voices to be heard. Viral content is spread by word of mouth and through social media, thus it is vital that your brand is mobile compatible and uses suitable distribution mediums.

The ice bucket challenge to raise awareness for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) caught on really quickly. Big names such as Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift all joined in. Not only was it easy to upload a quick video onto any social platform, tagging friends to do the same quickly spread the word worldwide.

Source: nydailynews.com

Remember to choose the suitable channel for your marketing campaign to increase engagement with your targeted audience:

Snapchat (16-24 Yrs old)

Instagram(16-34 Yrs old)

Facebook (25-34 Yrs old)

WeChat (18-34 Yrs old)

To recap, this is the Millennial Viral Matrix

Valuable unique experiences

Instant gratification

Relatable content

Authentic brand customer relationships

Likes & Shares

With these features in your marketing campaign, go forth and go viral.

Mid-Autumn festival is fast approaching and as marketers, it is the perfect time to capitalize on the holidays. Regardless of industry, some creativity is all it takes to make your brand relevant to the upcoming festival. Take inspiration from the following 10 seasonal advertising ideas that have worked for these companies.

A huge name in the coffee scene, Starbucks launched their own line of mooncakes, each one stamped with their signature mermaid logo. Flavours? Of course they included a coffee one. Their Facebook post garnered over 20 000 likes and shares making them the top Facebook post of the month in Hong Kong (Socialbaker).

Coming up with seasonal advertising is not just about differentiating your product, but also triggering emotions. As Wechat marketing is essential in China, Kate Spade launched a sky lantern flying game on Wechat to allow users to virtually release a lantern, written full of well wishes into the sky. A long tradition in China, this game effectively allows anyone celebrating the holiday anywhere in the world to join in and share their lantern (and the brand) with family and friends. This is one of the most successful cases when using WeChat for Business.

Read More: How to Go Viral on Social Media?

Angry Birds, the phone app game is the most downloaded game, possibly of the century. When mid-autumn festival came around in 2011, the Rovio team decided to celebrate with its 3 billion players. The Angry Birds Seasons app successfully incorporated seasonal marketing, aptly fitting in with the festivities. Golden eggs were replaced by golden mooncakes and the game has 34 oriental stages to get through.

This company decided to include everyone, including the furry friends in the celebration of Mid-Autumn festival. They came out with animal friendly mooncakes stuffed with pork and chicken and even donated them to local animal shelters.

Read More: 5 Successful Content Marketing Cases 2016 (Hong Kong)

A good marketing idea for smaller companies – take advantage of the festivities to send a message across to your audience about what your company stands for. New World Department Store China Limited has done just that, reminding the public to go green with their Moon Cake Box Recycling Campaign. To incentivize participation, they give away complimentary gifts and vouchers that can be redeemed at any of their department stores, for every mooncake box collected. In their 5 years of running the campaign (2011-2015), they have collected over 28,000 boxes, successfully making a difference and marketing themselves as a company that cares.

In light of the Mid-Autumn festival, Nestle came up with a whole new way of eating their yogurts. In their Facebook post that received almost 20 000 likes and shares, they featured a simple Do-It-Yourself recipe to make yogurt mooncakes. Not only is it festive, it increases the value beyond the traditional use of your product for your consumers.

Read More: 5 Reasons You Should Outsource Your Social Media Management

Marriott Tang’s “ Jewels of Mid Autumn” mooncake contest gives customers a chance to take home their own box of Marriott mooncakes by guessing the name and ingredients of the mooncake in the photo posted on Facebook. Running a Facebook competition allows you to engage directly with your customer to form relationships. Not only does it bring about brand awareness, it is also nice to give back to them.

Known for their quirky products and sense of humour, Goods Of Desire lived up to their name, launching a line of mooncakes shaped like butts. That’s certainly one way to catch the attention of your audience. (The Pronunciation of “15th Aug” in Chinese is equivalent to Butt.)

2-Michelin star Yan Toh Heen offers a mooncake baking workshop allowing their customers to create their own customized mooncake with any chosen inscription. Mid-Autumn festival celebrates togetherness and offering an experience your consumers can share with the ones they love makes the festival all the more special.

If you have never heard the expression, content is king, you may have been living under a rock. Content right now is one of the most important factors to your marketing strategy because 9 out of 10 customers will look online at social media, customer reviews, and blogs before making the decision to purchase a product or service.

So what are the different opportunities you brand should consider taking advantage of when it comes to content?

According to a HubSpot survey, 60% of businesses who blog acquire more customers. One of these reasons is because the modern day customer will give you 2 minutes to read a blog post vs. mere seconds to look at an ad. Taking advantage of this platform can be one of the biggest things your business can do to grow your business. But your content should be unique, current and fresh.

Not only do case studies add value to your potential clients showing what your business has accomplished, they also add credibility to your company. There are also many different ways you can reuse your case studies in future content marketing such as blog posts and videos. Not only can they be used in your marketing efforts, they can also be used at the sales pitch or as your team is trying to secure the deal with another client. Customers like to see people like them interacting and using the brands they are going to make purchases with.

They say that a picture is worth 1000 words. Infographics afford companies the opportunity to breakdown complex topics into user-friendly visuals that are easily digestible.

Your customers can often be your best marketers (or your worst). Most customers will post a negative review or comment if their experience was terrible. But if they have a good experience, most people will not say anything. Offering a customer review page on your website can be a great way to encourage your customers to write something and it allows you to have more control over what is posted than if you were to use a feed such as Yelp.

Generating interesting and unique content will help to exponentially increase your fans and magnify the brand’s marketing messages on different Social media platforms. We have successfully created over 110,000 social engagement on Facebook for our client, Jolly Shandy, which directly contributed to multiple sales increase for the brand. For further tips, please check out our recent blog post on “Five Tips For a Successful Social Media Strategy”

Customers in the modern world are looking for a unique experience and opportunity to interact with brands they choose to buy from. As a result, brands should frequently generate new content to stay as top-of-mind choice. Last but not least, we should allow customers to know more about the brand, instead of pushing sales content all the time.

If you considering developing a content marketing strategy? Let us help. We can create a customized digital content strategy that you and your customers will love! Contact us today.