Advertising to Gen Z: Tips to Gain Young People's Attention

There was a time when a good advertising campaign mostly involved placing ads on TV, the radio and in print, but that time has passed. While you can still reach a sizable audience with such a campaign, you probably won't be able to reach younger people. About 6 in 10 young adults only watch TV through streaming services, they get most of their news online instead of from print, and they are far more likely to stream their music than listen to it on the radio. In other words, you might be able to reach the parents of Generation Z through traditional advertising methods, but you probably won't be able to reach members of Generation Z themselves.

Of course, this doesn't mean that young people are entirely unreachable through advertising. Generation Z still consumes media as voraciously as previous generations; it's just that they consume media differently. The youth of this country spend far more time on social media than they probably ever will watching TV or listening to the radio, which means marketers need to rely on digital advertising if they are going to reach them. This is actually very good news for small businesses who don't have the budget for television and radio advertising. After all, it costs very little to post advertisements on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and you can reach people from all over the world. It's still easy to waste your money and time on a poorly thought-out social media ad campaign if you don't know how to reach your audience, so let's go through some tips that will help you gain the attention of young people with your next campaign.

Make Good Use of Templates

Visuals can make or break an ad, especially one that is meant to be viewed on someone's Facebook feed. Ideally, you will find a great graphic designer for your campaign, but not everyone can afford that. Fortunately, you can still create a great-looking ad even if you don't have the budget for a graphic designer if you choose the right templates. Websites such as Venngage and Canva have high-quality templates that can be used to make just about any social media look polished and professional. You still need to maintain a consistent style with your advertising, so make sure that any template you choose matches your business's image.

Mix Up Your Writing Style

One of the keys to reaching anybody in advertising is mixing up your writing style to avoid sounding too stodgy or formal. If you're having trouble understanding what this means, try to write to your audience like you were talking to them. A conversational tone will make your advertisements more accessible, especially on social media.

Know Your Audience

Audience segmenting has been said to be one of the keys to digital advertising. In a nutshell, this means knowing what kinds of audiences use different social networks and how to speak to them.For example, you will probably be advertising to a younger crowd with your Facebook campaign than anything that involves LinkedIn. Knowing the differences between different audience segments will mean spending some time on social media to see what kinds of ads are effective and which ones are not, but you will eventually find something that works as long as you keep paying attention. You can also look at the demographics of those who visit your social media accounts and who like and share your posts. With the right tools, you can find out where they live, how old they are, and where their interests lie. Once you have a good idea what kind of audiences you're reaching with your campaigns, you can start to target them specifically.

Automate Your Campaign

It should go without saying that you need to constantly stay active on social media if you want any advertising campaigns to be successful. Since that is technically impossible (you need to sleep, after all), you will need to find ways to automate your campaign. Schedule your posts to go out during the best times to reach the most people, and seek out virtual assistants to alert you of any attention that your posts are receiving. At the very least, this kind of automation should allow you to maintain a consistent schedule, which is the most important part of being active on social media.

Advertise Locally

If you have a brick-and-mortar store or some other central location for your business, you will want to target potential clients close to you. Even though social media allows you to reach anyone anywhere in the world, you geo-targeting is still a possibility. With the right search engine optimization, your business's website and social media accounts will show up on local searches and reach those most likely to walk into your place of business. You may technically reach fewer people this way than if you tried to reach out to the whole world, but your bottom line will ultimately be much better.

Keep Experimenting

There will come times when it will feel impossible for a small business to compete with national or international competition, but modern advertising has made things easier than ever before. You can reach young people practically anywhere in the world with the proper digital marketing efforts, but you will need to keep updating your techniques to find out what really works and what does not. Social media is always changing, and what is effective today might not get you any results tomorrow. This is why you will need to keep experimenting with your advertising. The digital age makes this easier than ever before as well. Remember that Facebook and other platforms have ways to test out marketing campaigns before they go live so you won't have to waste any time with something that ultimately doesn't work. Even if it turns out that you can't reach the audience that you want with your ads, you can think of it as a learning process. In the end, we're all still figuring out how the digital age works in terms of marketing, so don't be afraid to try something new.