When connecting with your audience, there are 4 major factors that you have to take into consideration. Whether your targeted audience includes millennials or baby boomers the overall influence on the market from these groups has reshaped how many brands seek to communicate and connect with their audiences.
With shifting ages, the technology each generation uses to stay connected becomes separated based on functionality, with millennials favouring smaller, faster devices and older audiences larger, easier to use devices. This of course leads to a change in how information and content is gathered and watched. With these shifts in technology, as well as how content is received, advertisers have had to evolve their communication strategies in order to fit the medium of each desired target audience.
1. Age Trends:
With major shifts in the methods different age groups use to communicate and connect with their peers, many advertisers have changed the way they try to connect with their preferred audiences. With the growth of the millennial population, clear trends are forming around their content consumption habits, as well as how they want to connect and communicate. Some clear trends that have come out of these audience shifts is the desire to communicate directly with a company or brand. This has been made possible through immersive social media engagement, community and brand management, as well as direct B2C relations. Along with being able to connect and communicate directly with companies and brands, younger audiences feel they should have a transparent view of how those companies conduct themselves in order to ascertain if they are operating in an ethical manner. Along with millennials, aging internet users are also making their mark in communication and connection trends, favouring tablet devices over home desktops. A simple conclusion from this trend is that a company or brand’s conversion tool must be mobile optimized.
2. Technological Trends:
Another major trend affecting B2C communication is the ongoing technological advances. We already know that different age groups have influenced shifts in technology, but with those shifts have come adaptations that advertisers will need to remain aware of. Mobile optimization is the new industry standard used to connect with increasingly mobile audiences.
One tech trend that will drastically affect connection and communication standards are aging social media platforms. Facebook started in 2004, making it almost 14 years old with the average user being primarily 25 to 34 year old women. As social media evolves, we will see some platforms rise and adapt as Facebook has done through their purchase of Instagram and Snapchat, both of which have been highly influential for younger audiences. These trends will make it so advertisers will have to keep a focused eye on new and upcoming social platforms instead of just focusing on the most popular.
3. Advertising Trends
New advertising methods are also affecting communication trends, especially when it comes to connecting with valuable audiences. With content marketing becoming more and more important with each new Google SEO update, advertising with google has become more about promoting content than promoting advertising. Some ways content can be promoted is through blogs, social media pages and experiential ads often in the form of live video, webinars and virtual video tours/walkthroughs. When users consume your content, whether it’s video, music, games, or news, new advertising trends can be seen being implemented already, such as 360 degree pictures/image elements, videos that only play if more than half of the ad is on screen, playing an ad after the video has started so that you are more likely to watch the entire ad in order to watch the rest of your video, and more. There are a number of new advertising trends giving advertisers more ways to connect and communicate with target audiences of value.
4. Information Trends
One key trend affecting the way a business communicates and forms connections with their audience is how information is shared with the public. As our world has become more connected through technology, people want to know that the company and brands they associate with are ones that reflect their interests and values. This is no longer just the trend of a younger audience. As an aging demographic becomes more immersed with technology, many have become very serious about the organizations they choose to support, opting to do research and online investigation before committing to one group or another. Another important information trend to note is how people choose to receive their news, with many people using Facebook and other social media platforms as their primary news source.
Keep In Mind
With these trends, it is important to keep in mind that connecting with a desired target audience is no longer as simple as putting your message or content out on the web. When communicating with your valued audience, you have to know what tone they will respond to best. Are users typically connecting through a mobile device? If so, is your conversion tool properly optimized? Be sure the information that you are providing is honest and direct – while at the same time is prepared in a way that will allow you to connect with your audience.
