“Social Media is about the people! Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide for you.”
— Matt Goulart, Founder, Ignite Digital
With each passing generation, the awareness amongst the population in terms of what they need is peaking. Out of all the generations today, Gen Z has successfully managed to announce itself as one of the most dominant and self-aware generations. Their role in the make or break of any company’s or brand’s marketing strategy is becoming crucial.
Gen Z is considered to be the population born from the year 1997 to 2012. According to a market study, approximately 40% of the current economy is made up of Gen Z. Given this statistic, it is evident that they hold a lot of power in the market today. Therefore, to be able to achieve your business objectives and goals for social media and otherwise, strategizing based on what Gen Z is looking for today is of high importance. Before we jump into the top social media trends for Gen Z, let us quickly understand their traits below.
- This generation is highly vocal of their opinions, values, and beliefs.
- They are conscious influencers of any brand they work with as they need to truly believe in the work a brand is putting across for the customers before they promote it.
- They are highly driven by research and so spend ample time analyzing a brand and its products or services before making the final purchase.
- They are self-aware and so know exactly what they are looking for at all times.
Let us now look at some of the top social media tips that Gen Z is obsessed with in 2022 below.
Top 5 Tips To Target Gen Z
Bring Back Early 2000
One of the most recent obsessions amongst Gen Z is bringing back old fashion trends from the early 2000s. Their nostalgic resonation with the fashion from those years is encouraging them to come up with an amalgamation of new-age fashion with old fashion styles to make it a whole new thing in the market today.
For instance, Ugg Boots have been popular since early 2000 and still hold a fair share in the market. However, one Tik Tok user recently created and uploaded a short video clip wherein she combined an old set of Ugg Boots and stitched up her new boots together with it, bringing in a brand-new product. This innovation resulted in a sudden jump of over 525% in sales for Ugg Boots. That is the power of Gen Z and how they interact with social media today. So, when you are designing a marketing strategy to target this particular audience group, engaging with a combination of old with new can work in your favor.
Inclination Towards Inclusivity In Society
As mentioned before, Gen Z is the biggest target audience group to keep in mind when designing your marketing campaigns and strategy. So, one trend that they are obsessed with at present is supporting brands that highlight inclusivity for everyone in society. For instance, Gen Z is obsessed with gender-neutral pronouns and a whopping 59% of this generation today firmly stands for increasing the gender options on government documents.
Keeping this in mind, designing your marketing strategy should not be limited to just promoting the brand to your set target audience alone. Instead, using marketing tactics that involve the needs of all different gender-neutral pronouns will increase your conversion rate significantly, if done right. Furthermore, reality support and not just online publicity is another important factor to remember when targeting this particular generation. Thus, to be able to cater to this particular target audience group, you need to be authentic with what you do and showcase the same through social proofing.
Make It Entertaining
Almost 97% of the Gen Z population is extremely active on social media and trusts different social handles for shopping and design inspiration. Along with this, approximately 65% of this group are always on the lookout for entertainment on social media handles. For example, Instagram reels are one of the most popular social media features that have caught the fancy of this generation. It gives them quick to absorb content that not only gives out the relevant information of a particular brand, product, or service in a very short period but also sustains their attention throughout.
For the same reason, choosing and posting content that is entertaining from end to end is the right way to keep this generation involved with your brand. There are multiple ways of creating entertaining content that include video content like Instagram reels, short Tik-Tok videos, etc., that directly cater to 61% of the Gen Z population, and information-based content relevant to begin.
High Scope For Interaction
Posting content on social media and promoting your brand the right are two separate categories when it comes to a marketing strategy. You can post any type of content if your end goal is to keep your social media handles active. However, that does not cut it for Gen Z. They are instead on the lookout for the constant scope of interaction and they are made to feel that their opinions are important.
To incorporate it into your marketing strategy, as a brand, you can look at firstly focusing on user-generated content. UGC encourages this particular target audience group to not only interact more with the content you are posting on your social handles but also re-share it to spread the word. Along with this, creating communities and asking for their suggestions, recommendations, and overall thoughts through question answers, polls, etc., is a great way to attract Gen Z. Additionally, it also has the potential to increase your brand loyalty as they are made to feel like they belong and can trust the brand.
Influencer Marketing
Given that almost 83% of the Gen Z population relies on social media for shopping, it is a great medium to create online visibility for your brand for sales. However, did you know that the impact of influencer marketing is the highest on this generation? You heard it right. Content created by their favorite influencers or popular influencers has a great impact on the sales of a particular product or service. This is because even though this generation is highly opinionated, they need some sort of validation which comes from confirmation bias from their favorite influencers when they promote a particular brand.
Moreover, as they are always on the hunt for authentic brands, the addition of influencer marketing in the marketing strategy will 100% change their opinion about your brand from the get-go. One important thing to note here with influencer marketing is to not go for the highly commercial influencers. Instead, to make them feel like they are a part of a community, target the micro-influencers that have a genuine interest in your brand to create that connection with the target audience.
Final Thoughts
To conclude, it is evident that the introduction of artificial intelligence has been a successful marketing tool that has allowed brands to specifically know what the target audience is looking for. However, to be able to target the audience that your brand requires, you need to understand the nature and wants of the particular group. That being said, as Gen Z is, at present, the most influential generation on social media platforms, it is important to create content that seems most reasonable to them. For instance, viral videos being incorporated into your content is one way to go. Another is to introduce memes relevant to your brand and product or service as almost 55% of the Gen Z group loves interacting with memes. Just set your target of catering to this population group and you will witness a positive change in your brand visibility and sales.
