Page 23 - NECO News

“That’s important because asking me to call you on the phone is as uncomfortable as asking you to go on Snapchat,” Dorsey said.
Retailers must be willing to meet young consumers where they are, not where the re- tailers have comfort- ably found customers in the past.
Dave Souter, the
vice president of Baron’s Major Brands in New Hampshire, said finding a new market of millennial customers is becoming a priority. To get there, Baron’s is participating in educational opportunities offered by NECO, including a recent class on digital marketing.
“We’re marketing to them,” Souter said. “We’re embracing digital because that’s the new world of marketing and advertising. We’re hiring younger sales associates.”
Studies show that Millennials tend to develop loyalty for brands or companies that stand for something or contribute to their communities, and that’s another way Baron’s Major Brands is succeeding. By working with charities and schools, they’re creating a reputation for good works and that’s a great way to catch the young generation’s eye.
“Our core customers are customers who have lived in the area for many years,” Souter said. “People who have not lived in the area, or lived here less than three years, they’re not as much our customer. The ones who have been here three or 10 or 20 years, they know us. They know our reputation.”
Connecting with the roughly 80 million Millennials in this country and developing a relationship with them is going to be more and more important in the coming years.
According to Retail Leader, Millennials are expected to spend $200 billion annually, beginning next year, adding up to about $10 trillion in their lifetimes.
The consulting firm Accenture estimates that millennials will spend $1.4 trillion annually by 2020, and they are expected to inherit about $30 billion in the coming years.
In a 2015 study by Forbes and Elite Daily, an online news platform for Millennials, 62 percent of respondents said they’re more likely to feel loyalty to a company that engages them on social media.
The same study found that 75 percent feel it’s important for a company to be focused on more than just its bottom line, but that it should give back to
Jason Dorsey
Acclaimed Gen Y Speaker & Researcher at the NECO Fall Expo
society in a visible way. In addition, 60 percent said they tend to stick with the brand they started with, which means the earlier retailers engage and land young customers, the longer they’re likely to have those customers.
Brian Nathan of Appliance World in New York said the key to
landing Millennial customers is to get them in the doors so face- to-face communication can take place.
“Millennials are a demographic we are very much aware of in our business,” Nathan said in an email. “Most are either just now buying their first home, or will be within the next couple of years. We have to be able to market directly to them, through advertisements on different media platforms, based off their usage. The internet has enabled direct marketing to make this easier, but the truth is, our customer understands why they want to shop here only once they have been in our store. So our goal is to market just enough to get them to walk in, and from there our great staff can provide them with the experience they want.”
Dorsey said this is a perfect time for retailers to target the next generation of consumers.
“Generation Y is in the wealth accumulation phase right now,” he said. “We’re the number one generation to refer our friends. We’re the sweet spot in the market – we have no es- tablished loyalty. We’re the perfect client if you can win us. Of any generation, my generation has the greatest lifetime value. Whoever wins us now wins big.” N