Nope, actually, they’re already here. And they’re not kids any more.

A portion of the millennials are in their early thirties now and have started families with their own kids. Their group represents 30% of the population, and in 2015, millennials surpassed boomers as the largest living generation in Canada. This pattern followed in the USA in 2019, with the millennial population hitting 73 million people while boomers fell to 72 million people.

Both groups are huge influences on how we market our businesses, but a few key aspects show how stark the difference is between them:

• how they consume information
• how they make decisions on purchasing
• their expectations around delivery and services

We also can’t forget about the group in between boomers and millennials — Generation X. Most Gen Xers are adaptive and moldable to new technologies — they’re really a hybrid of the two groups and share traits from each. They still appreciate the value of a handshake (which they learned from the generation before them) to seal a deal that they found online using their smartphone. (We’ll talk about the “xennial’ micro-generation another time.)

It’s true that some boomers are also just as adaptive as their younger counterparts, and some millennials are not as tech savvy as they should be, but the truth is that stereotypes exist for a reason. To generalize, many boomers appreciate old-school business values, and millennials (and younger) look for modern solutions for their problems. This is why there’s such conflict between them (“okay boomer”)… but that’s for another blog. For our purposes we use their contrasting ideals to shed light on how they affect your business. Not every business is a fit for both groups, but a lot are. Does your marketing connect with both those groups? When you run ads on different platforms, do you create ads that attract the potential groups you want, or are your ads all about you?

Putting out a “one-size-fits-all” advertisement will result in one or both of these groups ignoring what you offer. Your marketing needs to be varied and targeted — ads for boomers should show boomers in the ad actively using and enjoying your product or service. Ads for millennials should show likewise. And most important of all, your website needs to remove all barriers that would prevent any of these groups from contacting you via their preferred method. The average boomer wants to pick up the phone and talk to a real human being (so your phone number better be prominently displayed), while a millennial is much more likely to use live chat, fill out a contact form, or send a DM on Instagram (and Gen Xers will float between all of these options).

Whether it’s boomers, millennials, or even the upcoming Generation Z (“zoomers”), we’re here to help you make sense of all this and ensure the right messaging is reaching the right people.