James Gorrie explains why simple is better in the era of millennials.
Staying relevant with your B2B communications in a millennial world. The millennials have arrived in the corporate world and guess what? They don’t do corporate-speak and don’t want to. If you want your B2B message to resonate with them, you’d better learn to speak their language…and fast.
How big of a deal is this? The truth is, it’s a pretty big deal.
Millennials in charge
If you’re still thinking about the corporate world as somehow being above or beyond the tech-reliant, social media-addicted hipsters who’ve misappropriated their dad’s wing tips and feel entitled to everything immediately, stop thinking that way. Today.That would mean right now.
Does it really matter that much? Business is business, right?
Yes. And no. One firm’s money is the same as another’s, but people like to do business with peers, with people they like and understand. That’s just human nature. And -surprise! – language is what connects people, and for millennials, technology drives their communication.
A digitally native generation
Because millennials are the world’s first digital native generation, their perspective is heavily influenced by instant gratification that the internet, apps and other enabling technology provide. As a result, millennials absorb and convey information differently than prior generations. Their attention spans are significantly shorter than that of prior generations’. Quick answers with high level visuals is the “new” language of millennials.
Not surprisingly, millennials rely on concise, to-the-point briefs and visual-heavy infographics. They also prefer to have details cached in URLs, typically use the second person in writing, and have little tolerance for long presentations. There’s a reason Instagram is one of the top apps used by millennials. And, yeah, this blog is already too long. But keep reading, you need this.
Speaking of short attention spans, millennials typically prefer texting to emails. From an efficiency perspective, that makes a lot of sense. Why check two or three devices and communication channels when you do it all on just one?
The quick take is that more is not always better. In fact, less is usually better. Knowing these digital sensibilities, your B2B content needs to communicate accordingly.
Corporate-speak: A failure to communicate
And that’s where many businesses fall quite short in truly reaching their millennial audiences. It’s not that their communications are consistently ill-conceived or even poorly written – although for many businesses, that is a challenge in itself – but rather, it’s how they (meaning you) view communication. You say too little in webpages that are text-heavy, hide leads in overwritten demand gen content, miss opportunities with clunky emails, fail to differentiate your brand in dry reports full of jargon, and all the rest.
What does that mean for businesses of all sizes? Simple; corporate-speak is dead. Actually, in too many instances, it’s not dead, but it really ought to be.
Think of the corporate world as a giant machine (or motherboard?) with millions of parts that must work together and communicate with each other. In such a scenario, millennials aren’t just a part of the machine; increasingly, they are the machine. If you’re not communicating with them, the machine stops communicating with you. You don’t want that.
The millennial mindset
What’s more, millennials don’t really care about what or who happened before them. They just don’t. Prior generations – that would be yours, perhaps? – are often viewed as legacy technology: quaint, but virtually useless (all puns intended).
What’s worse is how they view corporations. Many millennials simply view them as a necessary step on the way to building their own businesses. And even those who are climbing the ladder speak to each other on that ladder in their language. Ever seen a Boomer try to chat with a millennial? It’s either a comedy or a tragedy.
Think all this talk about millennial talk is just a bit over the top? Think again.
American companies adapt messaging to millennials
Even the largest companies need customers, and that means meeting the expectations of millennials. In a nutshell, it means presenting products and services – whether it’s martech or workplace safety harnesses – as being more than just a great product. More and more, companies are integrating politically correct or “woke” messages behind and within their brands. Talking about how fantastic your professional services are just won’t cut it anymore.
U.S. government agencies accommodate millennials
Consider, for example, that major U.S. government agencies, including defence and intelligence agencies, are rewriting their employee behaviour protocols to accommodate their millennial employees. Those adjustments include how communications are handled. That’s the government of the United States of America, the same folks who were using technology from the 1960s up until the new millennium and then some.
If those folks recognize the new reality, shouldn’t your business? You don’t need to answer that question. Millennials now account for up to 70% of some businesses’ workforce. They’re sales managers, buyers, IT managers, corporate relations directors, VPs of marketing, and yep, CFOs, CMOs and CEOs. They’re also owners, too. What’s more, for the foreseeable future, their percentages in the corporate world will only grow.
Adapt or die
It’s not only language that millennials are changing, of course; they’re changing the very idea of how we work. Millennials’ habit of mixing work and personal business on the same smart phone or other mobile device, for example. Work and personal lives are intertwined all day, and don’t stop at 5 o’clock in the evening. From their perspective, lending work and personal devices makes perfect sense. Also, millennials don’t see the need to be present in an office when there’s Skype, FaceTime, email, and various teleconference and project management technology that allows them to do their job remotely. Why schlep 45 minutes or longer to an office when studies show remote workers are more productive anyway?
These attitudes, behaviours and expectations all manifest themselves in the ways millennials communicate with one another. Adapting your communication and content styles to millennial preferences isn’t just smart; it’s a necessity. That’s why one the first casualties of the millennial shift in the corporate ranks has been the dry, impersonal corporate way of communicating. No big loss there, if you ask me. To avoid sliding into irrelevance, you need to shed that empty husk that is your corporate tone as soon as possible. It doesn’t mean you can’t tell your story. You can and certainly should. But it’s in the ‘how.’ It may seem like a daunting task, but it needn’t be.
This has happened before
This phenomenon really isn’t as new as you may think. Generational shifts happen, well, every generation. Sure, some are more dramatic than others. The ‘60’s generation was radically different than the conservative one that came before it, and the millennial shift is dramatic as well. But the good news is that people – all people – still love a good story and react positively when they hear one told well.
Here are three tips to keep in mind for writing millennial-friendly B2B copy:
1. Cut to the chase – Millennials have grown up on ads; their minds have been saturated with them. Tell them what you want them to know or react to.
2. Leverage social media – Millennials live on and by social media, so hit them where they live.
3. Avoid being too clever – As the most progressive generation yet, millennials can misinterpret or become offended at copy that may have been acceptable just a few years ago.
As the millennials continue to dominate the corporate world, you have to learn how to tell your story in webpages and content that’s brief and powerful or it won’t be nearly as effective as you need it to be. As the old saying goes, “it’s not what you say, but how you say it.”
