How Do You Sell Digital to Younger Buyers?
Growing up, my family consisted of my dad, my mom, my older brother, and myself. My parents had their own general contracting business up until they retired six years ago, so my brother and I had the privilege of watching firsthand the ups and downs of owning your own business. My brother now has a family of his own and has a structural engineering degree and works for a nationwide engineering firm. When we all get together, my dad and brother can talk for hours about work-related topics, but when it comes to what I do, there is a bit of a generational gap, and my dad doesn’t have the slightest idea of what I do. He recently said to me “Kate, can you write down in ten words or less what you do for a living? People ask me what you do, and I just have to say ‘she does something on a computer’ because I don’t understand what you do.” I will give him the benefit of the doubt that explaining to a 78-year-old what I do for a living is a little hard to wrap your head around.
Up until the last few years, the majority of business owners or those in charge of marketing have fallen into the Baby Boomer or Generation X (seasoned buyers), demo, with even a few Silent Generation business owners in there. But, as they are starting to age out, Generation Z and Millennials (young buyers) are becoming the main demographic of those who own businesses or make advertising decisions. This is important to know as you are selling digital advertising to these groups because they are more versed in understanding exactly what digital advertising is, they are more tech savvy than previous generations, they understand the importance of needing to advertise, and they have a different way about doing sales than their seasoned counterparts.
SalesFuel did a report last year on “The New Era of Gen Z and Millennial Decision-Maker” and came up with 40 quick insights for selling to younger buyers, so I am going to highlight a few.
The first one is an important one: “Always be credible. 45% of younger buyers have not encountered salespeople who go beyond selling their product and actually try to help solve a problem or achieve a business goal. 29% of them also believe citing research that is misleading or from questionable sources is a deal-breaker.”
We have all been in a situation where we are trying to be sold something and we can tell that the sales rep is NOT credible, and that immediately turns you off. Jeffrey Gitomer said it best when he said, “People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.” You want to be able to give the business owner or the marketer a good credible reason to purchase from you. This is where you can stand apart from your competitors and talk about products and services that you offer like having DoubleVerify on all campaigns, being able to offer an Insight Reports for a list of customers or potential customers that they might have. Also, before your meeting, request a Research Report so you can show them various metrics about their industry in their relative market. This carries a lot of weight because you will be able to show them research information about a client or prospect’s business. With the Research Reports you’ll receive:
The Local Account Intelligence Report gives you an overview of the business and what they offer, as well as information about their business vertical.
A Digital Audit gives you an overview of how and what the company is doing digitally.
A list of Common Business Terms where you can refer to the most commonly used terms for that type of business
A list of Common Business Metrics which is a listing of the most commonly used metrics for that type of business
A full presentation based on the above bullet points. This is a client facing presentation that combines information from all of the above reports. It’s ready to be presented to the business; you just have to add your logo and/or the business logo.
By pulling a Research Report, it also plays a part in number seven of the list: “Don’t just know their business, know their customers. Younger buyers are nearly 20% more likely to rank “knows my customers” in their top 5 desired attributes of a salesperson that calls on them.”
Next, we will look at #12: “Talk about how great they can become, not how great you are. One-third of younger buyers consider “talking too much about how great your products are” instead of “what they can do for me” a deal-breaker.”
My first big girl sales job was selling radio, and one of my managers gave me advice that I still use to this day. “Treat a sales call like a date. If you talk about yourself the whole time (or your company), you aren’t getting that second date. Talk about them, ask questions about them.” In today’s world, it is so easy to get information about a business or even a person through social media. Before you go to someone to talk about advertising their business, do your homework. Look up their website, look at their social media pages. See if they are currently running ads on Facebook by checking out the Ad Transparency page, or maybe they just posted something about a new menu item, or an employee celebrating a milestone with the company. Those are all great talking points to be able to show that you took the time to look them up to become more educated about their business, along with easing into a conversation about marketing opportunities like expanding that social post with Social Mirror or Social Mirror OTT, or using TikTok as an advertising platform and not just as a platform to post. (Keep in mind this can also work both ways. Check out #27: “Run a social media audit on yourself. Younger buyers are 38% more likely to look for the salesperson’s posts on social media. Don’t let a sale get derailed by a joke or snarky remark you posted 5 years ago that can be taken out of context.)
Number 15 is a great stat to showcase your video offerings: “Use video more often. Even if you already are using video in your email and LinkedIn posts, it’s likely not enough. Younger buyers are 19% more likely to look for video when researching your company or products. They also look for podcasts.”
This is a great opportunity to talk about all the products in your toolbox that can utilize video ads, and Online Audio:
Native Video
Amazon OTT
Amazon Video
Social Mirror
Social Mirror OTT
OTT
LinkedIn
Online Audio
YouTube
Video
TikTok
Facebook/Instagram
The last one I will touch on is #38: “Your #1 cause is still solving problems and producing positive business outcomes for the buyer. Younger buyers may want to talk about other causes, but this is still priority one to them – and to you.”
At the end of the day, the business owner and/or marketer has one job and that is to increase their sales, increase their revenue, get more foot traffic, get more market share, get the phones ringing, and get the doors swinging. That’s where you want to come in with a customized plan that is designed to help them get there. You want to start by educating the client and setting realistic expectations. Explain that they aren’t going to see immediate results. They are reaching a very targeted audience of potential customers, and those people need to see the ad as many times as possible, and it takes time. With a three-month commitment, we will make changes based on what is working best and as a campaign progresses, the exchanges’ algorithms also learn and can predict better who will respond to ads based on prior performance. Digital is a frequency medium so the more that someone sees the ad, the more likely they are to take the next step.
Also, what kind of business are you talking to? A pizza shop is most likely going to see more engagement or conversions compared to a bank or an HVAC company. For example, a pizza company has better success with “today customers”, meaning customers can act on the ad that they see today. With an HVAC company, someone isn’t going to see an ad and decide they need a whole new HVAC system right then, but when the need arises and they DO need a new system, who are they going to call? That is a “tomorrow customer”, so you want to be able to paint that picture for the client or potential client.
Like I mentioned earlier, do your homework before you meet with them and determine who their target audience is. Pick out some targeting categories for each digital product that you think they might have an interest in to show them how targeted you can get. Request a Social Mirror spec ad so they can see what their actual post would look like in that format. Take a look at SpyFu.com and gather some keywords that would be a good fit for them to use with Keyword Targeting. Check out where they currently rank on Google for their keywords and if they have a Knowledge Graph or a Google Business Profile. See what their website speed clocks in at https://pagespeed.web.dev/ to see if they might need some help with their SEO.
All of those key elements are things you can do before you meet with a client to show that you are a credible source and that you want to help them and not just get a sale, and that you have a customized plan or thought process to get them there.
Benjamin Franklin also had a good saying: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
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