Tips to Create Shareable Content in 2019

Social media likes are a type of currency. But shares are where it’s at for growing your reach. A share will organically generate more views to your post. If you get one share on a blog or social media post, it can domino into another, then another, and another, building brand awareness, expanding your reach and data footprint. All you have to do is create content worth sharing. How do you do that? Follow along.

Quality Over Quantity – But Pay Attention to Quantity.

The Internet is chock-full of tips on creating shareable content— however, you may find that much of the advice made widely available is so generalized and ambiguous it may not be helpful at all. Phrases that you may find are things like, “Posting good content guarantees shares and increased traffic!” That’s not false by any means, but what exactly is the proverbial “good content”?

Quality is a no-brainer. Audiences will share content that is relevant and of value to themselves and their social media network. Relevant content is built on audience research. Who is your audience? Who is your audience’s audience? Who do they follow? What do they already share? With the answers to these questions, you can start generating potentially shareable content.

By posting your content online, you’re just starting a conversation with your audience. The key now is to establish a back-and-forth rapport (you post, your audiences share; they post, you share). Ultimately, when done right, this can establish an ongoing relationship.

Titles- Not Just For Books

There’s a lot of content on the Internet. Millions of blog posts are published every day. Social media users and platforms are constantly increasing, and all of these writers and social media users are generating, liking, and sharing content, all the time. You need your content to stand out in the crowd. A good first step is to give them a title that really hooks your audience.

Start small. Use your general topic to come up with a few specific working titles, which are whittled-down, enough to guide the direction of your post.

Now make that working title, fun and unique. Test bold and strong language against more conservative and direct titles, and find the balance between the two. If you need to workshop your titles don’t be afraid to ask for second opinions. Having another opinion is valuable; don’t waste the chances you have to get one.

There are rules, guidelines, and tips galore on the web for you to find. Choose what works for you and your audience.

Note: People love to scan titles especially on Twitter, using an RSS reader or otherwise. Get them to take the next step and click-through with a title that is short, succinct, and interesting.

What Kind of Content Matters Too

Simple content is hands above more shareable. The way blogs and social media posts work is by making use of tidbits and clickbait. People generally respond very well to short form copy like lists and listicles. Your audience is busy, and the quickest way they can go through interesting and valuable content, the happier they will be.

SEO FTW

Although clarity and (sometimes) brevity is key to sharable content, making sure your SEO is well thought out can be a huge plus for reaching those that are maybe not already part of your consistent audience. Keep in mind that trying to over optimize your titles or posts can often sound awkward, and make your words sound like they were automatically generated for optimization by an SEO tool.

In order to effectively use keywords in your blog or social media titles and posts, research your potential customer base: What are they searching for? What problems do they face? How can you either help them directly or help inform them of other solutions? With the answers to these questions, you can choose and use relevant keywords, which will help you to become more searchable.

Note: Keyword rank isn’t the biggest barometer for success in search anymore. See this previous post to learn why.

A Picture Says A Thousand Words… (Infographics, Videos, and Other Visuals Can Too)

It takes more than a snappy title and intro for a post to be truly shareable. Images, infographics, videos, charts, tables, and block quotes can dress up and increase the influence of an otherwise text-forward post. Any visual you choose must, like everything else, be accurate and relevant. Use visuals to promote content that offers solutions to your audiences’ problems, in useful and creative ways, so that you can garner shares and valuable comments.

Tip: Don’t forget to read comments on your content. They’re an excellent measure of post success.

SEO vs Social Media Marketing

When you’re trying to increase your web traffic you may be wondering which is better for growing your traffic organically, social media marketing (SMM) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Is one better than the other? Both methods are continually changing and evolving, so the answer can’t really be gleaned simply.

Long story short, SEO and SMM are able to be successful on their own, but when used together have the potential to have the most influence on traffic. Essentially, by sharing content to your social media channels you should be driving traffic to your site.

Throughout the last few years, there has been an exponential growth of social media pages (Facebook and Twitter primarily) in the top 100 on Google.  An article by PrimeView states, “…SMM blogs should be receiving the majority of their visitors from social media channels, as it is their area of expertise …SMM-focused blogs perform better in organic search than SEO-focused blogs. The high levels of engagement SMM blogs receive from social media allow them to get more backlinks and referral traffic, which, in turn, helps them rank higher organically.”

This goes against Google’s stance that rank and social media presence are not correlated, showing that links with more social engagement can lead to a higher ranking. This does not mean, however, that more social activity is a way to “hack” your SEO, in fact, pushing too much low-value content on your followers can annoy them, leading to followers ignoring your posts or even unfollowing you.

So, as important as it is to post consistently, again we find that quality over quantity is key to adding value to the content you’re publishing, and key to getting post engagements and therefore improved SEO. With that, make a note that SEO should not be the focus of your social strategy and that content is still king for getting you ranked, as quality is the number one factor for Google rank.

When trying to grow your site traffic and developing content for SMM, it is crucial to put the work into placing keywords and links correctly so that your content will garner more backlinks and get more referral traffic from your social media followers. SEO appeals to an algorithm, but SMM appeals to people, so to really harness the power of both you must understand how these two key components to your marketing strategy are almost complete opposites, but yet interdependent. Content that is high ranking will bring in more search traffic, and by the nature of how the world of social media works, this search traffic will drive shares, comments and follows on your social channels.

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Marketing Tips: Keyword Research and Planning For Improved SEO

If you’re looking to improve your SEO and haven’t done much research into keyword planning, you might not realize how important it really is. Knowing how to use and find the right keywords is arguably the most important skill a marketer can hone when it comes to search effectiveness. The start of effective SEO comes from a well-built keyword map or keyword plan.

What is keyword mapping?

“Keyword mapping is the process of assigning or mapping keywords to specific pages on a website based on keyword research. Based on your mapping process you are able to then make specific on-page SEO recommendations to help make the page more relevant to the mapped keywords.” Says Adam Bate of SEO Brothers.

How to start keyword planning

Step One: Research

Put together a list of all of the words you might want your business to appear when someone searches that word. It would be nearly impossible to achieve getting your business to rank on the first page of search results for every word you choose but here you can shoot for the stars.

Tools like Moz, SEMrush and the Google keyword planner can help you expand your list and include faceted keywords you may not have initially thought of.

Step Two: Filter

Work on removing any duplicated words, as well as any that you know for a fact you won’t rank for (taking out branded terms from competitors is usually a good starting point).

Now set your keywords into sets: Priority, Secondary, and Other Terms.

1. Priority terms: Should be keywords you want to appear for right away. They need to imply that you have the answer to a question or the ability to fulfill a need; be a high volume keyword that is worth the investment, and need to be related to current and upcoming (near-future) business.
2. Secondary terms: These will come into play later on, once priority keywords are locked into optimized pages that are query-responsive. These should be keywords that relate to your site, have a decent volume and imply questions you don’t have the expertise to answer.
3. Other terms: You’ll ignore these for now, and note why you may or may not want to re-evaluate these keywords later on

Step Three: Map keywords to pages

The first thing to do when mapping is to scrape Google for your keywords and current rank. You don’t have to do this, but generally, it is useful to be able to keep things simple, rather than to manually map each page, regardless of how Google feels about scraping and rank tracking (the general consensus is not incredibly positive). Now you need to ensure that the content on the page that the clickthrough directs to actually answers what is being searched for. Sometimes your map will work perfectly, and other times, Google gets it totally wrong, so remapping is necessary to close the gap. You’ll go through this same process when you’re working with mapping URLs, starting new pages, as well as when optimizing content and existing pages.

Keyword planning is a big job, but when done right can get you noticed and moved up in the ranks of the SEO world. For a more in-depth walkthrough of keyword mapping for SEO and content creation, see this blog post from Moz that will give you a map to mapping.  

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Marketing Trend: Omni-Channel Marketing

Marketing is ever evolving, and consumers’ paths to purchasing are no longer as linear as they once were. Because marketers need to adapt to a changing climate, new techniques are constantly developed. Omni-Channel marketing is one such strategy that businesses are using to keep up with the trend of keeping things as simple as possible.

What is Omni-Channel Marketing?

“Omni-Channel”  is no doubt a marketing buzzword, but the concept adheres to a shift in the needs of both consumer and marketer. Omni-channel marketing is the answer to marketers needing to provide a consistent experience and path to purchase.

Because consumers now can engage with a brand and products on multiple platforms (physical store, app, website, catalog, social media), it is important that each experience with the product and brand complement the others.

Hubspot defines omni-channel marketing as “… a multi-channel approach to marketing, selling, and serving customers in a way that creates an integrated and cohesive customer experience no matter how or where a customer reaches out.” Read about some of their top examples of an Omni-Channel experience here.

How to implement Omni-Channel Marketing into your strategy

• Create a customer profile

Consolidating a customer profile can be a challenge, as customers are constantly interacting with a slew of different channels. By creating a broad and complete picture of your consumers, you can create a better overall customer experience. This can be done using collected data and applying it to your strategy. This article discusses how you can come up ahead of the competition by succeeding at cross-channel marketing.

• Interact on preferred channels

Consumers are moving back and forth on devices and platforms just for a single transaction. Be sure to keep all lines of communication open for a seamless experience. This includes, but is not limited to social media, email support, video chat, web chatbots, texting, and calling.

• Use aggregated data

Compiling data is already important, but in order to use omni-channel marketing, data is everything. From creating your customer profile to understanding how to adapt to market changes and adding platforms, data will help you gain insight into how to make your marketing strategy work for you.

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Essential Guide to Instagram for Business

Instagram is a valuable marketing tool for any business, which many marketers have known since the app was released. We’ve seen brands leverage the community to build their influence and brand awareness as well as increasing sales. But in early 2016, a new feature was released just for these businesses. Instagram for business allows marketers to leverage real data and account insights as well as create ads and targeted posts.These tips and tricks will help you leverage your Instagram business page today.

Get creative

Show off what your business does by creating content that isn’t expected. Focus on the solutions your products can provide for your customers, not just the products themselves. Sharing insider views of how your business functions on a day to day basis, and keeping up with what’s going on in the world and relating it back to what you’re doing is key, as well as keeping in mind that Instagram is a primarily visual platform. That means you need to keep your posts clean and well composed.  

Instagram Stories

If you aren’t already using Instagram Stories to further your content, you need to re-evaluate and work them into your marketing strategy. Stories are a great way to share things that are going on in your company that may not be worth creating a full post for but are also great for showcasing events, going more in-depth about what your posts are about.

Create consistent and authentic content

The content you create can and should be beautiful on its own, but it also needs to be consistent. Consistency means making sure you’re posting on regular basis or on a pre-set schedule, but also that each individual post fits in with the rest of your content. Paying close attention to your color palette is key to this, as well as posting content that is consistent with your brand’s image and communication style.

Respond to your followers

Customer service is a huge part of owning a business. You wouldn’t leave a customer to sit with an unanswered question in person, so making sure you’re engaging with your followers and people commenting on your posts or sending you direct messages. Communicating outside of just the posts you make is huge for projecting a good public image of your business to the outside world. Let your followers know that you are invested in them, so they feel they should invest their time caring about you.

Targeting Ads

If you’re familiar with Facebook ads and targeting through the Facebook ad management platform, you’re in luck. Instagram ads (specifically for business accounts) are managed in the same place and are set up in the same way. This includes location, demographics, and interests targeting, which ensures that your ads are being seen by exactly who you want.  

User-generated content or contests

Engage with your customers by hosting contests, giveaways or other incentive-based “events”. If you have customers post photos with your specific contest hashtags, you can easily track engagement and participation. Another great way to include your user base is to post user-generated content, either by reposting (and crediting) others’ posts or by having a channel “takeover” where an influencer or other user is able to post on your profile as themselves as sponsored by you.

Instagram is a valuable tool for marketers, and it’s easy to get started today. See how this always expanding social media platform can help you grow your business.

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Marketing and PR Fails of 2017

This year was filled with great moments in advertising and PR, from Honda’s “Yearbooks” and the all-new HoneyBaked Ham company’s “KellyBaked Ham” commercial to the Domino’s Pizza wedding registry and BrewDog’s puppy parental leave, there have been a lot of spot-on moments. But all of these hits don’t come without some misses, whether it’s just a flop or if there were bigger issues at hand in the PR department. These were some of the worst fails in marketing and PR this year.

Pepsi and Kendall Jenner

Pepsi’s “Live For Now” spot aired in April and was pulled shortly after, when it was received as ill thought out and in poor taste of the current social and political climate. The ad features Kendall Jenner abandoning a modeling gig to join a protest. Tensions begin to mount between police and protesters until miraculously, Jenner’s opening of a can of Pepsi eases the conflict.  The ad was so unliked that Wired claimed it “united the internet”.

Adidas Boston Marathon

After finishing the Boston Marathon, runners received an email from the sponsor of the race, athletic brand Adidas. The message read “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!” The responses to this message were quick and harsh, as many wondered how the messages deeper meaning had not been thought through. If you recall, in 2013 three people were killed and over 260 were injured during a bombing at that year’s Boston marathon. Adidas released a statement officially apologizing for the email

Walker’s #WalkersWave selfie campaign

Automated Twitter campaigns sound like a great idea, until they aren’t. British company Walkers Crisps launched a campaign to bring attention to the brand by having Twitter users send in selfies to be featured in the #WalkersWave, with a chance to win Champions League tickets. The selfies that ended up being submitted were, frankly, less than ideal. From mass murderers to disgraced TV stars, the PR stunt that was intended to be lighthearted and fun backfired in a way that was in one word: incredible. Walers issued an apology and shut down the campaign shortly thereafter.

The Oscars mix up

Following the botched announcement of the winner of Miss Universe, no one would have expected the same thing to happen on the biggest night in Hollywood. At the end of the night, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway went onstage to present the award for best picture, and read the card with the results, one that stated “La La Land”. However, Beatty was handed the wrong envelope, and during the celebration of their win, the cast and crew were interrupted to announce that, “La La Land” was not, in fact, the winner, but the film “Moonlight” was. Mass confusion ensued, and PricewaterhouseCoopers the accounting firm that has overseen the Oscar ballots for 83 years issued an apology and launched an investigation into how the mistake was made.

United Airlines

2017 was rough for United Airlines, with multiple damaging PR situations including a violently removed passenger, overbooked flights and passenger dress code uproar. The United PR team and CEO Oscar Munoz have had lukewarm responses to all of the incidents. The non-apologies and disappointing initial responses caused United’s stock price to fall by half a billion dollars. Social media users spoke out about the airline’s policies and responses, and there didn’t seem to be a strategy to fix it, making this an even bigger PR disaster.

Dove

Dove has worked hard to align itself as a brand that is for everyone, especially with their “Real Beauty” campaign that has spanned a decade. But this year missed the mark in some pretty major ways, with the series called “Real Beauty Bottles” and an ad on Facebook that was immediately criticised as being racist. The bottles were an awkward misstep that meant to show inclusion and Twitter users ripped the campaign to shreds.  The ad for Dove’s body wash showing models removing a skin toned shirt to reveal another model was more recent, but since its release, the backlash surrounding it has caused Dove to issue an apology and pull the ad. You can read what one of the featured models thinks about the controversy here.

Fyre Festival

Who can forget the Fyre Festival? In April, the fallout from a failed blowout music festival in the Bahamas was astronomical. From lack of promised amenities to the infamous cheese sandwich, the festival that promised everything delivered nothing. Those who purchased tickets (with prices ranging from several thousand dollars up to $250,000 for deluxe packages) were either blocked from flying in or ended up stranded on the island. The organizers of the event have remained quiet, save for citing “unforeseen and extenuating circumstances” for the postponement of the event and promising free entry for next year to all of those who purchased tickets. There are currently multiple lawsuits filed against the event organizers which include accusations of negligence, fraud, failure to provide funds and breach of contract. Spin’s timeline of events outlines every misstep and incident from the very beginning.

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Content Marketing Tools to Boost Your Strategy

Content marketing is becoming more important to everyone’s marketing strategies than ever before, but it can be hard to keep up with for many, with both time and creative needs to manage, especially for those without dedicated content teams. Use these tools to create, curate, manage and schedule all of your content for maximum effectiveness.

Feedly

Streamline your searching and content curation by using this tool to find articles and posts that match your interests. Choose sites to follow, verticals to focus on and mark the things you’ve already read. Feedly also has the option to integrate with your workflow with IFTTT automation. See how IFTTT recipes work here.

Canva

Create everything from business cards to logos and resumes that are built to impress, even if you aren’t a professional designer. With Canva you can use one of the many provided templates, or you can create your own design from scratch.

Airtable

Create a content database that will link similar content, share with your team, filter and sort your content in multiple arrangements and at the same time make a more visually streamlined content calendar and pipeline for ease of access. Airtable also allows you to create IFTTT recipes and integrate this database with many of the apps you might already be using including MailChimp, Evernote, Facebook, LinkedIn and more.

Contently

Master your content strategy with the Contently platform. If you’re looking for a one-stop shop, then this is your best bet. From content generation and scaling to insights and strategy, Contently allows you to create a strategy that will have visible and transparent results, with built-in analytics and a holistic approach to digital content. See how it works here.

Buffer

Manage your social media quickly from one simple hub. Buffer allows you to create and schedule your social media content while measuring key metrics and performance analytics. By allowing all of your social content to flow from one dashboard, you have complete control of your posts and how they look and sound without having to move from platform to platform.

Visual.ly

If content development is not your thing and you need a team that can handle that for you, visually can help you achieve great content without needing an in-house team. Simply discuss what you need for your project with a Visually representative for a quote, talk about the goals you hope to achieve with the content and get matched with a team of creatives that will develop everything you need. Learn more about the Visually process here.

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Marketing Trends To Expect in 2018

As 2017 comes to a close it’s time to look to the future to predict what will be the biggest trends in marketing. With only a month left in the year, now is the time to reevaluate your current strategies and start working on new ones to match the technologically focused consumer. Here’s what you should be looking for this coming year.

Death of organic reach on Facebook

In the past, it was easy to see results when marketing on Facebook just by having a page out for people to find. Those days are in the past, as many marketers are reporting decreased organic traffic, leading to slowed growth and decreased conversions from social media to the website. This is due to changing algorithms that make it more difficult for non-sponsored posts to reach into the newsfeeds of consumers, but also because of the steadily increasing presence of businesses on social media.

What to do:
Start investing in a paid Facebook strategy. Over 50 million businesses use Facebook, and most are feeling the effects of the shift from organic to paid reach. Buffer’s Facebook advertising guide is a great resource for those new to the process.

Landing pages

The landing page is often overlooked, but it is one of the fastest and least expensive ways to increase conversions. A website is always a necessity, but a landing page is a focused way to ensure that your customer is seeing exactly what they want or need to see without distractions and multiple calls to action that distract from the main goal.

What to do:
Build focused landing pages for each campaign. Follow these steps for great form optimization. Build more pages for more conversions. This Hubspot article will tell you why this is so important for growth.

Integrated influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has become increasingly important to marketers, and because Instagram is becoming (for many) one of the top social media platforms, the use and understanding of influencer marketing in all verticals is becoming a valuable tool.

What to do:
Prepare for a boost of companies using influencers, especially on social media. Many companies will begin building long-term partnerships with influencers, allowing them to become brand ambassadors. However, be aware of the FTC’s strict rules and regulations about endorsement posts. The key measurements to track this year for influencer marketing are KPI and ROI.  Learn the basics of influencer marketing here, and learn how to find the right influencers here.

Personalized content

Personalized content has been having a moment lately, and the moment will continue into the new year. Hubspot reports that personalized content does 42% better than non-personalized content. It is important to understand your audience and to use the new shift towards emotional content to engage with your customers and to increase that “shareability” of your content. Storytelling with creative content will be a big theme this year.

What to do:
Begin with gathering information about your audience, even if it is as basic as their name and email address. Make the content you use to acquire this something relevant that will grab attention and encourage conversions. With the information you gather, you can begin to target your users, and provide them with content that matches their needs and lifestyle. Read more about personalized marketing here.

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Holiday Ads of 2017

The holidays are right around the corner and the commercials that are airing right now are becoming more festive, heartwarming and gift focused. So far, these are some of the best ads from around the world this holiday season.  

Waitrose: “#ChristmasTogether”

John Lewis “Moz the Monster”

Marks and Spencer “Paddington & The Christmas Visitor #LoveTheBear”

Cost Plus World Market “The Performance”

Heathrow Airport “#HeathrowBears”

Apple “Sway”

Audi USA “Parking Lot”

Amazon “Give”

Old Spice “Ye Olde Exploding Yule Log”

Spanish Lottery “#DANIELLE”

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The Best and Worst Ads of 2017

The Best

Fearless Girl, Agency: McCann New York

The winner of five Grand Clio awards was created by Kristen Visbal and commissioned by State Street Global Advisors. The award-winning and now iconic installation was placed in front of Wall Street’s Charging Bull to promote and celebrate International Women’s Day. The statue’s strength paved the way for McCann New York to win agency of the year, and for State Street to win advertiser of the year.

MailChimp “Did You Mean MailChimp?”, Agency: Droga5

MailChimp is already an established brand, but their first major campaign introduces them to a new audience in a way that subverts almost every expectation. By creating goofy and fun mispronunciations of their name MailChimp is able to prove that they are true to themselves and use creative ways to help their customer base.

Samsung “Ostrich”, Agency: Leo Burnett

Samsung’s tagline “do what can’t be done” refers to their virtual reality headsets and what you are able to experience when you put it on. This ad premiered during the product launch of the S8 and S8+ and used #DoWhatYouCan’t to further promote the new Samsung product lineup.

Audi “Daughter”, Agency: Venables Bell & Partners

Rated as one of the top commercials aired during the Super Bowl, ‘Daughter’ pushes for equal pay and employment opportunities for women, pushing for progress with #DriveProgress. Though not directly related to any specific Audi model, spokespeople for the company say that progress is at the core of the brand.

The Worst

Jennifer Aniston Smart Water campaign, Agency: AR New York

Bland print ads and unfunny attempts to go viral have plagued the bottled water company’s campaign with a very popular spokesperson. However, a bright spot in an otherwise unexciting campaign takes an aim at celebrity gossip: a video that shows Jennifer Aniston’s “leaked security tapes” revealing all of her secrets, from being pregnant to wearing a wig.

GoDaddy “The Internet Wants You”, Agency: Bullish

GoDaddy was once the king of scandalous ads, especially during the Super Bowl, but this year’s ad went in a different direction, poking fun at internet trends, from sneezing pandas and water bottle flipping, to “David After Dentist” and Rick Astley. The commercial itself was clever, but fell flat, with almost too much going on to effectively promote GoDaddy’s services.

T-Mobile #Unlimited Moves, Agency: Publicis Seattle

The Super Bowl commercial featuring Justin Bieber was in one word, underwhelming. Coming off of last year’s spot with Drake dancing to ‘Hotline Bling’, Bieber plays a “celebration expert” narrating touchdown celebrations throughout the years. Bieber is refreshingly down to earth, but his presence alone is not enough to give life to an otherwise unfunny commercial.

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Marketing Tool: Chatbots

80% of marketers are expected to be using chatbots by 2020. Personalized marketing is becoming an expectation for consumers, and chatbots are another tool to bring personalization to your audience. It is certainly fair to say that not every company will need a chatbot, and that some customers will not utilize or like the option of using a chatbot, but for ever-evolving times, it is important to understand this trend as it is, as it can be, and to fully acknowledge the pros and cons of using chatbots within a marketing strategy.

What is a Chatbot?

NBC defines a chatbot simply as: “simple artificial intelligence systems that you interact with via text. Those interactions can be straightforward, like asking a bot to give you a weather report, or more complex, like having one troubleshoot a problem with your internet service.”

How do Chatbots work?

A chatbot responds to a message just as a customer support employee would, but is available at all times. Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa are all examples of widely used chatbots. Chatbots are programmed with specifically coded responses to questions or can be built with AI and can, therefore, expand their knowledge base with machine learning.  When your customer asks a question or interacts with your bot, the responses that it gives are modeled to act like a real human response. Sometimes, a question will be impossible for the bot to answer, either because it has no prior experience with that question or because it is phrased in a way too complicated for the bot to understand. If that is holding you back, there are ways to program your bot to have prompts that might be able to get the bot and your customers back on track.

Why use a Chatbot for marketing?

Chatbots do more than just answering questions, they can also effectively drive engagement, make sales and nurture leads. Because chatbots built to use AI can learn, they can also remember details and have a more personalized and human interaction with your customers, something that is important as “nine out of ten consumers say personalization has an impact on their buying decisions, “ says research from LeadsCon. The evolution of social media and technology has played into the need to utilize big data in order to provide a more targeted and engaging approach to customer support and marketing.  Check out Hubspot’s list of seven brands using chatbots and get inspired!

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Marketing Tool: Generational Profiling

One size fits all marketing is a myth of epic proportions. Demographic profiling is one of the most important tools you can use when building a marketing campaign, and while demographics include language, location, age, and interests, generational profiling is another way to look at a broad overview of an age range. While not all members of a generational divide exhibit all of the traits that are common within the broader summary, embracing generational marketing is helpful for understanding prior influence and for predicting consumer behaviors. There are 5 major generations within our society right now, and each brings new experiences to the table. These profiles will help marketers understand these generational differences.

The Silent Generation (Traditionalists): Born 1945 and before

Members of this generation were children during World War II and were named the “Silent Generation” by TIME Magazine, because of the nature of the political and social world they had been born into. Because of the anti-communist beliefs, speaking freely was dangerous, and attempts to keep up a “clean” public image became much more measured. This generation was more financially cautious than their parents, especially after seeing the long-lasting effects of both the war and the Great Depression as young children. Statistically, this has always been a smaller generation, and as they age, numbers continue to dwindle.

Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964

The Baby Boomers were free-thinking and spirited, generally moving away from traditional values held by their parents. Defining events for this generation included the civil rights movement, the moon landing, the rise of television and rock ‘n’ roll, as well as the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy. This was the first generation of children and teenagers to have an influential amount of spending power, and the generally low saving, high consumption lifestyle introduced a booming “youth-focused” culture, in fashion, music, and vehicles.

Generation X: Born 1965 to 1979

The anti-establishment Gen X-ers were rebellious, thinking in anti-consumerist ways and many were just beginning to gain traction in their careers when the great recession struck. Important events for Gen X were the introduction of personal computers, the AIDS epidemic, and the Watergate scandal. Gen X is called “America’s neglected middle child” by Pew, stuck between the loud, overspending Boomer, and the student-loan burdened Millennial.

Millennials (Gen Y): Born 1980 to 1995

Perhaps the most talked about generation right now, for better or worse,  Gen Y, or Millennials have been discussed extensively. Millennials are often called entitled and narcissistic and are known for being tech-savvy, environmentally and socially conscious, and creative. Millennials lived through 9/11, internet and social media growth, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a revitalized pop culture. The weight of student-loans weighs heavily on this generation, with the entire generation carrying about $1 trillion in student debt, and 48% of employed college graduates working jobs they are overqualified for, according to Inc.

Gen Z: Born 1996 and beyond

The youngest generation currently, Gen Z or the iGeneration comes across a lot like millennials, but more intense. This generation has never been without the internet, and the understanding of technology is further along than before. Gen Z is the most diverse generation, and is also one of the largest generations, with a population of over 23 million. Gen Z is critical of big government, values privacy, and has a lower amount of optimism about the future than their millennial counterparts. The war on terror, the advent of social media and the great recession will all be defining factors for these young people.

Demographics are a key part of building a target market for any new marketing strategy, and part of that has become understanding generational differences to better understand influence and consumer trust. The relationship between marketing and generational profiles is not a new one, but it is something that changes rapidly, and thus needs to be continually analyzed.

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