Generational Preferences In Storytelling

Marketing Coach Ross Herosian opens this episode talking about recent developments in digital marketing - Twitter's new name, the launch of Threads, and GA4.

Next, he explores the storytelling preferences on various demographic cohorts like Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Finally, he closes it out by sharing a useful productivity tool from his Digital Marketing Toolkit.

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Transcript

0:00

In this episode. Gather around, everyone. I'm going to tell you a story. Well, okay, I'm not actually going to tell a story. Instead, I'm going to tell you about storytelling and how to weave it into your marketing. But first, some quick updates from all around the world of digital marketing. Let's enter the news cycle. You all right? So there's a lot to catch up on since last episode. Twitter is now X. Yeah, you can sense how excited I am about that. It seems to be that continued effort of Elon Musk to truly tank that platform, renaming a company something that he doesn't even have copyright or trademark to, this is something that probably may affect you or has already affected you. One of the many things of this switch over to X. He's annoyingly. Paywalled Tweet Deck. So what used to be the free Twitter tool that you could use for multi account scheduling management, social listening related to Twitter, and maybe your multiple accounts, your personal account, your business account. Well, now, to use Tweet Deck, you need to be a paying subscriber. You need to have, I think, what they call the Blue subscription. So just one of literally the laundry list of things that Elon Musk has done and continues to do to seemingly just tank what we formerly knew as Twitter and kill that bird and bury it in the ground. Meta also launched Threads right out of the gate. Oh, excitement was high. Do we have a Twitter X killer on our hands here? Looks like it. Looks like it. Oh, the chat was intense for that week when it launched, and now the daily users after a week, just completely bottomed out. So we'll wait and see what is happening with Threads. If you are a listener to this show, that probably means you're trying to stay ahead of some of these digital marketing trends for your business. And my advice to you as it relates to Threads and the seeming assassination of formerly Twitter is that you still wait a little while. Now, Threads is connected to your Instagram account. So a lot of times for a lot of businesses, I think a good recommendation is to at least go on and secure your handle, even if for now, you don't do anything with it. But Threads, just like Twitter X or Facebook or Instagram, is a new content mouth to feed. So before you just jump right into it and task your poor social media manager with another platform, you need to do some extensive research looking at what is happening on Threads. Okay? And that is evolving and changing over time. The one thing that I have seen that the users seem to really be loving about Threads is image quality. So ironically enough, is Threads going to be the platform that brings back what we loved about original Instagram? I don't even know what the hell is going on anymore in social media. We have instagram, which is really just about video, vertical video to compete with TikTok. But then they launched Threads, which is maybe a Twitter competitor, but it has really good image quality. So therefore it's like old Instagram. Everything new is what was old and everything old is new again. And finally, Google Analytics. Universal analytics is done and Ga Four is here. Now, if you are like pretty much every single one of my clients, you have no idea what to do about this. So Google Analytics, the former product, the product that if you know anything about Google Analytics, it's what you interacted with, it's called Universal Analytics that stopped reporting, stopped collecting data in July. Now I think they've pushed that back a little as I record this we're in mid August, and I still think they're kind of like giving it a little bit of a push. But for all intents and purposes, it is not a fully functioning platform anymore. You have to switch over to Google Analytics Four. Now, the big difference is Google Analytics Four takes into account what I would kind of call the modern browsing scenario. So it does a better job of being able to track traffic across mobile on a website if you have an app being able to track it in there. Right. However, Ga Four is a completely different product if you spent even just a little bit of time inside of Google Analytics universal analytics, switching over to Google Analytics Four is not going to be intuitive at all. I have spent hours and hours and hours in it myself, trying to navigate it to produce the same types of reports that I had inside of Universal Analytics. So I do have some content inside of the marketing clarity community on how to install and set up your Google Analytics for. So if you're not a member there, it is a free community that I run. There is a link in the description of this podcast. I definitely recommend that you join that community because I do have like a walkthrough post in there about how you can set it up. Okay. I've watched many, many YouTube videos and I even share some of those in that post, the ones that I found particularly useful. Okay. Those are some of the highlights from the digital marketing world. So now, as promised, I want to talk to you about storytelling and marketing. This episode is sponsored by Ecamm for Mac. With Ecamm, you can easily record, edit, and stream high quality video content for your website, social media, or even those virtual meetings. Whether you're a content creator or a business owner, ecamm has everything you need to make your video content stand out. Ecamm's powerful features include multi camera recording, screen sharing, virtual backgrounds, and broadcast quality graphics. It's what I use to make my videos look professional, and you can do the same without having to buy any expensive equipment. It works with your existing webcam plus, with its easy to use interface and seamless integration with popular platforms like Zoom and Skype, you can focus on creating great content without getting bogged down by technical details. So why wait? Sign up for Ecamm today and start creating video content that will elevate your brand and engage your audience. Tap the link in the episode description to try Ecamm risk free for 14 days. So here's the deal. Data has made us lazy. We talked about this in last episode where I had guest Jeff Greenfield. We talked a good amount about this. How the modern I'm using air quotes here. The modern digital marketer has become very reliant on data, very reliant on the current ad structures and systems where they are able to target and overly index people purely for conversion. Bye bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye bye. Hey, bye. Let's get them and let's buy. Bye bye. Bye bye. And as discussed in that episode, which, again, if you haven't listened to, I highly recommend you go back and listen. We talk about? Jeff brings up how if you are spending all of your money exclusively or mostly at the bottom part of the funnel, you run through that, you exhaust that audience, and then your ads have to work harder, your conversion becomes less efficient, and you are not refilling your funnel by putting people back at the top. Everyone's trying to build customers instead of building relationships. That is the problem. Okay? Now, I understand that if you're a small to medium sized business, you may not have a sophisticated ads or remarketing strategy that is okay. This is still an incredibly important topic because this technology shift can benefit you. And when I say technology shift, what I'm talking about is the move to a cookieless web. That should happen this year, 2023, and it is going to shift a great amount of how digital ads and how customer data is handled, is utilized, and can even be targeted, right? So cookieless web is going to fundamentally transform at least the ad landscape as we know it. It doesn't mean it's, oh, there go digital ads. They're done. We're never going to see this again, right? That's not what's going to happen. But it's going to be different. Now, you may have less resources than a bigger company, maybe even less resources than a competitor, right? But no matter how many resources, if you are the only resource, you are the best author of your business story. And that is why this is really important that you pick up what I'm putting down here. And if you're not doing ads or if you are actively doing content, that you start to at least make a strong consideration for storytelling. Now, you may be asking yourself, how do I tell my story to my customer audiences? Now, you probably didn't call them your customer audiences. I'm calling them your customer audiences because we're talking about current customers, prospective customers, maybe even customers that left. But you want to win them back, right? Those are your customer audiences. Well, the first thing you need is you need to know your story. This isn't what I'm talking about here. And your marketing should not be improv or jazz where you're just skibbity BOP booing left and right about your marketing. You need an actual plan, a blueprint, if you will. And that is exactly why I put together my flagship program, the DIY Marketing Clarity Guide. It is $9 and it is video guides, downloadable worksheets. Everything about it is to help you define your story. And it's broken up essentially into three chapters, right? Being able to tell your brand story, being able to tell your customer story, and then being able to really understand and share relevant your content story. So it is brand company I'm sorry, company, content, customers. Those are the three parts and every single section. Like I said, video guides, downloadable worksheets, all kinds of valuable guidance that I have worked with dozens and dozens of small to medium sized and even large businesses. Candidly have run through this program and have just raved about how transformational it is. So again, it's $9. If you have no type of blueprint, let's start there. There's a link in the description. You can check it out. Now, related to storytelling, I came across this Adweek article, and it talked about tailoring storytelling to different generational cohorts and how that's really crucial in effective marketing, understanding psychological nuances and preferences of each group and how that helps create memorable narratives that actually resonate. And I think that's also about narratives that provide value. As a content first marketer, I am always thinking about the content that adds value to my customer audiences, right? So is this something that can help a prospective customer, a current customer, someone who's gone away, right? Is this content that adds value to them and then therefore by adding value, they attribute said value to me, my company. So this article in Adweek also talks about how storytelling engages more brain regions than just presenting product information. So watching a story, it's firing off a lot more synapses. It's getting deeper in the Brain folds. Brain fold sounds kind of gross. But even telling this story, probably now that you've heard me telling this story, this is so meta right now of brain folds. You're like, oh, I'm going to remember that storytelling actually is impactful or you just threw up in your mouth, which will also make you remember the impact of storytelling. Now, the other piece of this is age and emotional intelligence and how this tends to increase with age and how that affects storytelling preferences. So I wanted to share with you again from this article, like some real really good highlights related to the generational differences and how marketing and storytelling is perceived and what these generations kind of at a high level, their preferences, right? I mean, now, obviously, we're painting with a relatively broad brush here, but I think this is helpful. Assuming you go through the DIY marketing Clarity guide and are able to then define and understand your different audiences, and then when you look at your customer demographics or your customer audiences, and you can ascribe some amount of they are generally this age range, this information can help you when crafting content that is telling stories. So let's start with the boomers. Baby boomers, born 1946 to 1964. They respond well to emotionally driven narratives, nostalgic elements, and linear storytelling. Linear storytelling clearly being beginning, middle, end. So that could be problem solution, call to action. That standard setup, simple. I don't have to think about it. This isn't like a Christopher Nolan movie. A mindbender. This is a very clear story. And I think the other thing here is too, nostalgic elements. While this talks about boomers really loving nostalgia, I kind of feel like that's a powerful thing across the board. Then we have the Gen X. They are born from 1965 to 1980. They value independence, overcoming obstacles, and transformative product narratives. So that is really talking about a problem solution, end state, right? So how your service, your product has transformed or can transform someone's life. Okay, then we get to the millennials. I think everyone tosses the term millennials around for just anyone that is, I don't know, probably from like 19 to 30. But their actual range is 1981 to 1996. They embrace inclusivity. Social responsibility is important to them, authenticity, and value based storytelling. So this is the type of storytelling where sharing, if you have community involvement, sharing even employee stories about what they do at your company, value based storytelling, what you as a company stand for, why, maybe there's even a story tied to that. Right? So this is, again, millennials. I think everyone just throws around when there's just a young person that Candidly is annoying or whatever. Millennials. It's not accurate. 81 to 96. Gen Z is where we start to poke into the 2000s. Gen Z is 1997 to 2012. They seek personalization short form content, social consciousness, and authentic narratives. So this is actually really interesting with Gen Z, particularly the short form content. So you look at, as I was talking about before, the platforms that are currently just in our lives right now TikTok, Instagram threads, I guess X, YouTube, and maybe by extension, YouTube shorts. This generation really engages with content in a short format and they jump around. So this is where having an overarching potential theme or a campaign and then building it into bite sized pieces is really beneficial. And I would say this to you, when we're talking short form content, we are also probably talking mostly about short form vertical video. That is what is king right now. So if you have a customer audience that includes Gen Z, TikTok, Instagram, Reels, I guess by extension stories, those types of things. YouTube shorts, these are probably the best playgrounds for you. And the nice thing about Gen Z, too, is authentic narratives. So this is something that is really good for those of you out there who are solopreneurs, small business marketers, and you're like, I don't have a professional videographer. Guess what? Gen Z doesn't really give AF. They don't care if the video looks like it is a movie production. Now, if you have the ability to add some graphics and slick things to it, okay, great. But it's not a necessity. They are really big on that authenticity. So this can be something you just shoot with your phone and you share, and even if you flub, whatever, get it out there. I talk about this a lot, but it is absolutely very true with a Zen Gen Z audience. Don't let perfection get in the way of production. So before we end this episode, I wanted to share with you something from my digital marketing toolkit. There's a whole section with section. There's a whole section with sections that doesn't make sense. There's a whole space with sections based on SEO, video, content creation, AI, all that stuff inside the marketing clarity community. Again, it is free. I recommend you check it out. There is a link in the description for this episode. Today's tool from the old digital marketing toolkit is really something that's going to help you with your productivity, particularly if you are one of those solopreneurs or a digital marketer. And the tool is a chrome extension called Session Buddy. Now, if you're anything like me, you kind of pivot from task to task. So it might be writing a blog and then recording a podcast, or maybe even editing and uploading a podcast, or looking for information or news, doing email, that kind of thing. You have these very specific types of tasks, and almost all those things now are based purely online. And so what I hate to see this is maybe a lot of you are when someone shares their screen and they have like 300 tabs open, my brain explodes. Session Buddy. What you can do is you can set a certain amount or you can set certain tabs. You say, okay, again, let's just say for my day to day, I have my email tab, I have a chat GPT tab, I have feedly, I have here, let me go look. Actually over here. Oh, ahrefs. I have my community tab. You can load those tabs and then Session Buddy lets you save that tab group. So then you can load it anytime. So you can open up one window, hit Session Buddy and then load those specific tabs only. I have really liked it. It's super helpful, particularly if you do work at home and then maybe in an office, you have a hybrid situation with different computers even. It's really helpful because it's a Chrome extension. When you save this tab, grouping on any browser, that you're logged into, you can just load them back up again, right? So maybe if you're going to do okay, I'm going to go into and I often do this like SEO deep dive. All right, well here are my SEO tools. I need Google Analytics, I need search console, I need ahrefs, I want my blog open, know, I want Google open. You can save that tab grouping to session buddy and then load it at any time. So I really love it. I think it can really help your productivity. So check it out. And of course if you have other things that you use, I always love to hear about new tools and things like that. You can drop them inside the community. You could send me a message or I suppose you can, I don't even know. I was going to say you could tweet at me, but wherever you want to message me at Ross Hero because I just don't know how I feel about Twitter X. But that's a topic for another discussion. So I hope you found this episode helpful. Get out there and start working on your business story, right? It can be through your everyday content, it can be through an ad. Just start working on it because like any story you're going to need to probably go through a couple of drafts, right, and share it out there, see what works, see what doesn't. So until next episode, until next time, I talk at you, see you, chat with you, I encourage you to keep pedaling.