Meet Gen Z: Don’t Trivialize Your Brand’s Digital Presence

Gen Z is going to continue to grow in importance, not just because of their increasing purchasing power, but also because they are the tail that is wagging the dog of culture. Today, we are all influenced by social media. This is where Gen Z expresses themselves and captures the hearts and minds of the rest of us.

As researchers, we deeply understand that participants are the “raw material” of marketing research.

And Gen Z has a unique POV on how they are recruited, incentivized, questioned, and treated. They have lower tolerances for bad experiences and poor user interfaces.

The more we understand them, the more likely they’ll become repeat participants.

Marketing research is poised for significant growth

We are experiencing a sample supply shortage. Daily, clients are trying to get feedback from niche audiences. A few recent examples are women who use Muslim dating sites weekly and dentists in Ohio who do both fillings and root canals. These niche audiences are extremely valuable because they can help marketers refine their messages with laser point accuracy.

The need for niche audiences is not going to decrease. In fact, it’ll increase. Greatly.

Why? Because everyone has seen the data. Companies that use consumer data to make decisions outperform those that don’t by three times.

In Watermark’s analysis of the S&P 500, they found that companies that leverage Customer Experience outperform the broader market, generating a total return that is 45 points higher than the S&P 500 Index.

Meanwhile, Consumer Insight Laggards trail far behind, posting a total return that is 76 points lower than that of the broader market.

For brands, the question isn’t, “Should we use research or not?”

The question is, “Do we want to be in business or not?”

This is why we’ll see continued growth in ResTech as brands push research tools across their organization.

Why is this important?

One of the things I’m hearing a lot among brands is that it is no longer adequate to create a customer experience that is tailored to a segment based on strictly demographic.

Recently, I released five podcasts on the Happy Market Research Podcast with:

• Director of Product Design at Nationwide
• Research Lead at Google’s Cloud Platform
• Director of UX Research & Insights at Thomson Reuters
• Director of UX Research at Course Hero
• Sr. Manager of Strategic Insights & Analytics at J&J

According to those conversations, the ideal customer experience is one that is entirely tailored to the individual. Segmentation is now framed in the context of preferences in addition to everything else.

Starbucks is a great example of this. Prior to shelter-in-place, did you visit the same Starbucks at least a few times a week?

This ideal customer experience would manifest itself at Starbucks when the barista greets you by name before you order.

It is about the human connection to the experience rather than the actual terms of trade. It isn’t about the coffee. It is about the feeling you get when you purchase.

Know your audience

Has anyone seen the Jawzrsize ads on their social feeds?

As a 50-year-old man on Instagram, I’m served an ad for some block of plastic to chew that allegedly makes my chin look like it did when I was 30. The issue here is that they are asserting some pretty negative things about me in order to move me to purchase.

This is a great example of creating a bad experience.

Why do we care? For two reasons: Economics and ease

When I recruit a gen pop on Facebook it’ll cost about a buck per complete for the ads.

As we all know, less participant attrition in the research process makes our lives easier and makes us more money.

In this strawman, our Facebook Ad Manager is generating a participant at $1.00. Our six participants go into a router where two (20%) churn. The remaining four go into the survey where one churns (25%). The final outcome is that 50% of the participants churned through the process. Once a participant churns, they don’t come back.

This process is even more complex for qualitative research that has the added step of coordination.

So, we need to limit the waste that is occurring in the process so that we can increase participant stickiness, in turn making everyone’s lives better.

Conclusion

We know that brands that are succeeding are using customer feedback at the point of decision. Additionally, all of our tolerances for poorly directed advertisements can have dire effects on a brand, and especially among Gen Z.

Our next installment will discuss specifics around Gen Z’s research preferences including:

1. Correctly using social for connecting to Gen Z
2. Research compensation expectations
3. Gen Z psychology

Header Image: RODNAE Productions, Pexels