Marketing for Digital Natives

Digital Natives are people born and raised in a household with access to digital technologies like computers, Internet, mobiles, smart phones, etc. Digital natives view the media landscape as their “natural habitat” from which they can pull resources for creativity, expression, and commerce. The key characteristics of digital natives are that they are always online and have multiple identities – personal, social, online and offline.

Digital natives are constantly reinventing and expanding the offline social sphere by creating profiles on social networking and micro-blogging sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They are collaborating online for business and social networking to market their products and services. New media sources have changed the way the Internet-age generation experiences the world. Thus, digital marketers have to change their marketing approach as well when they are reaching out to digital natives. While marketing for digital natives, considering the following aspects:

1. Offering varied user’s views: Digital Natives research before they buy – asking friends, searching online and comparing various providers. They are influenced by product reviews written by users, so actively share reviews and comments, maybe allow folks to comment on your site.
2. Update content: Digital people are very impatient and always looking out for more information. They want content to be super fresh and updated, so provide them content that is engaging, interesting and informing them about your product quality. Adding and updating a blog to your site is a simple must have to give regular updates to your customers.
3. Make Users co-creators: Share your new products and plans with people and ask them for feedback. Increase their involvement and encourage digital natives to pass along your online newsletters, videos, or blog posts.
4. Include audio and video: Video, audio, and other rich media are fun to share and engages digital natives. Embedded video and audio players are easier to pass along than text and much more interesting. Just one caution – quality matters – both Video and audio should be convincing not advertising.
5. Influence the influencers: Digital marketers should engage with “influencers” people who write about your products or services. Be an active blogger, comment on blogs written about your domain, product or services, and the competitions recent products and services on regular basis.
6. Customer oriented: Your customer comes first. Listen to customer requirements and try to fulfill them at the earliest. Great customer service is integral to the success of any business – more so in the digital age where every message can be amplified millions of time just like United Airlines learnt to its cost when they offended a digital native who happens to sing.