The moment a new generation is old enough to have its own buying power, marketers analyse how to get them to spend their money. Too often, though, we focus on their power as consumers. We forget about the buying power they have as they rise through the ranks in their professional lives.

Millennials are relieving baby boomers of the buying power in most companies. The buying preferences of Millennial and Gen Z professionals are now driving the customer journey. Many of the marketing and customer experience (CX) tactics that work in a B2C space now work for B2B brands as well.

The consumerisation of the B2B experience can feel jarring, but brands who want to stay relevant can’t ignore the shift. Neither can they afford to be superficial about how they engage with the trends or the audience.

These customers have climbed the career ladder and are senior enough to be influential decision-makers. They are serious, career-focused businesspeople. You can't dismiss them just because they’re on TikTok a lot. 

For a lot of B2B brands, creating a great customer experience for younger generations will mean stretching their comfort zones and trying new things. It might mean investing in new tech or capabilities, or even making fundamental changes from the inside out. 

Understanding Millennials and Gen Z

Millennials were born from 1981 to 1994; Gen Z is anyone born from 1997 to 2012. Older Millennials are over 40 and older Gen-Z are over 25. Millennials entered the workforce during the Great Recession around 2008. Gen Z started adulthood as the world shut down from the Covid-19 pandemic. Both generations grew up with mobile phones in their hands from an early age and have almost always had constant access to the Internet. 

With compounding life-changing events, constant access to information, and perpetual tracking from marketers, these generations have a very different mentality from those who came before them. They value a customer experience that is digital-first, responsive, empowering, and transparent. 

As a brand, does your strategy reflect the customer journey preferences of these generations? Or does your marketing leave you looking like you’re out of touch?

How To Engage Millennials and Gen Z

Young people are looking for more innovative, consumer-like experiences. Compared to older generations, young people view themselves as consumers of your product or service first, and reps of their company second. 

This means you need to go further than merely enabling appointment booking on your website or providing downloadable case studies or white papers. These things aren’t relics of the past, but they’re not sufficient to meet the expectations of today's customers.

Go Digital-First 

These are digital-first generations. Wherever possible, you need to offer prospects and customers the same level of service online as you do in person. 

According to Gartner, by 2025 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur on digital channels. Your customers should be able to book appointments, search FAQs, watch tutorial videos, and more… all from their phones. 

However, digital-first doesn't mean digital only. Your customers want the best of both worlds. This means providing great self-service options, like a comprehensive knowledgebase, but also making it easy to reach out for a face-to-face meeting.

Empower the Customer 

Young buyers want to feel like they have insight into every interaction. If they’ve downloaded content or signed up for communication, they want to know how long before they’ll hear from you. They want to track shipping and item fulfilment for anything ordered. 

Brands also need to make it easy for the customer to research their product or service. Focus on providing testimonials, reviews, and social proof on your website. Authentic word of mouth goes a long way with this age group. 41% of Gen Z and 29% of Millennials start their research of a brand with online reviews from others. 

Besides reviews and testimonies, crowd-sourced FAQs, how-to videos, live events, and other engaging, valuable content will help young buyers feel like they have agency in your brand. 

The most important component of self-service for young B2B customers is the ability to find pricing information. Don’t make them call for a quote! They also want to view product specs, and access free trials, self-guided demos and tours. Finally, when they feel they know everything they need to, they'll schedule a call with a rep.

Be Responsive 

Younger buyers want flexible, on-demand access to your brand and its experts. They expect 24/7 responsiveness, both pre- and post-sale. 

Conversational marketing in messaging apps can help you address this need. This “choose your own adventure” style of messaging is engaging, feels personalised to the buyer, and offers real solutions. These components resonate with young buyers.

Many social platforms like LinkedIn offer customizable messaging ads. For example, a bot can ask people about their biggest pain points at work and guide them to the solutions you offer.

A chatbot on your website can also go a long way to addressing these needs. In best-case scenarios, a chatbot will direct users to self-serve resources. Worst-case: it can triage issues and provide background when it hands over to a human support rep. 

Most of these tactics for staying responsive to young buyers are enhanced by automation and AI technology. This will show innovation by your company, while also relieving your employees of some of the workload.

Make it Personal 

Younger generations know vital their data is to businesses. Their expectation is not just that their data will be used ethically, but that in return it will provide a more personal and relevant customer experience. 

This means you need to tailor your communications and experiences to suit each individual buyer.

Don’t rely on any one-size-fits-all approach. You might have plenty of trends data to go on, but avoid the pitfalls of over-generalizing based on age. Understand your users. Individualised customer service goes a long way.

Start with your customer’s end goal in mind and build out a tech-driven funnel from there. Establish with your teams exactly when it is essential to maintain human interaction and always respect each customer’s communication preferences. 

Personalising the experience gives your customers emotional satisfaction, which — even in the B2B space — can be just as important as rational satisfaction. 

CX From the Inside Out

To attract and sustain a young following, B2B brands may need to do some introspection.

Young buyers look for brands that are transparent in their stance on ethical and social issues. Develop brand loyalty with a social conscience that is aligned with your brand values. Avoid surface-level gestures, though. Younger buyers can tell when they’re being manipulated.

Your employer brand is also critical. Younger buyers will not only check out your scores on review sites. They also want to know that the way you treat your employees aligns with the values you espouse. Complaints on LinkedIn and Glassdoor are as big a turnoff as those on Trustpilot.

You can make large charitable contributions and pride yourselves on inclusion, but if you treat your employees poorly, that disconnect will turn young customers off. Thanks to social media, clients can see when the internal doesn't match the external and, for some, that's going to matter a lot.

If you've got a great company culture and employee engagement, encourage your team to amplify your message on professional social networking sites. Supply creative assets to show enthusiasm for the brand and get them involved in campaigns.

Finding Millennials and Gen Z B2B Customers

So, is traditional marketing dead? No, but its health is being called into question as media consumption habits and customer expectations continue to shift.

“Old school” digital marketing is also struggling to keep up. Click-through rates on paid media decreased 44% from 2019 to 2020, and have continued to drop. Even throwing your ads on platforms like YouTube and Facebook doesn’t work sometimes. Gen Z is quite savvy with ad blockers. 

B2B companies need to reimagine their CX strategy. Despite the challenges of reaching the youngest generations, there are still ways a brand can find and engage their audience. 

On Social Media 

To reach Gen Z and Millennial audiences on social media, it's important not to assume they share the same preferences. While you can find both generations on Instagram or YouTube, for example, you're much more likely to find a Millennial on Facebook than a Zoomer.

One characteristic they do share is a love of bite-size video content. While TikTok started out as a Gen Z stronghold, the platform's user base is aging upwards as it moves into the mainstream. TikTok is proving to be more than just a social networking tool or even a source of entertainment. Young people are using it as a search engine and turning to it to find solutions that make their lives easier.

Another route to Gen Z and Millennials' attention is via user-generated content and influencers. While Millennials are more trusting of brands than their younger counterparts, both value recommendations and reviews from their peer group and trusted sources. B2B brands that know how to leverage these strategies will have an edge. 

Despite the challenges faced by paid advertising, ads can still work on social channels… as long as they don’t feel like ads! People are looking for hacks, tips, or ways to make their lives better, even if it’s from an ad.

This makes the best-performing ads indistinguishable from the rest of the customer experience. As long as an ad feels like native content, younger viewers will stick around and click. 

On Their Phones 

Both age groups spend more time on their phones than the previous generation. However, these days it’s not just for personal use. Work-from-home culture has blurred the lines between the personal and professional use of their devices. 

During the research phase, expect young people to be looking up reviews on one screen while they browse your site on a laptop. After becoming a customer, they may need to address a business emergency while they’re away from their office.

You need a mobile-first experience to accommodate and sustain young B2B customers. If you're not optimising for mobile, expect your younger customers to move on to someone who is before they'll switch devices.

At Corporate Events 

While digital-first and mobile are a must, these generations are not only behind their screens. They still value face-to-face meetings and work-related events.

Because of the pandemic, they are accustomed to virtual events. But, they’re also eager to socialise, network, and represent their company in real life. B2B brands trying to reach Millennial and Gen Z professionals can't give up on expo booths, conference sponsorship, and networking events.

A technologically enhanced, hybrid event will offer the positive customer experience they're looking for. From online registration and personalised customer support, to interactive online events, live video streams on social media, and on-demand evergreen content, you need to upgrade the experience.

Rethink the Millennial and Gen Z Customer Journey

With the generational shift in B2B buyers, brands need to move to meet new customer expectations and behaviours. Google is so synonymous with online search that the brand name has become a verb. And yet, Google has seen Gen Z turn to TikTok as its primary search engine. If they recognise the need to address Gen Z’s changing online behaviours, shouldn’t your business? 

Need help to create engaging content that empowers the customer and highlights your brand? Or are you interested in marketing automation to underpin your digital-first customer journey? Contact 1827 Marketing to start a conversation today.