The Power of Values In Gen-Z and Millennial Marketing

If you've ever looked us up, Lifestyled Media's entire foundation is connecting brands and values to customers' values. Today I want to discuss why that is so essential for your brand if you're trying to communicate with Gen-Z or a Millennial-Market.

One of the biggest trends we see in Gen-Z and young millennials that are shifting the market is a decline in trust in organizations, large organizations especially, but that goes across the board. With that. Gen-Z. Demands brand transparency and brand neutrality isn't an option anymore.

There was a study that was done asking Gen-Z. Whether. A stance that a company might take on something similar to Black Lives Matter would affect their buying decisions in that organization, and 66% of Gen-Z said how businesses react to topics such as Black Lives Matter. Won't just temporarily affect their buying choices but will permanently affect their decision on whether to buy from them in the future. So this idea of values is more crucial to Gen-Z than ever in any other market in the past.

What we're seeing is this essential need for you as a brand and as a company to identify your values, identify your target market's values, and market where those values overlap.

The best way to illustrate values' importance is by talking about our client, The Veterinarian Cooperative (TVC). So TVC is a cooperative of independently owned animal hospitals, using their buying power, allowing them to compete with big box animal chains.

On the surface, TVC's product is relatively dull when it comes to marketing. They use money to help give their vets a competitive advantage, but there isn't a lot to show there, and we could talk about how you could save this amount of money, and we could do the math and show how they've changed the industry and all that stuff is excellent. But what we did instead is connected their values to their customer's values.

So we know that TVC's values are all about being an independent owner, and we also know that their target market is these independent vets, independent owners of hospital practices. So at that intersection of values, we told the stories of three fantastic vet practices, how they got started, and what struggles they overcame.

These values don't specifically talk about each and every one of the product offerings and services that TVC does. In telling the stories of how they overcame significant obstacles, these owners will talk about TVC and what TVC does. They're also going to talk about the values of an independent vet owner and, in doing so, illustrate why TVC cares so much about these independent vets and help other independent veterinarians see that TVC is on their side.

This type of project does several things for TVC or for your brand. It's one going to connect with your current target market that already agrees with these values, and it's going to further engrain why they're buying from you, using your services, or being a part of your community, whatever that might look like.

Second, it will connect with new members and not people who just have the money and want to buy a one-off product or a one-off service or join for one month in your community. What it's going to do is create a long-term value relationship between you and your new target market.

So as you're moving forward in marketing, start by identifying your shared values. They're already there in your mission statement; you may have already written out your values and then take your target market or the persona that you've already developed for your target market. And find where those values overlap, and that's where you need to be marketing, whatever that looks like. Then you can get into all of these other things that we talk about UGC, video marketing, TikTok, podcasts, and all of these other strategies have to start after you find the shared values between you and your target market or your customer.

You use all these other methods of right in that intersection, and that is where you will find actual value and significant results for your company.

BY JOSHUA STANLEY
FOUNDER & CEO OF LIFESTYLED MEDIA