Patience Jones: Hello and welcome to As Built, the podcast from Graphicmachine about architecture firms, buildings, and how both get built. I'm your co-host, Patience Jones. With me is Brian Jones, your other co-host. Thank you for joining us. Today, we are talking about multi-generational marketing.
Brian Jones: Which is different than multilevel marketing.
Patience Jones: Yeah... no. Multilevel marketing, uh-uh, nope.
Brian Jones: Have nothing in common.
Patience Jones: No. Multilevel marketing shan't be featured on this podcast. What do we mean by multi-generational marketing now that we know we don't mean multilevel marketing?
Brian Jones: Basically, there are many generations of people in the marketplace, and they all respond to information differently. In the process of selling, you need to interact with multiple of these generations, and they don't all respond to the same types of information, they don't all look in the same places. And, just because somebody isn't the ultimate decision-maker right now doesn't mean that they won't be the decision-maker at some point down the road. So, all of this plays into a larger sense that you have to be seen in the places that people look, but also talk to them in the ways that they want to be spoken to. This is just a large way of grouping that under an umbrella that we call multi-generational marketing.
Patience Jones: To really be effective and to reach everybody who might be currently involved in the decision-making process, and to sort of seed you as a solution for the next generation of decision-maker, you really do need to be marketing to each of these audiences in the way that they to be marketed to, which can feel exhausting, but there are ways to do it that don't have to be as exhausting. In any organization, it is no longer the case that you can just go to the owner and then the owner makes a decision. Oftentimes, especially with RFPs, a very junior person, or even an intern, is tasked with finding a list of potential people. That list is then vetted by their supervisor. The owner then signs off on that list. When it's time to make decisions, different levels of people are involved. So, you really are trying to reach everybody, ranging from somebody who just graduated from college, to somebody who's in their 60s or 70s.
Brian Jones: Let's talk a little bit about making those decisions and how that is impacted by the different age ranges. And bear in mind, there is no 100% view. There are outliers in each group of people. We are speaking in generalities here.
Patience Jones: Yes.
Brian Jones: This is not every single person, this is not 100% a blueprint of people, but it is helpful to understand patterns and trends that do exist within generational elements in the workforce.
Patience Jones: We’re going to start with boomers. These are the people who are most likely to be in the most senior-level position, whether it's a company owner or C-suite. Boomers like to go to the source, so the website is a place they will look for information. They will also rely on printed brochures or printed catalogs. They prefer personal contact. They like phone calls. They like in-person meetings. They are not as fond of text messages or emails because they often feel like technology was foisted upon them. Unlike Gen X, who started becoming familiar with technology in high school and college, Boomers were adults when technology started to become a thing.
Brian Jones: And had already been in the workforce for a number of years.
Patience Jones: And it evolved rapidly. Generally, Boomers feel like they have a hard time keeping up. They didn't choose any of this. Other generations are putting this on them, and their bosses put this on them as cost-saving measures, and they hate it. So, again, in-person, whether it's in a phone call or an in-person meeting, that's what they like. They focus on stability, so they will continue to purchase from the same professionals or the same companies until they are given a persuasive reason not to. They have a higher tolerance for mistakes and bad service. It has to reach a tipping point before they will switch, because the disruption of that change has to be worth the resulting benefit. Trying to oust an incumbent, if you are appealing to a boomer, you have to make a very persuasive case. It can't just be, "Well, we're better at this."
Brian Jones: Or things have to be really bad.
Patience Jones: Yes. Then we have Gen X.
Brian Jones: They came into the workforce about the same time that the web was sort of coming online and so are very familiar with the inner workings of it, and feel very comfortable in that space. They are, not surprisingly, prone to self-serving and to finding information on their own. They sort of lead the charge of what the future of selling is, which is trying to get through as much of the sales process before they interact with a human being. Providing details and information for them to find out all the information that they want is incredibly important. They will also go check on what is said, and they will search through forums like Reddit to gather additional information to understand if what they're seeing presented in the marketing piece from the company matches up with people's experience.
Patience Jones: And their focus is on, does this solve the problem?
Brian Jones: Correct.
Patience Jones: It's not about, have I done business with this person for 30 years? It doesn't mean that they're disloyal. It just means that's not the thing that's leading the decision.
Brian Jones: What is really important to think about from a marketing perspective, though, is to provide those talking points, because a Gen X person may have to communicate with a Boomer in order to get the piece completed. By providing those pieces of information, you can help seed the conversation that needs to happen in order for the decision to get made.
Patience Jones: Then we have Millennials. And again, all of this is in generalities. Generally, when they're researching an option, they would avoid personal interaction. They prefer to do their research and even conduct the transaction online, and that has to do with how prevalent technology was when they were growing up and how comfortable they are with it. They also value other people's opinions, sometimes more than even the source information, because their perception tends to be that a third party has no agenda. If they get information from a third party about a company, then they can trust that information because that third party has no reason for lying or making something up. Oftentimes that is not true depending on the source, but this is the perception. They also focus on self-expression and values: does this company align with how I see myself? What is the sustainability factor of this company or this product? And they have also been acclimated to the idea of subscription services and buy now, pay later, things like Klarna, where you buy something and it's not a credit card; it's basically a payment plan, but you get the thing now, and then you pay for it over a period of months. That and subscription services have become so ubiquitous in their lifetime, that isn't even a question. That is how they would like to do business. The idea of laying out the full amount of a product price or a service price all at once is a harder thing for them to get excited about.
Brian Jones: Part of it is the relationship to owning something, but most of it is understanding that the value has to be explained. It isn't just intrinsic to you telling me that this is the brand name and therefore I have to pay more. You have to really demonstrate that more effectively, I think.
Patience Jones: That is also true, for Gen Z, which is the, at the moment, probably the youngest generation that you will need to be appealing to. They are the most familiar of all generations with AI, and they are the most likely to use AI as a search engine. If they're asked, "Come up with three architecture firms who we could invite to apply to this RFP," their go-to may very well be to ask ChatGPT.
Brian Jones: Or look on social channels, which are the search engine for that generation, and it seems so foreign, especially to maybe an older generation, but that is absolutely what's happening.
Patience Jones: Absolutely. And that dovetails with the opinions of their peers. That's a really critical factor in their decision-making. What do their peers think about this? They prefer information to be presented visually, so videos are very important. This comes not only from the rise of TikTok and how used to that presentation everyone's gotten, but also because this is the generation that was in college when COVID hit and they were learning online. They were learning through videos. Oftentimes, they had to self-teach through things like YouTube, so this is what they're most familiar with. They have, again, because of things like TikTok, according to some studies, they also have the shortest attention span of all of the generations.
Brian Jones: Which, in fairness, is not long, no matter which generation that you're in.
Patience Jones: Yes, we're not talking about the difference in like hours or even minutes, probably. But you are more likely to have a Boomer watch a minute and a half video than you are Gen Z. If they are forced to navigate through a complicated site or complicated information, they will just go elsewhere because they have many other sources where they can get information. And like the Millennials, they have really strong feelings about value. The assumption tends to be that value is in the eye of the beholder, and that price difference is due to markup and greed, not quality, craftsmanship or experience. So if your firm is more expensive than another firm, unless you explain why, a Gen Z assumption could well be that's because you just mark it up more. You're just a bigger capitalist and you're just more greedy. But if you explain, "This is why we charge more…" You know, "We pay people more. We have better benefits. We have higher overhead. We contribute to these causes." Then they can understand that.
Brian Jones:
Absolutely. I mean, one of the biggest things that we have to kind of highlight is that the goal of all of this is the same, regardless of generation: they're looking for ways to gauge trustworthiness of a source. The ways we get there will be different, but the ultimate goal is the same. That's something that can be helpful when you're thinking about it. It isn't that you're trying to communicate a different idea to different generations. You're trying to communicate the same idea to different generations. And so, the tactics and techniques may be different, but ultimately, what you're trying to do remains the same.
Patience Jones: And you don't have to do any of this. I mean, this is not a requirement. You can absolutely say, "You know what? We have a website and a brochure, and everybody gets the same everything." That is totally fine. If, however, you want to make sure you have the best opportunities for your firm, it behooves you to really think about this and think about, "How am I reaching each of these generations?" Because maybe how you communicate is very effective with Boomers and Gen X and Millennials, but it's the Gen Z people who are doing the initial culling. And if they don't know who you are or they don't care, then you're never going to make it up to that other level. It works in the reverse sometimes too, depending on the client. You may go to the owner, and the owner says, "You know what? I really love this, but I want to run it by everybody and see what they say."
Brian Jones: Yep.
Patience Jones: I hear Boomers saying all the time, " I like this, but I think I want the younger staff to look at it because they're more in touch with what's going on than I am."
Brian Jones: And think of it too as a way to gather buy-in on an idea or a piece or a choice, that you're both building up the strength of the firm by having this communication, but you're also making it more likely that people understand how a decision gets made. And that is also really beneficial.
Patience Jones: All generations need to see you as trustworthy and capable. That's really the through line.
