When you’re generating leads these days, most are going to come from older, more established adults. Starting from their later thirties through their 60s and 70s, most leads today come from homeowners who didn’t grow up using the internet. But in a few years, many of their millennial children will become home owners and start looking to improve those homes. What will that generation look like from a lead generation perspective?
The Internet is happy to tell you everything that’s different about millennials, from their dietary habits to their musical tastes, but for our purposes there’s only one thing you need to know: younger people tend to get their reviews from different sources than your older customers.
Specifically, millennials are starting to shy away from review sites like Yelp and Angie’s List, instead preferring to get their reviews from social media. This is just in the beginning stages right now, and seems to be confined to millenials. Despite the importance of reviews for SEO and directories, there may be a shift coming where the early thirties generation goes to Twitter and Facebook to try to find providers first.
Why? In part, the proliferation of obviously fake reviews on sites like Yelp is a turn-off for tech-savvier customers who can spot them. These users have a more discerning eye towards reviews and don’t like feeling “gamed” by fake reviews. They’ve grown up with social media accounts and are more comfortable with their network’s thoughts, rather than the general public’s opinions.
This change is not going to happen overnight, so don’t abandon Yelp and start writing elaborate responses to every post that mentions your business on Tumblr, but you do need to be aware of the slow and steady increase of importance placed on social media reviews.
Especially since it takes a long time to figure out what exactly Tumblr is for.
Image Credit: Romain Toornier
It’s easy to not notice changes when they happen so gradually. Ten years ago, no one thought we’d be doing so many searches on mobile phones. Yet here we are, and the changing nature of how millennials get their referrals is worth paying attention to.
