How to Leverage Social Media to Capture Gen Z Customers in 2020

Today social media has taken over all aspects of human life, especially business. With more than a whopping 3 billion active users around the world, it can provide an unprecedented audience reach with Gen Z.

Of course, social media marketing isn’t as simple as posting some pictures/videos. Numerous marketers have wasted time and money on social media without a good ROI.

So, you need to build a strong social media strategy to make sure your investment will benefit you. This needs quite a bit of expertise to create a brand identity on social media and increase your online sales.

One of the most important matters in this regard is to exactly target your potential customers on social networks. You can’t expect to throw out arbitrary content and gain followers. Generating leads using a social account and converting them into sales is not an easy task at all.

Sorting target audiences based on their age, gender, location, position, etc. is paramount for your marketing. Gen Z has bought products/services online, especially via searching on social media, more than any other generation. Therefore, it is a great target group among all audience categories. They are young and they want to experience everything so they can be your customers if you could successfully reach out to them.

In this article, we’re going to describe how you can encourage Gen Z to purchase your products/services.

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What Is Gen Z?

Generation Z comprises anyone born in the late 1990s and early 2000s and is after millennial generation which is made up of everyone born between 1981 and 1996. Therefore, this young generation is now less than 25 years old.

An important aspect of this generation is that they were born after booming the internet and digital technology and are vastly using social media. Although every person at every age can easily use smartphones and social media, Gen Z is exceptional since they have grown with the internet and particularly social media.

What does Gen Z want?

Recognizing the personality traits of potential customers is a must for every marketer. This is more serious when it comes to selling to Gen Z. As a marketer who wants to target this generation, you need to speak to them with their own language.

In fact, you need to consider both the left and the right sides of the customers’ brains. The left side is responsible for logical tasks and, in contrast, the right side is in charge of emotional decisions. You need to know what they think and what they feel to be able to provide them with.

Here are some important things Gen Z wants:

1.  They want to decide for themselves

According to a lot of researches, this generation wants to find brands that are aligned with their personal characteristics. In other words, they do not want to obey their previous generations’ choices. So, they seek more personalized and unique products/services to bolden their differences from others, especially elders.

So you need to revise your content generation such that social users, especially Gen Z, feel they are part of your story. Your products/services must be marketed such that they are made in response to their needs. This can help you make them feel comfortable with you.

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2.  They want to share personal moments

It is well-established that Gen Z is more sociable via social media experiences, although they’re serious about their privacy. Actually, you can see this trait in many teenagers around you.

They’re willing to share their personal moments on social media if they consider the group trustworthy. They might have less face-to-face friends compared with the previous generations. But they have certainly more friends online and on different social networking channels.

3.  They want to save the planet

Several decades ago many people just used to think about industrialization and modernization. Now, environmental issues are the top concern of the world.

Fortunately, due to the unprecedented press covering climate change, air pollution, and animal extinction, the youngsters’ top priority is the earth.

You can’t ignore this fact in your marketing. So, try to make your content eco-friendly and give the Gen Z a say in these issues. This can greatly help you to gain their trust and increase your engagement rates.

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What Apps Does Gen Z Use?

One of the most important stages in social media marketing after identifying your target audience is to choose the right networks.

Here are 10 top social media platforms with some of their bold characteristics:

It is obvious that the more active users a platform has, the better. But you need to know that the distribution of users on these platforms is also very important. For example, more than 40 percent of TikTok users are between 16 and 24 years old.

So, if you have a business-related to this group, you can’t ignore this app. It is based on video content which is greatly loved by Gen Z. Although Facebook is the top social network, TikTok is the top downloaded app from the App Store. In fact, it is the fastest-growing app among Gen Z and is the best medium for building brand awareness among them. It is mainly about short video creation and sharing and has risen from nothing since 2016.

Also, other multimedia-based networks like YouTube and Instagram are other choices of Gen Z for finding cool brands. Generally speaking, Gen Z is more inclined to watch videos rather than pictures or texts.

Of course, you might not have the time to create accounts on all of them, especially if you’re a beginner. Many brands are therefore using social escrow services to acquire and customize new accounts.

More importantly, you need to take care of your content since Gen Z doesn’t have the time to read texts to learn about something. They just want to watch something cool that is also informative. So, if you have a business related to teenagers, you need to think of generation video posts as much as you can.

What Kind of Influencers Does Gen Z Follow?

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective means of building brand awareness on social media. A lot of marketers believe that the ROI of influencer marketing is higher than that of any other marketing strategy.

It is said that the majority of the Gen Z population purchase based on a piece of advice from

• Close friends whom they know from school, neighborhood, etc.
• Social friends whom they know online
• Family members and relatives
• Influencers 

Influencers have a great effect on the products or brands they choose. This is a great opportunity to build your brand awareness and generate leads.

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Influencers can be categorized into four types:

1. Mega-influencers: celebrities and public figures who have more than 1 million followers
2. Macro-influencers: accounts with less than 1 million followers who have gained fame using the internet and social media 
3. Micro-influencers: niche experts who have less than 100,000 followers but are highly engaged
4. Nano-influencers: common social users with less than 5,000 followers who can be your friends, teachers, colleagues, etc.

Obviously, collaborating with the first two groups or sometimes the third one will cost you a lot. So, it is recommended to think of finding trusted nano-influencers even if they don’t have a lot of followers.

Many times, Nano-influencers who’ve tried your products/services are willing to recommend your brand to their friends. They won’t charge you a lot and their posts don’t seem like an advertisement. They are “organic” influencers and, fortunately, they can significantly influence Gen Z.

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In fact, user-generated content by these kinds of influencers is the best way of affecting Gen Z. Especially when the influencer is of their own age and position, they will trust in them and purchase your products/services. So, try to reach out and encourage them to be your brand advocates.

Then, if you have a marketing budget, you can think of working with micro-influencers. Based on a report by Social Tradia, many influencers on Instagram, are fake and want to sell the Instagram account. Try to find trusted influencers using valid sources like

• Awario
• BuzzSumo
• Heepsy
• Klear
• Traackr

Many tools like NeoReach also provide you with worldwide influencer marketing campaigns which will be your next stage.

Final Word

Currently, Gen Z might be the most important group active on social media. We tried to describe some important personality traits of this group and accordingly, several aspects of social media marketing. Of course, you need to study more about other characteristics of Gen Z to be able to convert them to your customers.