What Wedding Planners Can Teach Businesses About Millennials

What Wedding Planners Can Teach Businesses About Millennials?

The first thing that comes to my mind is that as Wedding Planners we market primarily to a group that frightens many businesses. Fear comes from not taking the effort to understand something that we don’t know well. 

I have fallen in love with Millennials as a wedding planner and not out of necessity. I admire their thirst for research, their excellent BS meter, their ability to see a much broader picture, and their love of authenticity.

They have access to more information and more rapidly than any previous generation. Not since the 1960s has there been a generation that is more in tune with the state of the world. The more educated Millennials have a great sense of deciphering what is the truth and what is not. 

Authenticity is a word you will hear often from a millennial. They appreciate the real McCoy. They want someone who talks the talk and walks the walk. They will come right up to you and tell you that they admire something about you. I find that it’s usually about the quality of volunteering to make the world a better place or leadership qualities. They don’t want to be talked at. They want to have a conversation. 

People have tagged Millennials as lazy. Can you think of any generation that hasn’t been accused of such along with the generalization that they don’t show any respect? They might not have the same ambitions as their parents did because they learned from what happened to their parents. They saw them work hard only to be discarded through outsourcing or downsizing. Who would want to duplicate those events for themselves?  This leads to Millennials putting a higher priority on seeking employment that is meaningful in a worker-friendly atmosphere. They also had helicopter parents and were also given awards equally just for participating. Those things alone don’t make anyone feel appreciated or confident and leave something missing within themselves. With most of them coming from families where both parents worked, you see them eager to spend quality time with their kids. It’s something they didn’t have. Their parents were working and they were kept so busy with various activities. The pendulum always swings in the opposite direction from what people experience with the previous generation. Usually, it is about time or money. Two of the most valued commodities of which one is usually scarce. 

Millennials often say that their favorite past time is to just hang out at home. With real the wages being stagnant for decades, sometimes that is their only choice. More of their income is going to necessities and as a rule, they are frugal 

If you want to market to Millennials, make it an experience that contributes to their sense of making the world a better place. Pairing up with a charity that blends in with what your business does. Again, if it looks like you are partnering with the trending cause, but it isn’t congruent with what you do as your business, the BS meter’s dial is reaching its maximum reading.

Janis Flagg of Greatest of Days is available locally to give a presentation on marketing to Millennials to business organizations.

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