Adolescents and young people may have a bad reputation in the world of research. Researchers often don’t know how to approach and engage with them, and thanks to their notoriously short attention spans, it’s no surprise that researchers can find it difficult to target younger generations and ever more. -May even have to contend with low response rates.
However, Millennials and Generation Z are the influencers of tomorrow, so it’s really important that we find a way to reach them – and luckily the rise of social media over the past decade has allowed researchers to do just that! Read on to discover our top four tips to help you recruit youth through social media for your qualitative market research
1. Use Targeted Social Media Campaigns for Optimal Performance
We have been very vocal about how much we rate targeted social media campaigns in our last few blogs and how beneficial they can be to recruiting qualitative market research. Using Facebook, researchers can target people based on demographic information, such as their age, gender, lifestyle, relationship status, job title, and more, such as location, page likes, brand preferences, and buying behaviour. Can also target based on specific things. It’s one of the best ways to reach people based on specific criteria – so if you’re looking for women aged 18-25 who live in Liverpool, love to shop and regularly share their iPhone reads fashion blogs on Facebook, they’ll find it! This means you can reach respondents no matter what type of participant you are looking for – and it will also give you an estimated audience size, so you know how many people you are potentially reaching.
2. Clearly explain the benefits of participating
No matter how bad their representative may be, the truth is that the younger generation really cares about the world and wants to make a difference. For example, 42% of Millennials are interested in helping companies develop the products of the future – which is not surprising since their age group is known as the ‘why’ generation who like to collaborate, want to know what is the end goal of things and most importantly, want to know why it can benefit people.
This means that if you want to encourage youth to participate in your market research, you need to include a clear overview of your study, what the end goal is and clearly state why it should be posted on social sites and how can people benefit while doing it? Millennials want to deal with brands that match their personalities and share similar values – so gain their trust by giving them as much information as you can about yourself and making sure your social media posts reflect your personality. You can’t go too wrong!
3. Make Sure Your Posts Are Interesting
Reaching the Millennial population requires a tailored approach with an emphasis on digital. This generation is very much engaged; They love Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest – so you should make sure you include photos and videos in your posts to capture their attention.
Additionally, because they are used to digesting information immediately, the attention span of this ‘Snapchat’ generation is very short – meaning you have just 8-12 seconds to catch their interest. Basically, if you want young people to stand up and pay attention to your ad, you need to make sure it stands out! By making your ad a bit exciting and interesting, you will not only have a better chance of grabbing their attention initially, but it will also keep them interested and engaged in research. Here are some key points to get you started:
· Sure, it’s interesting to watch
· Include photos and videos where you can
· Keep it short and sweet
· Ensure that it stands out
4. Make sure you post on all platforms
Yes, Facebook is the most famous social media recruitment tool for market researchers, but don’t forget to post on all other platforms as well. Instagram has 1 billion monthly users, 61% of whom are in the age group of 18-34, which makes it a really useful platform to reach young people, while Snapchat has over 300 million monthly users, 78% of whom Are 18-24 years old. Twitter is still popular with younger generations as well, with 335 million monthly users, of whom Twitter itself says 80% are ‘rich millennials’ – and don’t forget Pinterest, which has over 200 million monthly active users and it is a women-centric platform. It only takes a few minutes of your time to post across the board and can get some good participants – so what are you waiting for? It’s time to get posting!
In conclusion, social media provides the modern researcher with a powerful tool from target recruitment to feasibility testing. Using targeted marketing allows you to target specific audiences more accurately than ever, so you can be certain that your research will reach the right people, and Gen Z’s propensity to share on social media makes it possible to reach larger numbers than ever.
Whether it is about relevant rules and regulations or selecting the right methodology, our expert team of qualitative market researchers works with kids and youth. If you need more information on how to conduct qualitative market research with children and youth, please visit our website at www.philomathresearch.com
