​Brand Amplitude President Carol Phillips explains why marketers can target Millennials and expect to see content ROI.

​Labels help marketers identify and segment their audiences into specific groups. Instead of targeting prospects by name, brands develop content marketing campaigns that resonate with Millennials. However, these buzz terms can sometimes distract creative teams from realizing how different people have become thanks to new technologies. In a recent interview, Brand Amplitude President Carol Phillips told eMarketer’s Danielle Drolet that brands should abandon the term Millennial because it’s not as inclusive as many may think.

Phillips notes that many Millennials share similar values, but across the 15-year span, consumers find themselves in different life stages, with varying education levels and specific needs. It’s foolish to think that a newlywed couple of 19-year olds have the same interests as single Americans in their late 20s, and web content strategies cannot assume the same language and tone resonates with each persona.

For brands that do cater to Millennials, Phillips emphasizes the need to segment audiences into smaller subsets to effectively deliver online content that speaks to prospects’ needs. Phillips says, “What the whole concept of Millennials does is provide you with context…you have to define who you’re talking about. Are you talking about young mothers without a college education? Those are Millennials, and there are a lot of them.”

She reiterates that life stage is often the most telling segment for marketers who work closely with creative teams​ ​when appealing to Millennials.

One channel that brands can use to learn more about their undefinable customers is social media. Sprinklr’s Jeremy Epstein says that social media monitoring reveals buyers’ true motivations. When brands actively engage with their audiences via Twitter and Facebook, they can better define the content that elicits responses from their varying audience subsets. If marketers are struggling to understand how their Millennial customer base differs, they can look to social for further guidance.

Ted Karczewski is an Executive Communications Associate at Brafton. He works to develop his own voice and apply his passions to the evolving world of SEO and content marketing, but he doesn't shy away from writing for fun. After graduating from Suffolk University, Ted used his Communications degree to test out Sports Journalism before Marketing at Brafton.