Get Ready for a Millennials Onslaught
You may have started to notice something a little different around your business lately. It was hard to pick up at first considering you haven’t done anything differently. But then it hits you! Your customers have changed. A significant portion of these customers want different things from you, things that you have not really done in the past or if you have you certainly have not perfected them. These new customers are millennials and they have different expectations from the companies they do business with.
So, who are these millennials? Although there is no definitive consensus, a typical definition is that 
millennials are people born after 1980 and before 2000. This means this generation is somewhere between 17 and 37 years of age. They are late teenagers and young adults. This makes millennials the new generation of customers for the million or so businesses in Canada. And they are a big group quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with. The 2011 “Census of Population” from Statistics Canada showed that 27% of the population were millennials and according to the Intergenerational Survey completed by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) in February of 2016 a panel of small and medium business owners estimated that 18% of their customer base were from this younger age group. While generation X and baby boomers continued to dominate their customer base at 35% and 34% respectively, millennials are large and getting larger.
What sets millennials apart from their older counterparts is they have grown up with mobile technologies and social media pervasive in their lives. Many aspects of their lives are influenced by and documented to their social networks which are always close at hand and accessible on their devices. This unique consumer behaviour is not without impacts to business owners. The same BDC survey shows that 78% of small and medium businesses have noticed a difference in consumer behaviour between the different age groups and 59% felt they needed to at least moderately adapt their business to millennials. And here is what they have done to adapt, according to the BDC:
- Developed an online presence
- Made their online presence mobile friendly
- Interacted electronically more frequently with customers
- Opened online businesses
- Conducted electronic marketing such as personalized offers or social media ads
- Provided faster service with quicker responses
- Lowered prices
- Hired younger employees and assigned them to younger customers
As you can likely tell, the majority of the actions taken by these adaptable companies focus heavily on contemporary technologies. With the millennial generation poised to make up a higher portion of consumer activity in the years to come it would stand to reason that small companies will 
need to sharpen their skills with respect to e-business, social networking, online marketing and other internet based technologies.
A useful first step is to complete either a formal or informal survey of your customers to see the make up of your clientele. This will give you a good indication of how urgently you need to make the types of changes described above. It is inevitable that you will need to eventually make some changes but if your survey suggests you have a year or two to prepare then all the better. Having some runway to make a great adaptation plan will help you in the long run but it is important not to delay. Millennials are already buying your products or are using your services and at some point in the near future they will make up the largest portion of your customer base.
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