For many marketing managers, cultivating a brand takes time.
When marketing to the coveted millennials audience, however, things can move rapidly.
How should you handle a whirlwind of customers’ demands, “likes” and shares? Founders of the daily newsletter theSkimm say it’s about striking a balance with your content and “being honest about the way you advertise to them.”
During TechCrunch’s Disrupt NY conference, theSkimm founders Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin discussed how they expanded their brand from a few hundred subscriptions to 3.5 million subscribers worldwide—more than the number of digital New York Times subscribers.
Here are two tips from the content creators turned branding experts about how to grab the attention of a younger audience:
1. Make the most of word-of-mouth marketing
TheSkimm’s fast-paced growth started with grassroots marketing.
“We are often asked how we have grown theSkimm and our user-base,” the organization’s blog states. “The answer is word of mouth. When we first took in our seed funding, we intentionally made our first hire a reader. Her mandate was simple: We have all these people writing in and calling themselves ‘Skimm’bassadors’, help us turn this into something.”
Creating a successful brand ambassador program started as a simple email blast: “Will you share this product/your experience with five friends?”
The answer was a resounding “yes,” and it turned into 13,000 dedicated brand stewards.
As millennials tend to be active online, word-of-mouth marketing in this situation worked. The product was also digital, which made sharing it as easy as copying, pasting and clicking “send.”
[RELATED: How to attract—and keep—a millennial workforce.]
Here’s more from the blog on how to build a brand ambassador:
We had 80 Skimm’bassadors and a lot of people asking how they could become one. We thought about our goal for the program: Grow theSkimm base organically, develop a community [and] give back to those individuals who have helped us get this far. We opened up the program, changed the user flow [and] started providing more and more resources.
2. Balance your brand’s digital presence
The product began as a daily news roundup that was emailed to subscribers. After swarms of millennials became interested in theSkimm’s headline-driven approach to news consumption, it has become something larger.
From TechCrunch:
The platform includes the daily newsletter, the Daily Skimm, as well as the Skimm Ahead, Skimm the Vote, and Skimm Guides such as what to look up on Snapchat, a brief on the Panama Papers or what the Kardashians are up to. And the material seems to be hitting the right nerve with young professionals…with a hint of the duo’s irreverent editorial wit.
Offering subscribers something that’s relatable in its approach and diverse in its content appeals to a wide audience. Its balance makes the brand’s content—ranging from pop culture to foreign affairs and political news—more likely to be shared.
Bonus: An additional revenue stream
If your organization doesn’t have an app, perhaps it’s time to consider launching one. For theSkimm, it proved to be another way to make money.
“[The] app adds a second source of revenue for the company by charging $2.99 per month to keep subscribers updated on the latest events and what’s about to hit Netflix,” TechCrunch reports.
For the brand’s founders, creating an app was about meeting younger consumers during their personal time and incorporating the product into those moments.
“Looking at your phone is the new definition of ‘me time’,” founder Danielle Weisberg says. “We want theSkimm to make the news easier on your time.”
What about you, Raganreaders? What approaches have you adopted to keep up with millennials?
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