June 27, 2024
NEW YORK, N.Y. – What’s the best way to get your brand in front of Gen Z buyers? It’s a question that Prosper Show speaker Samantha Evans (pictured upper left) heard a lot from Prosper Show attendees in Las Vegas. As director of Operations at New York-based Envision Horizons, Evans has focused her attention on the 18- to 26-year-old demographic, a subset of digital natives who are savvy and occasionally skeptical.
Tristan Williams (pictured lower left), a senior content strategist at Envision, has bolstered intuitions with real evidence, putting together a Gen Z marketing research study and compiling the data. The Prosper Show Newsletter sat down with Evans and Williams to get a better idea about how to win the fickle war of Gen Z attention.
Prosper Show: What should sellers know about Gen Z?
Evans: Gen Z has a pretty short attention span. According to an IAB UK article, it’s only eight seconds. They like short-form videos, but despite that attention span they do take their time to research and make sure that the product they’re purchasing—whether it’s low- or high-priced, is the best option.
Prosper Show: Where are they looking and researching?
Evans: Seventy-two percent of Gen Z report that TikTok is where they find most of the new products they purchase. Sixty-six percent report watching YouTube videos to find products. Only then are they going to Amazon to check the reviews. Amazon is not where they’re starting the purchase journey. They are starting on social media.
Prosper Show: Just to clarify, what’s the age range?
Evans: Gen Z are currently about 11 to 26 years old right now. Born between the mid 90s to the early 2010s. With that said, the study that we conducted was the 18 to 26 range. We did not include the 11 to 17-year-olds of the generation because they don’t have the spending power quite yet.
Prosper Show: What are some of the surprising data points that the research uncovered?
Williams: We tried to uncover shopping behaviors on Amazon specifically. One question was, ‘How long do you spend assessing a product on Amazon before you buy it?’ We split this up into different price tiers. We were really shocked that for products under $25, 42% of Gen Z respondents said that they spend a few days researching the product. We thought that for cheaper products it would be an instant purchase—at least that’s how I use Amazon. That was surprising to us.
Forty-three percent of Gen Z said they spend a few days researching products over $50. So whether the purchase is small or larger, they are doing their due diligence. They did report that price is something that’s extremely important to them.
Prosper Show: How concerned are you about the TikTok ‘ban-or-sell’ bill signed by Biden?
Williams: We know that we’re going to have to be flexible and adapt quickly to whatever happens in the space. As a consumer and a user of TikTok, I am concerned. I love TikTok and I don’t want it to get banned. It will be interesting to see whatever new platform emerges if that happens.
Prosper Show: Did your research confirm that TikTok was the platform of choice for Gen Z?
Williams: As far as data points in the survey, that was the platform that Gen Z reported they are using the most to discover new products. Seventy-two percent said that they use TikTok to discover new products over Google or Amazon.
Prosper Show: What’s your sense of how that compares to millennials?
Williams: We did a millennial shopping behaviors report after this Gen Z report, and that was one of the most drastic changes in stats. We had similar questions, and millennials aren’t using TikTok for product discovery the way that Gen Z is.
Prosper Show: I spoke to Dakota Morse (article here) and Paul Barron (article here) and they thought that Instagram was losing steam. Do you agree?
Williams: Gen Z and millennials are both still actively using Instagram. It’s just less of a platform for product discovery. Instagram lets you purchase things in-app as well, but it’s nothing compared to TikTok Shop, so that’s a big differentiator.
Evans: Within our survey, although the most popular platform for Gen Z to find products was on TikTok, 61% said they use Instagram to do so, which is still quite significant.
Prosper Show: What types of differences (if any) do you see between creators and influencers?
Williams: I blend the two together in my mind. I think creators are anyone who is publishing content on a platform like TikTok or Instagram. Influencers I see as having millions of followers and the posts that they create are more influential in that way.
The interesting thing about TikTok, and with TikTok Shop, is that we’re seeing creators with 100 followers on the platform publish videos promoting items and linking to TikTok Shop. That video could randomly go viral and get millions of views, and this creator could get a huge payout from that affiliate link. It can be sporadic and random with the algorithm, and having a certain number of followers is not as big of an indicator as it is with platforms like Instagram, where it’s really clear cut.
On TikTok you sometimes see creators with millions of followers and they post videos promoting products, and the algorithm just doesn’t pick it up—and it’s not selling to people as much. The return on investment there is a much wider range. And then you could get really lucky with small creators whose video randomly gets millions of views, even though they only have a few followers. The algorithm is a lot different than a lot of other social platforms.
Prosper Show: In 2024, how powerful are influencers in the eyes of Gen Z?
Evans: Gen Z is still very much responding to influencers. Amazon just signed a $100 million dollar deal with MrBeast, for example, who started as a YouTuber. With such a giant company making this investment, and new influencer agencies popping up every day, it’s clear to me that working with influencers is paying off.
Williams: I agree. Anecdotally I can say that influencers are still big, but Gen Z is becoming more skeptical. Even their favorite creators or influencers could post an advertisement, but if it’s boring and/or clearly a plug, they’re not going for that anymore. Instead they are valuing really thoughtful content.
Creators who are going above and beyond to put a ton of work into their content are seeing huge results, and it is really resonating with Gen Z audiences. The creators who are just throwing up a video saying, ‘Buy this hair treatment because I like it’ are not seeing results anymore because platforms are over-saturated with ads.
Prosper Show: What types of real-world examples have you seen?
Evans: We had a very successful influencer marketing campaign with a fragrance brand. The brief to creators/influencers was; Here’s a sampler of all the fragrances. Please speak openly about how you feel about them, when you would use them, etc. When influencers and creators are being honest and organic and saying, ‘This one wasn’t my favorite’ or ‘Here’s what I liked or didn’t like about something,’ that resonates so much stronger in making the creator more relatable and trustworthy. It’s more authentic than the ones who are very clearly being given a script.
Prosper Show: Is there a big mistake maybe that marketers make when targeting Gen Z?
Williams: I think it’s the script piece that Samantha spoke about. We’ve had multiple cases where clients wanted all of their product information relayed in the video. They have a script. They have talking points that are really specific and the influencers were coming back to us and saying, ‘My audience is not going to watch this. They’re going to scroll right past it. They know that this is not my content, because it’s way too much.’
The influencers were right. They know their audience and they know the platform. They are active on TikTok. They know what the algorithm likes and what it does not like. Trust the creators you work with and give them flexibility and creative freedom. It will help your brands create content that’s going to resonate with consumers. When brands go in with too clear of a directive, and are not flexible in listening to creators, it’s usually not a partnership that’s going to be super successful.
Evans: I would add that brands need to be careful about how they select their influencers, and not just look at follower count and engagement metrics. Start with a search for your own brand. Who is already talking about your products organically? They are going to be your strongest influencers, even if they have fewer followers. If they are already interested in your brand, when you do a partnership with them, it’s automatically going to be more authentic. They’ll get the engagement.
Prosper Show: What about product videos and reviews on Amazon?
Evans: Seventy-one percent of our Gen Z respondents reported that product videos and reviews on Amazon were important to them and influenced their purchasing decision.
Recent Comments