Winning the Profitable Teen Customer Demographic

Some businesses might have an advantage if their services or products appeal to teenagers. Teens have disposable income and they like to spend it. If you can grab this demographic, you may find intensely loyal, enthusiastic customers.

Tapping into the teen market can be a way to jump-start

your business. But make sure you learn how to speak to this audience. While teens are quick to let peers know what is new and cutting-edge, this same group can just as easily tell everyone they know that a product just doesn’t cut it. Make sure you, your product, and your message are as authentic as can be.

Grabbing Their Attention

Today's teens are multitaskers, which means you have to try harder to get them to pay attention to your message. Your message has to grab their attention quickly and effectively. Teens love technology, and they are early adopters. So use it to your advantage. Offer them something they really want, like a free music or video download that will entice them to look at your ad and want to know more. If you’re targeting tweens (short for the age group “in between” childhood and teens), think about offering a game they can play that will get them hooked and coming back to your site again and again.

Using Social Networking

Don’t overlook the power of social networking sites in your marketing plan. Make a place for your business on MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. Teens frequent these sites, and if you can gain their attention, you can create some serious buzz for your business. If you continually add content to your site, they’ll come back repeatedly. Facebook has an advertising plan that targets users by subject matter they post on their profiles, so check it out to see where your business fits into the advertising equation.

In addition, both MySpace and Facebook let users become fans of advertisers, so if you advertise on these social networks and your product is desirable, you'll get a group of fans that you can use to target your marketing efforts. Ask them what they like about your products and why they’re fans, and you’ll get invaluable marketing information. Ask them to fill out a survey about your marketing efforts and offer a desirable prize, and you'll get even more information you can use to market to teens.

Making It Funny

Teens are savvy about online advertising; they won’t click on a banner just because it’s there. If you can make your advertising funny and amusing, it will generate buzz and produce more hits to your ads as teens pass them along to their friends. Teens don’t like spam and pop-ups any more than the rest of the online community, so avoid these types of ads in your teen marketing campaign.

Avoiding E-mail

Although there have been some very creative and successful e-mail marketing campaigns aimed at teens, most e-mail to teens will end up in the deleted file or even more likely go unread. To communicate with each other, teens text message; they tend to leave the e-mailing to adults.