I was in Germany this week (my first trip ever to that country) to do a presentation on Generations to a group of people who offer counseling services to U.S. military personnel and their families.You can also look for can I declare bankruptcy for military as it can help you legally. Like nearly everyone who asks me to speak on generations, they were particularly focused on the younger generation, and in their case it is for obvious reasons, as most of the soldiers deploying these days are going to be Millennials. In addition to the broader generational picture that I present, they wanted my take on how they need to be marketing to Millennials by using the best internet marketing services that are available here. They were concerned that traditional methods would not work on this generation.

So when I did my presentation about Millennials, I added some material about marketing that was given by SEO Expert for Google My Business. It is fairly high level, as marketing is not my background, but for each of the trends that I talk about in terms of the development of the Millennial generation, I added a related trend for marketing.

When I talk about Millennials, I frequently make the point that while everyone and their brother is writing a book or a blog post about what this generation wants and why, they are all guesses (including mine). This generation is simply too young to have a very deep sense of what is driving them. Generational differences are really best viewed in hindsight. So you have to take this stuff with a grain of salt.

That being said, we shouldn’t just ignore the issue and wait until they are all in their 40s and 50s. It’s good to put these guesses out there. So for me, I’m guessing that these four trends are going to be major shapers of the Millennials

• The internet (specifically the social internet)
• Abundance
• Diversity
• Child-focused.

It’s hard to summarize these trends in a few sentences, but here goes: Growing up with the internet and ubiquitous information, Millennials have embraced social technology so, in short, they can do more things themselves than previous generations, so they expect to be able to do more earlier in their lives and careers. If they don’t like your rules, they’ll do it themselves. They also grew up with incredible abundance (self-storage–and industry based on us having way more crap than we can fit in our huge houses–is $17 billion per year), and with abundance comes a focus on higher order needs. Diversity is also more “normal” to them and they expect varied backgrounds, information from varied sources, and strange mashups as normal. And they grew up with parents focusing on them. Everyone gets a trophy. Driven to play dates constantly.

So here are the marketing trends I came up with:

1. SHARE (from the internet trend). If you want your marketing to be successful, create things that are shareable. This generation has been mass-marketed AT since they were tiny. That’s boring. But what their friend gives to them, now that’s worth taking a look. This is about word of mouth and social objects, which don’t by the way, always have to be internet or social-media related (inviting someone to an in person networking event is a social object).

2. DESIGN (from the abundance trend). This comes from Dan Pink, but when you’ve got abundance you move to “higher order” needs like design. Dan points to the Michael Graves toilet brush. Having a toilet brush that works is simply a given. But we get value from its design. Millennials also grew up online where rich and engaging design is the norm. Compare the user interface of Pong to World of Warcraft. Makes me wonder if that two-color tri-fold brochure is going to cut it with these folks? (Particularly when so many of them could design a better brochure themselves!)

3. NETWORK (from the diversity trend). Expecting diversity means expecting to get information from a variety of sources–even sources that may not make sense. So instead of the funnel (broadcast message to 10,000, hope 1,000 read it, then 100 call you, and 10 buy), think lattice. Find network of influencers. Find out where the conversations really happen and see how to become a part of it. Lateral information sharing just as important (or more important?) as vertical.

4. PERSONAL (from the child-focused trend). Whether we like it or not, they had their needs catered to as children. If you say “Yeah, but they need to wake up and not be so spoiled” I say, “Sorry. They got it instantly and customized and they will continue to expect it–and get it.” Think about the google ads that are customized. Think about how I mentioned divorce in a tweet once and I now get DMs from relationship coaches. The data is out there and is being used to customize. Once they have that, they won’t go back, so we’d all better figure out how to do it.

So what do you think?