Millennials Buy with Logic. Gen Z Buys with EMOTION

Sean Weisbrot: Welcome back to another episode of the We Live To Build podcast. Today I am talking with Catina Soko. She is the co-founder and chief business development officer for Post A Plan App, a platform for helping companies manage their social media and marketing. We talked about. How Gen Z is different and how you need to pay attention to them, and what are the things that your company should be thinking about when trying to engage with them.

Sean Weisbrot: In the beginning of the episode, I was maybe a little bit harsh with her, but only because I was trying to get the best out of her. Towards the middle and the end of the conversation, you'll get the feeling that it's a lot more friendly and conversational. While it's not a very long episode, I believe it's about 20 minutes of recording.

Sean Weisbrot: Why don't we have you tell everyone what you do right now and. What makes you a good person to talk about this topic?

Katerina: Thank you for inviting me. I'm really excited to be here. So my name is Kate. I'm a chief business development officer and co-founder of Post Plan, a smart social media and messenger marketing platform that allows users to create, schedule and promote their content on social media and messengers.

Sean Weisbrot: Why did you feel like social media and content was important?

Katerina: Well, content was always important and probably for brands, for businesses, it's the main, uh, source where the budget should be put on because customers can always feel whether the content is real, whether the content is a high quality, and you should really pay attention to the content.

Sean Weisbrot: It is a very saturated market. For these kinds of services, especially B2B SaaS, what is it specifically that makes your company different?

Katerina: Well, we are building a marketing automation platform that's not only about, uh, content scheduling and content management. It's more about marketing in general and automation marketing. So, um. It would really be helpful for small business owners to develop and build a marketing campaign themselves without spending like thousand and hundreds of thousand dollars on that.

Katerina: Uh, this platform would help them. To create content, make it really nice to find their target audience and, uh, promote their content to their target audience.

Sean Weisbrot: So how can a company find their target audience?

Katerina: The company should analyze their product first. And then they should analyze their target audience.

Katerina: Who would need that? What is the age, uh, of their customers? What is their relocation, what they are worried about, what do they need? It is really important for brand when they analyze their target audience to show that they know what is worried about, right, and to show that they can really help them.

Katerina: So not just something what is on surface. But something deeper. What could help them?

Sean Weisbrot: Once they identify who the target audience is, how do they figure out how to understand them at a deeper level?

Katerina: Are different ways to analyze, and usually you would have customer's feedback about your product or about the product of your competitors.

Katerina: The next really important stage, analyzing your competitors to not copy them, but to see. Previous customer experience with product, which is like yours. So you can see what they are worried about, what they're asking about, what they liked or what they didn't like, right? So you could check the reviews and stuff and then you can build your product like that.

Katerina: So I would say it's really important to get feedback of users and customers. About product like that.

Sean Weisbrot: So if a company is trying to develop a content strategy and manage marketing and create automations for all of that, it sounds like the stage we're talking about is one in which they may not have a platform yet, or they may not have users yet.

Katerina: Yeah. So if you are asking about like developing a content strategy and when you know your users, right, when you know your target audience, their needs and worries. You should have a target, like a point or aim with your content. What are you trying to achieve with this content? So first, when brand starts, probably you need to let users know about your brand.

Katerina: So they should know about your product and they might not be aware even about the problem they have. So in the. Like stage, you should bring this point that probably they might have the problem and there is a product which could solve it. So first they know about your product, then they get interested and like they trust your product.

Katerina: Then they are purchasing it and like trying. It is the third step. And at the last step, they love your product, they're ready to recommend it, share, and stay with you all the time. So I would describe it like that. And according to these steps, I would create a content plan.

Sean Weisbrot: So let's go deeper into the content and the strategy based on this target audience.

Sean Weisbrot: You were mentioning off air about Gen Z is different than millennials, is different than boomers. And how can a company know the right channel to approach for their content strategy based on the generation of user that they're targeting?

Katerina: You can analyze who your target audience is and what is their age, and uh, gen Z.

Katerina: A huge buyer's generation, so probably products should focus on them. And it is really hard because it has been changing because before the buyer customer journey changed and it became really short, like. From few weeks till now, like few seconds or even like few minutes when uh, somebody could see something on social media, like had few seconds to check your page and then analyze and decide if they need it or not.

Katerina: If they're gonna follow and like, look what is gonna be next, or just skip it.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. So why do you think there's this huge difference between. The way people think about these products and, and how they make their decisions.

Katerina: Millennials are more likely to analyze, like data analytics, I mean numbers, right?

Katerina: And they need more time to analyze. If we talk about Gen Z, they are more about. Emotional marketing and like emotional purchases. So they are more about to buy something from a brand they follow, and if this brand brings some emotions to them and specific value, not just something what is on surface, right?

Katerina: But something what could create the feeling that like, oh, they understand me, uh, they, they know what I did, so I will most likely buy it.

Sean Weisbrot: Why do you think there's this psychological difference between these two generations?

Katerina: I belong to Generation Z and we were born at the time when you started creating your personal brand from the second you joined social media.

Katerina: Everyone was talking about marketing and you didn't realize that you were analyzing competitors. Different social media pages. You are analyzing brands and it's already like everywhere. So we were born at that time when it was easy to share your opinion to like thousand of people, and you could see that it had a huge influence.

Sean Weisbrot: I had a computer in my home when I was six, and that was lucky. My first phone I was 17 and smartphones didn't exist until I was like 21, 22. I feel like my generation, we are much more used to like, I'll believe what I can see, what I can taste, what I can touch. Right. We're much more like, if I'm gonna meet you, I wanna meet you and shake your hand where Gen Z, I feel like is born with a phone in their hands.

Sean Weisbrot: I feel like they have a life that exists in the internet where our generation, we have a life and then there's the internet.

Katerina: Yeah, I agree with you, especially now, uh, you know about this. I was thinking when I was at the university, I would like trust everything what I see online. Right when you search for some information, like I thought it was really reliable and then it happened like yeah, of course.

Katerina: Like we could find something and we could share that, and I would most more likely to trust something what I see online then like if somebody on the street would tell me so, and then like when you realize that these websites and this information is created by people like we are, and nobody checks it.

Katerina: There is the problem on social media, on the internet. People, especially Generation Z, they, they trust everything. What they see online.

Sean Weisbrot: It's really not a good idea to just trust anything that you see. And it's really important to do research. Five years ago, I would've just read the news, and if it felt like a website that seemed legitimate, you would trust it, right?

Sean Weisbrot: Mm-hmm. But now you have to go, well, who owns? This website. And then when you look at an article and they cite sources, you have to see who are they citing, why are they citing them? Are they connected in any way? And the things being cited, if it's a research study who funded the research study, I feel like Gen Z living through their emotions are heading towards a train wreck.

Sean Weisbrot: Like I feel like it's really important for people to really focus on researching and getting to know the things behind what they see in order to make a decision. But it's not what I'm seeing with Gen Z.

Katerina: So yeah, that's what we were talking about. Like you are more likely to analyze stuff like that, right?

Katerina: When you see the information you are checking, you are like researching. And for us it's probably not like that.

Sean Weisbrot: So is it easy to manipulate Gen Z then? You think?

Katerina: It's not about manipulation, maybe it's about an influence. What a social media creates, right? And that's why there were a lot of like problems with, uh, appearance.

Katerina: These teenagers, they had problems. And also there are these challenges on TikTok, like what you see on social media is fake, which was really important. So I think this problem like is all about that we trust what we see online.

Sean Weisbrot: So if people trust what they see online, but they shouldn't trust what they see online and yet they do it anyways.

Sean Weisbrot: The line between influence and manipulation is actually very blurry.

Katerina: There is this influence marketing where they recommend products, and in the beginning it was really successful. When somebody famous recommends you a product, you would most likely buy it if you like this person. So now people wouldn't trust it.

Katerina: Micro bloggers become more successful because they are more real. And there is this tendency to trust brands who provide more natural information, more real. Not that perfect, but. Closer to reality, and also they would trust brands who has a person behind it so they know somebody who runs the brand.

Sean Weisbrot: I definitely see that happening.

Sean Weisbrot: I know a lot of CEOs are visible on Twitter now. Or Instagram or whatever it is. My team wanted me to be visible and I'm not a social media person. I despise social media. That's why I decided to do the podcast because for me, this is something where if someone wants to know about my company and through that decide, they wanna know who I am to know if they can trust my company.

Sean Weisbrot: They've got hours upon hours of content where they can hear me talking with guests.

Katerina: So yeah, I think it's really important to have a person behind the brand because. People trust people, right? They wanna see who is behind this.

Sean Weisbrot: When a brand is setting up a content strategy for social media, how can they manage it so that there is a person, but there's also the brand?

Sean Weisbrot: Is it something where the founder of the company has their own social media stuff and they're promoting the company's posts? Or if the CEO is interviewed, the company's promoting the CO. Like, so how? How do you manage. This personal versus professional promotion.

Katerina: So I think it is important for a person who runs a brand, right, that it should be separated and they should promote their personality and they promote their values so that people could see that probably their values are gonna kind sites.

Katerina: And it's more likely they put these values in the the product, in their business, in their attitude to the customers and stuff. So it's more about bringing your personal values. That's why people are more likely to trust you, right? When they see your interests are like the same with my interests. So it is important to show that that's how you get loyalty, right?

Sean Weisbrot: If you know that this is what Gen Z want, all you have to do is make them trust you. But you don't have to actually feel that way or think that way. You don't need to actually have those values. It seems like you could manipulate them into believing you have those values. Am I wrong?

Katerina: You should be really good in manipulation then, because people can feel that and people are not stupid.

Katerina: They can feel when you're real and when you're not. I'm pretty sure like it's gonna fail. For sure.

Sean Weisbrot: I think business and romance are very much the same, uh, in different ways. I think that when you're in a relationship with someone, if you just wait long enough, if they're faking some part of their personality, inevitably you'll see that thing come out.

Sean Weisbrot: Business is is the same way. Like if you're in business with someone, eventually they'll show their real self because you can only pretend to be somebody or something for so long until it gets so tiring that you just give it up. And

Katerina: if we talk about a company right. When a problem arises, right, with one or two customers, like something was not delivered or something was like came broken, right?

Katerina: For example, you can see how they fix that problem, how they solve it. Businesses should be really careful with that because social media has a huge power when you can like infuse second share. Your opinion, share your experience on social media, and everyone will see that. They will see the reviews, they will see the commands.

Katerina: If I'm a customer and they did that with me, right? I'm gonna share my experience. So brands should really pay attention to that, how they solve problems, how they communicate with people.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I think customer service is really important. It's something that I am gonna be working on this year for my company.

Sean Weisbrot: So I've been thinking about how to automate. Customer service as much as possible, but as a user, I find that when I'm forced to talk to a chat bott and there's no way to get to a human, I get annoyed because those chat botts suck.

Katerina: Me too.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you think Gen Z wants a human, or do you think they want a chat bot?

Katerina: You know, it is annoying to search for information in those like. Frequently asked questions they would try to send you there, right? Like, oh, if you have a problem, you type it and they would recommend you like, oh, go to this page, go to this article, like to read and yeah, find the problem. It is really annoying and I would say yes about Gen Z because.

Katerina: They have really short span of attention of focusing on something, so it become like really hard and I would most likely to watch a video about it. Right. Somebody explaining it to me than just reading and searching for information.

Sean Weisbrot: That's an interesting idea. Using video to answer questions.

Katerina: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: I do find sometimes, like let's say I'm playing a video game, for example, and I wanna know, oh, like I'm stuck.

Sean Weisbrot: What do I do next? 10, 15 years ago? You would search on Google, like for a walkthrough of the game, and someone has a text walkthrough that's like a hundred pages long, and you'll look for the section that you wanna look in, right? Mm-hmm. But now you can go to YouTube and people have videos of them playing the entire game, broken down by chapters, and you can search sometimes just for the specific problem you have.

Sean Weisbrot: And there will be a video about it that's like two or three minutes long. I agree. I think that video is a very interesting concept for customer service.

Katerina: Yeah. Actually video content becomes really important right now for like everything for social media explaining stuff. Businesses should really work hard on developing them.

Katerina: Maybe like starting from customer success from support to like. Brand itself, explaining some moments and sharing some information through videos.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, my marketing director and I've been thinking about what kind of content I can create using video myself so that anyone who comes to the website will be able to see like a short video of me explaining who we are, what we're doing, why we're different than companies like Slack, et cetera.

Sean Weisbrot: So I am definitely going to invest in a lot of these kinds of videos. I think it's a great idea.

Katerina: Yeah. And uh, you could put them, you know, in different like stages of customer journey from the very, like first step they register, there's one video, then they come to like a different point, right? Then you could show a different video about like how to solve that.

Katerina: Then when they come, like to each problem, there should be a different video for that. Not everything at once. Right. So they find what they need at the moment they need it

Sean Weisbrot: and they get to hear about it from the founder.

Katerina: Yeah, that's awesome. They would really like that you spend your time to explain something to them.

Sean Weisbrot: I think it's really important because a lot of software these days are becoming more complicated. When we first saw SaaS companies being developed. A company would solve a problem and now you're seeing a platform solve multiple problems.

Sean Weisbrot: And sometimes it's not obvious that those problems can be solved or that this platform offers multiple solutions. And so I think it's important to make it as easy as possible for people to understand the full value of what you provide, not only before the sale, but also after the sale in order to keep them engaged.

Katerina: I agree with that. I would say that like getting somebody register and. Purchase your product is just the beginning.

Katerina: There is a different question about retaining customers. Yeah. Communicating with them, solving their problems.

Sean Weisbrot: You were saying that Gen Z has a short attention span, but they love videos. I know from YouTube's algorithms after three minutes, 70% of them have already dropped off. What's the point in creating video content if you can't get the point across in less than two minutes.

Katerina: There shouldn't be anything they don't need. You have to solve their problem like right now. So if you have a topic, you should be able to open this topic in like this, two, three minutes, and that will be enough.

Sean Weisbrot: What about audio? Only

Katerina: brands should like have different channels and different kinds of channels because according to preferences.

Katerina: Of customers like, right? Some of them like to watch YouTube more. Some of them like to listen to something while they are in a car, right? Or like on the way to work or something like that. So I believe that you should develop your brand in dif on different channels, like with visual content, video content, audio content.

Katerina: Everything is good, but it should be on different platform and determined to different target audiences. Because on Instagram there is one, one target audience. There's a different age of them. They like more visual, right? So on YouTube there should be a different content because probably there is like a different audience with different preferences.

Katerina: You cannot share the same content to all of their social media because it's. It's not gonna be successful.

Sean Weisbrot: Is there anything I haven't asked you so far that you'd like to get into?

Katerina: Brands about 10 years ago would really have success when they had their like pictures, videos, everything would be perfect, really good prepared content and they were successful.

Katerina: But now. People are most likely to like trust something. What they could like see more in nature environment. You know,

Sean Weisbrot: like you could see the picture of my brother and I when we were kids behind me, right?

Katerina: Yeah, I thought about that. That's cute.

Sean Weisbrot: I didn't realize, 'cause I, I had my window minimized. So that I could see half the screen and then the documents on the other side.

Sean Weisbrot: And then I closed the document. 'cause I just stopped asking like questions really. And I maximized the browser and then I said, oh crap. She could see the picture of my brother and I. And I didn't say anything about it until now, until you said something and I was like, oh, okay. I'm gonna say something. So how do you think the pandemic has changed social media and has the pandemic changed?

Sean Weisbrot: So social media for Gen Z differently than millennials,

Katerina: everyone started developing a TikTok. And that was a golden like period for TikTok because everyone felt they could beca become famous just with the help of their videos, and they had a lot of time to create the videos and content.

Katerina: Also, brands had a lot of time to create content for their customers.

Katerina: So I would say, uh, that was the time when content became more like of a higher quality and more important.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you think TikTok is going to remain important going forward in 2021 and 2022? And do you have anyone, uh, any of your customers looking at Clubhouse and do you have any sort of automations or things planned for Clubhouse

Katerina: about TikTok?

Katerina: I think it's gonna be successful or. Course. And according to the last news, Instagram is gonna change the format of the content. They're gonna ship to videos more, right? So it's not gonna be just like a square picture, it's gonna be like full screen videos, and that's why they have those reels now. So videos become like really important because customers can accept videos as we discussed before, like easily about automation.

Katerina: Uh, we. Unfortunately we don't have, but we developing it right now for, uh, TikTok, for the clubhouse. No, unfortunately we don't have that. But yeah, there are a lot of analogs. Like even Instagram created something kind of clubhouse like rooms. You can create rooms and like talk and discuss stuff. So yeah, we'll see how it'll work.