Editor’s note: Miki Velemirovich is president, Cargo, Canada, a business-to-business marketing agency.

Small business owners (SBOs) can be difficult to understand. Despite representing over 98% of businesses in North America, there is still little knowledge on the key motivations and mind-sets of SBOs, making it a challenging demographic for brands – and more specifically, research teams – to connect with. This becomes even more difficult when analyzing the newest and fastest-growing segment of small business owners – Millennials – as they have quickly become one of the most labeled and stereotyped generations.

As Baby Boomers retire and Millennials become the largest SBO group, it is important for brands to understand and build stronger relationships with their customers. Traditionally, brands believed that what sets them apart from competitors was centered around the business model on its own. In reality, it’s so much more. Having insight into the drivers of the target audience – and tailoring messaging to those insights – is critical to begin building strong connections.

With this in mind, we set out to help brands build stronger connections with their customers based on in-depth research. Building on our Small Talk series, we looked past simple observations to better understand and analyze the emotional response of Millennial SBOs.

Behind the technology 

In working toward our mission of helping big brands market to Millennial SBOs, we partnered with neuromarketing consultancy BRANDthro to conduct a study combining emotional AI and neuroscience. The AI-driven model used social listening to identify the top issues and trigger language affecting Millennial SBOs, which was then extracted from social media and connected to primary and secondary emotions to measure emotional intensity. 

Forget what you thought: demystifying myths on Millennial SBOs

Through our research, we found a number of key insights that we believe are critical for marketers to understand as they look to engage and build deeper relationships with Millennial SBOs. 

Purpose drives action

Millennial SBOs are passionate about the businesses they create, as they are established with a greater purpose in mind. Purpose and passion supersede profit as the ultimate measure of success and are the core values that the demographic looks for when selecting other companies or brands to work with and stand beside. The sense of purpose a Millennial has in their professional life coincides with their personal life: work and life are one-in-the-same and shouldn’t be separated.

Achievement-oriented

When examining dominant personality traits of Millennial SBOs, one of the main qualities that continuously stands out is their drive to lead today, versus waiting their turn. They want to build a successful business and have a growing desire to acquire others. Millennials have their eye on the opportunity, but not without caution.

Our study found that Millennial SBOs are extremely cautious when it comes to making business decisions – directly debunking the common assumption that they are careless daredevils that are not afraid to make a jump. In reality, Millennial SBOs are careful and slow their pace to ensure that they aren’t making critical mistakes. The demographic witnessed the financial trauma that the Great Recession caused to organizations and personal wealth and have grown to distrust stability. 

Heart versus mind

Due to their cautious nature, Millennial SBOs process decisions differently than older SBOs. 

In general, for all SBOs, their business is their life and to move the mind first requires moving the heart. This often means that for SBOs, emotions overpower rationale. However, Millennial SBOs often use more rational thinking in their decision-making process. As information becomes more accessible online, Millennial SBOs research as much as possible before committing to a decision. Peer reviews have become an important source of information, which they often use to confirm business decisions and emotional motivations.

Skeptical of technology

A long-held perception of Millennials is that they are open to, and excited by, the latest advancements in technology. In fact, younger Millennial SBOs have concerns about a potential loss of privacy and the threatening nature of machine learning and artificial intelligence. They are savvy enough to know the full potential of advanced technologies and, because of that, understand the potential risks. 

However, not all Millennial SBOs have the same fears toward technology. Without a full understanding of technology, older Millennials have a difficult time keeping up with the quick pace of innovation. It is because of this that they also fear new developments in technology overwhelming the current practices they generally understand. 

Building a foundation for strong relationships

Think about this: if a brand or research team approaches a Millennial SBO with the previously held stereotypes informing their discussion, how successful do you think they will be at building a relationship? If the brand focuses the conversation on profit and doesn’t discuss purpose, requires a quick decision based on minimal information or leads with the advancements in technology, they will have little success and may drive a potential customer away.

Understanding the insights from this study and debunking stereotypes about the generation are necessary for brands to consider when trying to engage with this group. Just as Millennial SBOs are driven by purpose, it is a researcher’s passion to help brands make stronger connections with their customers. And while this provides us with a strong foundation to begin having these conversations, we are only at the beginning of understanding SBOs even better.

For more information and study findings, download the full report: https://www.thecargoagency.com/study.