When we make assump­tions about large swaths of the pop­u­la­tion based on labels, many times we’re just plain wrong. For mar­keters, this can mean miss­ing the tar­get alto­geth­er – or alien­at­ing it.

Maybe you’ve heard that Baby Boomers are the gen­er­a­tion with the strongest work eth­ic, miss­ing the fewest work­days, putting in the longest hours and tak­ing only rare vaca­tions? You may think that Mil­len­ni­als are fun-lov­ing and com­bine work with play, seam­less­ly inte­grat­ing an after­noon surf­ing with client con­fer­ence calls. Mil­len­ni­als are nat­ur­al tech­nol­o­gy wiz­ards, are con­stant­ly online, addict­ed to gad­gets and apps of all types because they are “dig­i­tal natives”, right? These assump­tions about dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions were just begin­ning to flood the inter­net and board room con­ver­sa­tions in 2010, the same year I began a doc­tor­al pro­gram at Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty with the inten­tion of build­ing a career as a “mil­len­ni­al expert”.

I believed what every­one had always told me: that gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences were real, and that they were a pro­duc­tive way to help parse and seg­ment the pop­u­la­tion. Since I thought this could be the basis for a high­ly effec­tive man­age­ment strat­e­gy, I want­ed to do real research to learn more. What I found when con­duct­ing the lit­er­a­ture review, how­ev­er, was that most experts were real­ly stretch­ing the facts.

There were so many con­tra­dic­tions in the so-called research, and so many assump­tions made based on small sam­ple sizes. The lan­guage of gen­er­a­tional stereo­typ­ing is still every­where, but the plain truth is that most of the indus­try (an indus­try that is rak­ing in tons of cash in con­sult­ing and book sales) is based on anec­do­tal infor­ma­tion. The data just doesn’t sup­port the gen­er­a­tional stereo­types when you start to dig deep. Of course, gen­er­a­tional stereo­typ­ing has been a use­ful tool for address­ing major trends in con­sumerism.

Accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter, 85 per­cent of mil­len­ni­als own a smart­phone. Com­bined with the notion that “mil­len­ni­als are dig­i­tal natives,” for mar­keters this has meant opti­miz­ing their mil­len­ni­al tar­get­ing strate­gies for smart­phones and tablets, plac­ing their con­tent online in vis­i­ble loca­tions and mak­ing the mes­sages visu­al­ly appeal­ing and eas­i­ly shared with oth­ers. The idea is to meet mil­len­ni­als where they are (online) and engage them with a prod­uct and encour­age their par­tic­i­pa­tion in con­ver­sa­tions, sur­veys, and con­tests. Ide­al­ly, they will be com­plete­ly engaged when they post their own sto­ries, pic­tures, or videos. But seg­ment­ing the pop­u­la­tion into cat­e­gories such as “Baby Boomers” or “Gen X‑ers” is by no means a mar­ket­ing panacea – it has its own set of dan­gers and draw­backs. The back­lash to Whole Foods’ recent announce­ment of a new store chain designed specif­i­cal­ly for mil­len­ni­als is one exam­ple of how to alien­ate your tar­get audi­ence.

More­over, with tech­nol­o­gy the game is chang­ing rapid­ly as mar­ket frag­men­ta­tion becomes more refined. It’s now pos­si­ble to tar­get accord­ing to spe­cif­ic, indi­vid­ual tastes and pref­er­ences. In this era when con­sumers are accus­tomed to receiv­ing ads and oth­er mar­ket­ing infor­ma­tion tai­lored to their indi­vid­ual needs, the risk of alien­ation is even greater. So how can mar­keters look past this knot­ted mess of mis­in­for­ma­tion and start grow­ing bet­ter-tar­get­ed mar­ket­ing strate­gies?

1. Accept That Generations Are Too Broad

Gen­er­a­tions are often too broad of a group to be effec­tive tar­gets. A bet­ter approach is to look at indi­vid­u­als rather than gen­er­a­tions. Lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy and data to seg­ment by char­ac­ter­is­tics that cross gen­er­a­tional lines, such as edu­ca­tion, income, hob­bies, job inter­ests, and vaca­tion plans. You’re much more like­ly to get the audi­ence you want based on their expe­ri­ences and pref­er­ences than on their age.

2. Check Yourself For Unfounded Biases

The lan­guage around gen­er­a­tional stereo­typ­ing is so strong that myths about the dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions can often feel like facts. It’s impor­tant to step back and remem­ber that label­ing gen­er­a­tions is not found­ed on sound sci­ence, and crit­i­cal­ly risks alien­at­ing many poten­tial cus­tomers. What­ev­er the con­text, using gen­er­a­tional stereo­types is divi­sive. It per­pet­u­ates a poten­tial­ly harm­ful “us” vs. “them” men­tal­i­ty that can dis­tance con­sumers from your brand. Check your mes­sag­ing to make sure it isn’t unnec­es­sar­i­ly exclu­sive.

3. Think Of Technology As The Great Equalizer

Just as gen­er­a­tional-dri­ven mar­ket­ing strate­gies are becom­ing obso­lete, the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy is grow­ing in rel­e­vance. The mar­ket frag­men­ta­tion made pos­si­ble by online tools and social media sites such as Face­book and Twit­ter bring to the table valu­able data about con­sumers’ needs as indi­vid­u­als, help­ing to elim­i­nate mis­lead­ing bias­es. These tech­nolo­gies will help you under­stand how oth­er groups or gen­er­a­tions can ben­e­fit from your offer­ings. Use them.