Mil­len­ni­al con­sumers are expe­di­tious con­tent con­sumers and always-on shop­pers. Their grow­ing spend­ing pow­er indi­cates that there’s a lot on the line for brands. Mar­keters who don’t tap into expe­ri­en­tial images and turn them into action­able pieces of con­tent will risk los­ing these pow­er­ful shop­pers to com­pet­ing retail­ers.

In the ear­ly days of ecom­merce, con­sumers relied on lit­tle more than a stock image, a brand-craft­ed prod­uct descrip­tion and maybe a few tex­tu­al reviews to guide them. Things are a bit more com­plex these days. With more than 2.6 bil­lion images shared on a dai­ly basis, con­sumers are in an end­less state of con­tent over­load. Some­thing new is pub­lished every mil­lisec­ond, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to con­sume every­thing that piques one’s inter­est. The per­va­sive­ness of images means one thing for mar­keters: They need to strive to break through the noise. Because dig­i­tal images are now so core to the human expe­ri­ence, con­sumers are hold­ing brands to high­er stan­dards. Stock images just won’t cut it in the sea of imagery peo­ple are swim­ming in each day. To reach mil­len­ni­al con­sumers in par­tic­u­lar, brands need to go above and beyond in their imagery. These shop­pers are high­ly cog­nizant of how mar­keters com­mu­ni­cate with them. And ulti­mate­ly, mil­len­ni­als do not want to be mar­ket­ed to; they want to be engaged. The best way to do that is by using images to cre­ate expe­ri­ences. A July 2014 Eventbrite sur­vey found that 78 per­cent of mil­len­ni­als would rather put mon­ey toward a desir­able expe­ri­ence over a desir­able thing. This is not an indi­ca­tion that mil­len­ni­als don’t see the joy in own­ing new prod­ucts. It’s a sig­nal that brands need to make the shop­ping expe­ri­ence an unfor­get­table one. Here are three sim­ple ways mar­keters can engage visu­al buy­ers.

1. Share Your Fans’ Experiences (Legally!)

There’s noth­ing like see­ing some­one else unbox a new gad­get or take pride in own­ing a new hand­bag on Insta­gram. It invokes a sense of desire with­in mil­len­ni­al con­sumers, mak­ing them want to expe­ri­ence these things first­hand. There’s a good chance your fans are already shar­ing visu­al con­tent about your brand on dif­fer­ent chan­nels. The most resource­ful thing you can do is to har­ness those images, and share them with poten­tial con­sumers to spark some inspi­ra­tion. You can dri­ve fans to share more con­tent by cre­at­ing a ded­i­cat­ed hash­tag like For­ev­er 21 does with #F21xMe. If you hap­pen to find an awe­some pho­to that isn’t tagged, sim­ply ask the fan if you can use it. They’ll like­ly say yes! Curalate data shows that four out of five Insta­gram users give brands per­mis­sion to share their pho­tos.

2. Transform Your Brand Into A Lifestyle

Many brands have already tapped into the idea that expe­ri­ences dri­ve engage­ment by cre­at­ing edi­to­r­i­al-style con­tent. By devi­at­ing from tra­di­tion­al prod­uct shots and mak­ing pho­tos sym­bol­ic of authen­tic life expe­ri­ences, brands will strike a chord with the mil­len­ni­al demo­graph­ic. Her­schel Sup­ply Co. for exam­ple, isn’t just a com­pa­ny that sells back­packs. It’s a brand that encour­ages trav­el, explo­ration and lim­it­less adven­tures. A quick look at the brand’s pho­tos on Insta­gram shows their prod­ucts in the con­text of these expe­ri­ences. Ulti­mate­ly, the plat­form serves a lifestyle des­ti­na­tion for the brand, and it tru­ly works.

3. Make Your Photos Actionable

Mil­len­ni­al con­sumers have come of age in a world of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Not only do they expect brand images to be engag­ing, but they also want them to be action­able in some way. As a mar­keter, the best way to cater to this expec­ta­tion is by mak­ing your images shop­pable. School­house Elec­tric does this beau­ti­ful­ly on their brand blog. The brand often shares edi­to­r­i­al-style images on their blog, and they fea­ture tons of prod­ucts. Typ­i­cal­ly, these types of blog posts con­clude with a string of clunky links at the bot­tom to dri­ve back to prod­uct pages – result­ing in a lot of work for the fast-mov­ing mil­len­ni­al con­sumer. School­house Elec­tric decid­ed to make their blog post images action­able by includ­ing the links with­in them, becom­ing action­able when the user hov­ers over a spe­cif­ic prod­uct fea­tured.