Tailoring your messaging to serve a specific audience is crucial for a successful marketing campaign. In 2016, marketers remain as focused as ever on millennials, spending four times more to reach them compared to any other demographic. But how to maximize engagement and ensure ad spending is effective? Research shows marketers should consider targeting individual specific groups of millennials to better reach their audience - groups that may be underserved by broad strategies that don't make the best use of available data.

When it comes to business and leisure travel, Millennials are a generation on the move. Numerous studies have shown that compared to older travelers, those ages 18 to 30 go on more trips per year (whether for work or play), seek unique, authentic travel experiences, and are more demanding about the amenities they expect both en route and at their desired travel destinations.

At a recent NYC Luxury Marketing Council meeting, Linda Ong, CEO of TruthCo., an omnichannel branding firm, said: "In 2017, Millennials will eclipse Baby Boomers in luxury spending." Sounds impressive and reassuring. But whether or not this prediction is true, this sound bite says nothing about what it means for your particular brand. Nor how to make sure your brand gets its fair share of that future luxury spending.

Millennial females are a generation of women more educated than their male counterparts, beginning to even out the wage gap, and bringing a different set of expectations to the brands they buy, and the media they consume. They are without a doubt a powerful group of consumers, regardless of their life stage.

Business leaders need to pay attention to the series of student protests shaking up American college campuses. Last month, students at the University of Missouri protested racism on and off campus (and the school's lack of response to it), and it led to the university president and the chancellor stepping down. (The breaking point came when the football team threatened to boycott a game-an action that would have had PR and financial consequences.)