From 79 million baby boomers in the US, 43 million of us are taking care of someone older than 50.
Baby boomers are also not getting any younger. Every day 10,000 boomers hit 65 years of age and since all boomers want to live forever, they are conscious about their health and consume more supplements than any other group, they might as well become the first generation to take care of its parents for as long as it cared for its children. But they want to do it their way.
Care giving is really becoming a common word in any boomer vocabulary.
Even though care giving might be the right word, many boomers just see themselves as the spouse, the son or daughter and they see themselves doing what is expected of them without any labels. Boomers after all don’t like labels. But this can also be an issue since they don’t tend to look for resources related to caregivers which impact them as caregivers as well as the aging parent.
For businesses selling online this means thinking outside the box when looking for keywords. The obvious is not what people search. They search for a solution to a problem according to their views.
For example, instead of searching for a “bed rail” for an aging parent, he/she might search for “stop falling out of bed”.
Because boomers want to live forever, talking about aging or care giving can lead to a stressful conversation but is also important that this type of conversation occurs.
Again, to make this conversation easier specially when addressing the fact that baby boomers are aging, refer to “a new phase in life”, just never call a boomer “old”
Freedom is an important concept to boomers specially when we take into consideration that most of them are empty nesters really immersing in a whole new phase in their lives. They can easily understand the importance of being independent when relating to their aging parents. These are concepts to explore in your marketing as well.
The concept of their parents being safe and having peace of mind is also crucial when we take into consideration that many boomers become distant caregivers and parents tend to stay into their own homes longer.
When marketing to boomers, words matter a lot. They want innovation, a honest conversation, freedom, peace of mind and are not so price conscious as their parents.
This different behavior might provide an extra challenge when marketing to this generation but can be extremely profitable since this group is known to be big spenders and hold a tremendous buying power.