Although the web is a somewhat recent phenomenon for baby boomers and seniors in the US, boomers now spend more time online than with any other form of media, including TV, and seniors are not far behind. Smartphones and tablets are playing a bigger role in the online activities of both boomers and seniors, who use the devices for a variety of activities, including to shop for purchases.
Marketing to boomers: some facts
Today in America, the average car buyer is 56- a boomer, the average head of the household is 52- boomer, MAC user 54- boomer, American Express credit card holder 57, 57 is also the age of the average business owner.
Real money is in the hand of boomers and so is decision making.
Definition of Boomers according to Wikipedia: A baby boomer is a person who was born during the demographic Post-World War II baby boom and who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964.
In general, baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values; however, many commentators have disputed the extent of that rejection, noting the widespread continuity of values with older and younger generations. In Europe and North America boomers are widely associated with privilege, as many grew up in a time of affluence.[3] As a group, they were the healthiest, and wealthiest generation to that time, and amongst the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time.
One feature of Boomers was that they tended to think of themselves as a special generation, very different from those that had come before. In the 1960s, as the relatively large numbers of young people became teenagers and young adults, they, and those around them, created a very specific rhetoric around their cohort, and the change they were bringing about.[5] This rhetoric had an important impact in the self perceptions of the boomers, as well as their tendency to define the world in terms of generations, which was a relatively new phenomenon.
Do you know your ideal client from an emotional level? What he/she cares about, what she/he values?
If you are marketing to boomers, you should.
Marketing to boomers: Are you missing the mark?
Are you mimicking old dumb marketing agencies and ignoring your best potential customers?
Smart businesses should develop marketing programs to reach baby boomers and do it in an intelligent way.
Are you asking why?
Well more than 30% of Americans are over 50 and the influential over-50 segment has $2.3 trillion in annual spending power and today controls 50% of all discretionary income. That is 2.5 times the spending power of 18-24 age group.
Did you see that the word influential is highlighted?
This is a generation that has disposable income to spend and invest even in though economic times.
The boomer generation likes to invest in products and services that are aligned with their deeper value. ( This is why it is really important for businesses to work with an irresistible promise like we show in the magnetic influence system). And boomers do pay attention how companies market to them
On the other side it looks like companies don’t care to pay attention to them.
Here some examples:
People 50+ buy 60% of all carbonated beverages but Coke The Heart Truth for Women campaign, which is a great campaign, uses a spokesperson that is 36 years old- Heidi Klum. Can’t they find anyone gorgeous after 50?
Pepsi uses psychedelic logos with Barry Whites tunes. Do we need nostalgia?
By the way, nostalgia is really the wrong approach with boomers. This is a generation proud to have changed the way things were done and some of the things they did, they don’t want to remember. Hair color spots tend to use this approach too.
Even worse is AARP that portraits 50+ as frightened and unintelligent in their commercials.
Honda spots for hybrid cars don’t include boomers while more than half of the 90 million 50+ consumers in America say they want to buy green.
People over 50 account for 80% of all leisure travel in this country including luxury travel. Do you think the spot “Travelocity Travel Wish #9: Jump on the bed in a fancy hotel” has anything to do with boomers?
There are many more examples of poor marketing to boomers. Just think about sex related commercials with couples in separate bathtubs.
Boomers can talk and make sex, why can’t the people that create these type of commercials do the same?
If your product or service is a good match for boomers, pay attention how you are promoting it, and include boomers in a tasteful, intelligent manner.
We appreciate and we like the attention. Missing the mark here can cost you a lot.