Your Ultimate Guide to Marketing to the Baby Boomers
Do you want to know a marketing secret?
Baby Boomers still hold the reins to your bank account.
While millennials have likely taken over your marketing strategies, it's important to spend quality time investing in the older demographic, because it is still at large, thriving, and spending money.
In other words, they are as relevant and as important to your business as anybody else!
The best generation marketing strategies know who their target audience is and that is how they plan out an effective attack.
Here are a few things about the baby boomers that can help shape your marketing content:
1. They love traditions
While the Gen-X has been running away from the traditional advertisements and marketing ploys, their grandparents are most likely to fall for them.
In order for you to appeal to the seniors, your marketing team needs to build content that is nostalgic, that gives them the old-school vibes and that has the traditional touch the edgier content doesn’t.
2. They are digital savvy
Most marketers underestimate the baby boomers in terms of digital marketing. They have this image of baby boomers sitting at home listening to the radio or reading newspapers. If you are one of them then you are losing out on a big consumer market.
Therefore, make use of the digital marketing arena to secure ties with the elderly.
For you to do so you know that:
- They prefer Facebook over Instagram
- They will see through your fake promises
- They like emails
3. They love to read
The baby boomers have a higher attention span than the youth. After all, we are talking about a generation that grew up on newspapers and paperbacks as opposed to tabloids and 140 characters.
Hence, when you are creating content solely for them you need to be thoughtful and lay out the details. However, there might still be things that they will stumble over.
This is why you need to avoid:
- Acronyms/Slang. The baby boomers may be tech savvy but they have no idea what YOLO is.
- Headlines that are clickbait
- A condescending tone that belittles them and their knowledge
- A fluff piece that is too short for them to care
4. They aren’t impulsive
While the younger generations chase new trends and have impulse buys in the middle of the night, the old folks don’t. Rather than being impulsive, their buying strategy is very thoughtful.
The baby boomers think things through before the purchase.
You can assure them with:
- Products that come with a guarantee
- Terms and conditions that give them a clear idea of what they are in for
- Promises that are kept
An overview of how the baby boomers think will tell you that you need to go back to basics to appeal to an audience that has been alive for half a century. These people have seen it all and therefore you need to show them something that is worth their time and money.
Posted In: Social Media and Digital Marketing