MARKETING TO BABY BOOMERS

So many people arrive en masse at the “final life stage.” However, Baby Boomers will give traditional retirement a new meaning. To market to them, you must “school” yourself on Boomers. Here are a few tips.

Talk to them. Ask them questions. Learn where they are in life, and find out where they want to go. Use resources such as genpolicy.com on the Internet. Books by Chuck Nyren, “Advertising to Baby Boomers” and Brent Green, “Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers,” also are good resources.

Evaluate your product portfolio. Boomers have specific needs. How does your portfolio speak to those needs? Once you have completed your evaluation, get creative. If you wait for the companies that you represent to offer brochures and sales flyers that are “Boomer Bitchin’,” you will become a dinosaur.

For all their good intent, company brochures and promotional materials are “designed by legal departments.” Instead, create your own promotional materials that compliment company brochures using Boomer language and pointing to you as the Boomer insurance and financial life coach.

Save time and money. Hire a Boomer to assist you in your marketing efforts. Look for a Boomer with attitude. When they were kids, companies focused the majority of their marketing efforts on Boomers. When they got out of college, marketers hired Boomers to market to Boomers. Now that they are older marketers, ad agencies and corporations are relying on non-Boomers for creative ways to capture the Boomer market. Something’s terribly wrong with that picture.

Do non-Boomers know that Boomers maintain a healthy materialistic appetite, that they have a higher level of education or that they will live longer than any generation before them? Market Boomer to Boomer to capture more of the market.

Talk Boomer talk.Your marketing message needs to stay away from the doom and gloom of aging. Remember the mantra, “not a senior.” According to political scientist Paul Light, the average Boomer viewed 15,000 hours of television by age 16, and by the time they reached 21, they had seen more than 300,000 commercials. Do you think they are a slight bit skeptical when it comes to advertisers and marketers?

Boomers have fine-tuned their brain to skip over negative stimuli. Advertising should speak about the product from the Boomers’ perspective. Talk about quality of life and well-being, and provide answers to the multitude of questions the next life stage holds for them.

Mirror Boomers.Show them you are involved and passionate about the battle to age with dignity and well-being living younger, not older. Let Boomers know you refuse to deliver the same retirement package of products and services that have been used on the previous generation. Guide Boomers to the companies that “get it,” and demonstrate your sensitivity to issues they face at this time of their life. Give them the information they need and generate “experiences” that increase their interest in your products and services.

The decades-old myth that people select brands early in life and never switch is far from true. Boomers’ thirst for value is unprecedented. They feel special and want to be treated special. Your marketing message needs to accentuate value to Boomers.

Keep your marketing design visually simple. Use contrasting colors (they like color) and easy-to-read fonts and sizes. If a Boomer has to work too hard to understand your message, they will give you the Boomer boot.

Connect with a well-told story.When they were children, Boomers were told bedtime stories, not bedtime facts. As they grow older, they are constantly faced with the facts of aging, working longer, war, flu shot shortages, gas prices, politics and life moving quickly by them. Boomers need the products you represent in your Boomer portfolio. Who they purchase products from depends on how they are marketed to. The power of a well-told story is unsurpassed compared with the confusing messages they are bombarded with each day.