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.

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