What’s that thunderous sound?
Every time the biggest generation reaches a milestone, you can feel the ground rumble.
In 2011, boomers start reaching Medicare age. There’s one turning 65 every nine seconds.
At every stage of life, their buying and work patterns have rocked whichever market they went into or created.
According to investment expert Harry S. Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead, in the late nineties and early into this millennium we saw one of the greatest booms ever due to the climaxing of the boomers’ high consumption phase of their lives. The boom ended when they neared the end of raising families, started retiring and began looking for ways to fund their retirement.
Affluent Boomers make up about a third of the generation and of that third, about half could be considered ‘wealthy’. They already have all the ‘stuff’ they want. What they are happy to pay good money for is services. And most advertisers are missing the boat in their ads aimed at this crowd.
The key to their hearts, and their business, according to Ken Gronbach, author of Common Census: Counterintuitive Guide to Generational Marketing is to give them what they want. And at this point in their lives, they only want three things:
- Time Saved
- Life made easy
- Not to be ripped off
So, if you want a simple copywriting formula to generate a high level of response from this crowd, the underlying themes of everything you write will be: Here’s how I’ll save you time; Here’s how I’ll make your life easy; and Here’s solid proof and guarantees.
Entrepreneur Magazine lists the senior market as one of the ten best opportunities in 2011 and my guess is we are just beginning to see this trend.
So here are a few tips for adapting this strategy to your business:
1. Remember they own a lot of stuff already – they are more interested in services and don’t mind paying for them. They feel less and less patient with time wasted and so have an ever diminishing tolerance for incompetence and inferior performance of services. Make sure you that in your business you do what you say you will at every step of the way and then communicate that message clearly and concisely.
2. Provide extraordinary service, raising the bar on convenience. If you a dry cleaner, offer to pick up, if you are a restaurant, offer free birthday planning, if you provide consulting and advice, find ways to provide information along with experience, such as cruise lines have done for years. Where else could you do something similar in your arena?
3. Dan Kennedy, marketing expert and author of No BS Marketing to the Affluent says, “Boomers still think in terms of “classic credibility”, while younger consumers do not. So for instance, brand names, professional affiliations, years in your field of expertise and access to live human beings matter to these folks. You will need to build and maintain a superior level of credibility to win and maintain their business.
The good news is, they stick with you when you maintain and develop the relationship. And that represents a golden opportunity.