Top 10 misconceptions that sabotage marketing to mature audiences – #8
July 21st, 2009 by Robbie Magee
As we all know, the two most critical success factors in any marketing initiative are:
1. Identifying the likeliest prospects for the product/service you’re offering; and
2. Creating relevant messages to them once you’ve found them.
Spending effort here is especially important when it comes to the vast and dynamic mature adult audience, which leads us into the next misconception of marketing to mature audiences:
#8: The mature market is one big, homogenous audience.
Does anyone really think this way anymore? Probably not, but just in case, here’s how and why it is important to acknowledge the diversity before we develop communications intended for older adults:
Demographics are the first and easiest—and, sometimes, the only—selection criteria that are accessed. Age, income, marital status, ethnicity, and other key demos are indeed necessary to know. But they only begin to scratch the surface. How often have you heard about seniors being described as “the nation’s most affluent audience?”
Older Americans in reality are the most polarized in terms of wealth than any other group—with young children being the next—ranging from extreme affluence to dire poverty. (Here, too, the 80/20 rule exists as approximately 20% of older adults control almost 80% of the nation’s wealth). In our work with clients, such as National Council on Aging and a cache of financial services clients, we have witnessed these extremes first hand.
And then there’s good old Mother Nature. Just as with younger audiences, there will be glaring differences in the attitudes and behaviors of older adults. The attitudes of, say, any two seventy-year-old widows can never be gleaned from a census report. Yet, attributes like health, upbringing, and life experiences all influence one’s outlook—on life and on your brand, product, or service.
The fact is, in our older years, we are still fundamentally the same person we were when we were young. Shy youngsters tend to be more timid later in life. Risk takers retain those behaviors. Spendthrift or penny pincher…optimist or pessimist…these traits are embedded in our DNA.
So how do we as marketers begin to understand the diverse mature market segments that exist?
At our disposal are several modeling tools which neatly classify “Healthy Indulgers,” “Ailing Outgoers,” “Threatened Actives,” and “Financial Positives,” among other sub-groups (this topic will be further discussed in a forthcoming white paper).
For now, if we were to offer one common thread to hold you over until you complete your due diligence and discovery, it would be along the lines of motivators (more on this in the next blog installment). These do change with age and, believe it or not, grow to be more similar across all the various older adult populations.
To easily access the previous misconceptions of marketing to mature audiences, click on the following links below, which also happen to be designed with seniors in mind:
• #9: Designing your website with older audiences in mind will “wreck it.”
• #10: Older adults are technophobes who don’t understand the Internet.
- Robbie Magee
This entry was posted by Robbie Magee on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 and is filed under Advertising, MF, Marketing, Mature Market, Senior Marketing, Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
