How Marketing to Baby Boomers Can Make or Break Your Business

America
contains about 78 million adults over fifty, and another four million
are added every year. Many view the aging Boomer population as a
crisis, citing Social Security and increased medical expenses. However,
savvy marketers view it as an opportunity. Cutting your slice out of
the Boomer pie will ensure a profitable business. Prepare to think
differently, though. Baby Boomers are about to shatter all your
perceptions on aging.

Common Misconceptions About Boomers

Many
marketers seem unaware of the economic promise of marketing to boomers.
Why do so many marketers ignore this growing demographic—the
demographic that controls $28 trillion, or 67%, of the nation’s wealth?
They do so because of several misconceptions.

The fact is,
traditional marketing has written off the 50+ group. Marketers look at
the generations before and assume Boomers are exactly the same.
Conventional wisdom says their brand loyalty is fixed, so there’s no
use trying to change their minds. Or, they have to buy products anyway,
so why bother marketing to them? So, the general tactic is to either
ignore Boomers or lump them in with the “senior” category—neither one a
good strategy.

When marketers do try to reach Baby Boomers, they
mistakenly assume they’re speaking to a homogenous group. After all,
aren’t all Boomers prosperous offspring of white-collar families?
Aren’t all Baby Boomers either hippies yearning for the sixties or
self-absorbed yuppies yakking on cell phones?

Not by a long shot.
At the same time, however, Boomers were influenced by the same
generational experiences—the debut of the Beatles, the assassinations
of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Vietnam War, among
others—which means there is some common ground when it comes to
reaching them as a demographic.