Baby Boomers Still Booming
It is a popular misconception, even among big businesses, that the biggest market segment today belongs to the 18 to 39 years old bracket. Alycia de Mesa of BrandChannel is kind enough to rectify this fatal notion.
According to her latest article, baby boomers remain the biggest spenders representing for $2.3 trillion annual household expenditures. This is two times bigger than the 18 to 39 years old segment. Surprised?
Yet despite Boomers’ trillion-dollar spending power, Madison Avenue still views 18- to 39-year-olds as the prime demographic to target, paying an average of 25 to 50 percent more to target younger adults, according to research commissioned by TV Land (a unit of Viacom) with Boomer think-tank consultancy Age Wave. This is in spite of the fact that Boomers are 71 percent as likely as their younger counterparts to be willing to try new products and services, and 55 percent are just as persuaded by “effective advertising.”
Now, go back to your drawing board and see if you’re making the same mistake. Here are some sites to help you on marketing to baby boomers:
Opinionated Marketing strongly reminds readers that boomers are not a monolith and it is better to develop sub-cohorts.
Guest Expert Mark Miller in Small Business Trends talks about reaching baby boomers on the Internet since “70 percent of adults age 50 to 64 are online,” according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Hmmm… it is interesting to see a cross between Single Female Market with Baby Boomers. Will there be a niche for Single Female Boomers as well?
