How to target Baby Boomers on Facebook:
1) Nobody likes to feel old.
Thus, you should carefully word your content so as to indirectly target this audience. You should not place labels that limit customers to a certain age group and terms such as “old,” “elderly,” and “senior” should be avoided at all costs. A good example of indirect targeting comes through Depends, an adult diaper company. Depends markets their product as underwear and uses middle age models in order to target an audience of 60s and older.
2) Get straight to the point.
You should cut out excess words and details in your ad in order to make it accessible, and your product and/or ad should be basic yet appealing. One of the best examples of this comes through the new Apple commercials. These commercials are short, but they draw the audience’s attention and still manage to encourage consumption of their products. Carrying this over to Facebook – your ads should not be wordy but rather concise and eye-catching. Baby boomers can easily lose appeal, so you only have a matter of seconds to get their attention and a wordy ad will prevent you from doing so.
3) Use a personal approach.
Baby boomers are used to personal marketing and engaging with humans rather than computers; thus, you want to ensure that you are actively engaging them through your staff. This is a generation focused on self-fulfillment and self-realization and to succeed you must take advantage of these mindsets. You want to create a personal connection with boomer customers in order to not only make the sale but to ultimately gain their trust.
4) Skip the hard sell.
We already touched on this, but we want to emphasize: it should not seem that
you are selling anything. You want to sell to this generation indirectly by explaining the benefits of your product and the value it entails. You want to be informative, but you want to ensure that you are not pressing your product on them. This form of indirect selling can be successful for any generation, but holds extra potential when targeting the baby boomer audience.
5) Maintain trust to build loyalty.
Baby boomers are different from other audiences in that they are much likelier to rely on a referral. Boomer customers are old-fashioned – they want a convenient company that will provide for their needs and keep promises. If you want to draw in and maintain baby boomer customers than you need to be reliable and maintain trust. Following these simple guidelines and providing friendly, proficient service will trigger not only new customers but loyal customers. Baby boomers tend to be more loyal than other generations and as I said before they highly value referrals.
Baby boomers – they’ve been around longer than most other generations, yet they’re one of the hardest audiences to understand and market to. However, if you follow these simple steps and provide solid, reliable service you should be able to gain new, brand loyal customers. These steps apply to all marketing in terms of baby boomers, but apply most specifically to Facebook. Whether you like it or not, Facebook is the marketing medium of the future no matter the generation you are targeting, so take advantage of the opportunity now and don’t wait until it’s too late.
John Zahn is a Co-Founder of Omnibeat. As a long-time business owner with an interest in technology, he strives to help businesses embrace new technology while sharing their unique story online. John loves helping business owners “Catch the Wave of Digital Marketing.”
Omnibeat is the digital marketing outsource solution for growth in Los Alamitos and the greater Long Beach area.
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