When you think of marketing to seniors, you might believe it’s all about increasing the size of fonts, use relatable language to target them and displaying images of older people in your advertising. Although this is a common practice among many businesses, those elements alone are not going to capture the attention of this market.
Let’s begin with some simple math:
According to the ABS, the resident population of Australia in September 2018 is more than 25.1 million. At least 15% of the population is 65 or older, which accounts for 3.4 million in total.
1 in 7 people were aged 65 and over. So senior citizens constitute a significant part of the consumer market. Yet they are so often ignored by companies when it comes to marketing.
With a quarter of the 75+ audience using tablets, plus half of the 65-74-year-old adults having social media profiles, it’s time to rethink the senior population and start including the aging audiences into your next marketing campaigns.
Here are some of the useful tips to target senior population.
Select proper advertising media
As we know by know
Email marketing is the big thing now. For marketing to seniors online, you should mostly focus on advertising on sites that are frequently visited by your target age group. According to the survey provided in AIMIA 20 percent of internet traffic comes from people who are 65+.
It may not be key to target the millenniums but it is very effective among seniors.
Experiences matter
Older audiences tend to consider customer service, personal contact and traditional communication in higher esteem. Once they receive that feeling of personal care and contact, they are motivated more to share it.
There are lots of approaches that can be incorporated into your marketing campaigns to progress this, such as:
- Bridging the gap between offline and online user journeys. Keeping marketing messaging consistent, easy to digest and simple for action taking
- Using CTAs such as telephone, single click actions, and even footfall drivers
- Including more offline media and traditional marketing (the likes of catalogs, local papers, flyers, and discount codes)
- Making the benefits clear, plus the action taking specific – the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) should be kept in mind
Youtube or Video Marketing
People age 50+ spend at least couple of hours watching youtube clips or movies. So video can be the most top marketing strategy when targeting the older audience.
People are much more likely to purchase a product if they watch an explainer video. In seniors, it might be more effective because of their explaining video of the product.
Use Relatable Language and make things easy
If you want to market your product to someone, you have to speak their language. If you’re going to market to seniors, you need to avoid using teenage jargon and it might be old school but its what they want and works every time like a charm.
Don’t make it confusing on the webpage by letting them to click symbols for some action to perform, this confuses them and you might lose your potential customer. Make it simple and clear sales process.
Sell them familiar products
People usually drawn to products that looks familiar and makes them learn more about them. As the years passed by, seniors still loves to receive advertisements and physical catalogs in their mail. So target the products that makes sense to them. Everyone thinks physical catalog marketing is dead and no ones reads them but seniors always love to carry something tangible in their hands and makes it easy for them. In fact, many big companies still send mail catalogs to their customers or subscribers.
Conclusion:
Aging populations and increasingly tech-savvy seniors present a huge marketing opportunity. To maximize this, marketing teams need to target more than simply older audience influencers.
If you follow these helpful tips, you will find it easier to not only reach your senior demographic but also retain them as long-term customers.
