Boomer's Online Behavior: How Boomers Use the Internet

Continuing to look at how marketers can reach the great generation of boomers and beyond. This is the ninth and final installment in a series as we continue our exploration to the many facets, tips and tricks to “Getting Found Online.” Our eighth in the series can be found here.

As in all marketing, knowing your target audience is key to reaching them with your message. When marketing to today’s digital boomer, knowing how boomers use the internet will give you important insights that will help you develop an effective strategy for your digital marketing campaign.

As I touched upon in my last article, Getting Found Online: How Boomers use the Internet, when considering today’s boomers, it’s important to keep in mind you’re marketing to a generation and NOT an ‘age bracket.” And, in fact, today’s boomers are anything but “old.”

Today’s boomers are anything but “old.”

They’re pretty tech-savvy and have caught on pretty quickly to this new era of digital communications. They’re also one of the wealthiest and largest segments in the U.S.. That being said, boomers represent tremendous potential to marketers and understanding boomers online behavior and what contributes to their decision making strategy will give you an invaluable marketing edge.

Keep it Positive: With the challenging years of raising kids and the daily grind behind them, boomers are an optimistic lot. Even if they’re raising grandkids, they’ve generally achieved a level of success and want to be remain encouraged and hopeful about the future. This means turning a negative into a positve, like fears about failing health, for example, into showing the benefits of products or services that maintain a healthy lifestyle. Keep your message positive and they’ll come back for more.

Keep it Real: Unrealistic claims with pictures of babes in swimsuits won’t tug at the boomer’s heartstrings or pursestrings for that matter. Having “been there, done that,” it’s not so easy to dupe this generation. Your message should resonate with your audience in a way that invokes a sense of authenticity and a genuine desire to meet their need where they’re at. Having your customer’s best interest at heart is a philosophy that will take your business to the next level if implemented from a sincere and authentic desire to meet their need.

Build Trust: Transparency, honesty and trust is the basis for relationship building and for this generation, it’s key. Do what you say you’re going to do and be who you say you are. Heck, go the extra mile with this market and you just might gain a loyal customer for life. Make good on your claims and if/when there’s a discrepency, respond with a sincere concern for resolution. Anything less than that and chances are great you will have lost a potential client/customer for life.

To the Point, Good Design: Your website should so easily convey who you are that a child could figure it out. Be inspired and creative yet at the same time, keep it simple, uncluttered, professional and easy to navigate. If your contact us or return policy is buried and hard to find, chances are your visitor will leave and never come back. Additionally, if your offering a certain product online, keep relevant information contained on a single page. Having to dig for shipping information may be what causes them to visit your competitor.

Value/Quality/Assurance: Just because this is the wealthiest of the generations doesn’t mean that they spend their money frivolously. Focusing on high quality, value and assurance that you are who you say you are, and will do what you say you’ll do, will go a long way with this generation.

It’s all About the Relationship

In order to gain and maintain this generation’s loyalty, you must build and maintain an ongoing relationship. In the case of baby boomers, the key to reaching out and retaining this market is to design approproate digital campaigns that develop trust, speaks their language and appeals to them. Go where they are, be authentic, and offer high quality, value driven incentives to engage and entice them. By offering valuable content and offers via social media and as an incentive to provide you with their name and email address from your website, you can then use email marketing campaigns to continue to provide valuable information and/or incentives to frequent your website and ultimately make the sale.