There are a million ways to segment the type of consumers you want to market your products to. For example, demographic segmentation (age, gender, income, ethnic, family-life cycle).
Although marketing to specific age groups is a well understood concept by many, still there is a need for more information on this subject. For example, big businesses such as the Disney Corporation know extremely well how to sell their products to children and tweens. They understand that the buying process will have to be routed through a parent or a guardian.
Similarly, elderly people are the target for many industries. Marketing to people of middle to upper age requires a different kind of thinking. It is a lot easier to sell to this age group compared to many others if your firm knows how to proceed. Here are a few reasons why your business should be going after this age group.
They have the money and resources to buy
I want to get the obvious stuff out of the way first. One of the main reasons selling to the elderly is so lucrative, they generally have more money than others. These people have worked for many years (hopefully) and have accumulated wealth over decades. But its not as simple as selling anything to this age group. You still have to do your homework in order to make a sale.
To put things into perspective, people aged 50 and up control over 80 percent of the financial assets in the United States. Their buying power exceeds $2 trillion every year and the same age group accounts for 50 percent of discretionary income in the US.
Elderly are generally nostalgic
This is where things start to get more interesting. Once a person has reached the middle age, they start to become nostalgic. If they want something, they will get it. Baby boomers are eager to continue to live active lives. They demand the best products and services including flashy cars, tech toys, health and wellness goods, etc. In-fact, this age group accounts for more than 32 percent of new computer sales and 31 percent of digital camera sales. Having this information opens up doors to many new opportunities for your business to chase after.
Understanding market segmentation and their specific needs are the first crucial steps to becoming successful. Too many people and firms take the shotgun approach, which is usually not a good idea. There is something called the Undifferentiated Targeting Strategy where a firm essentially adopts a mass-market philosophy and treats their whole target market as having similar needs. I will save that for some other time.
There are many ways to proceed with marketing to consumers. It is generally a best-practice for firms to familiarize themselves with their target markets as much as possible. Market research data can be bought from firms that specialize in categorizing and segmenting population by multiple attributes such as income, age, and gender. It is an investment that allows any company to really look into the needs of consumers and work towards providing products or services that satisfy those needs.