I attended the JWTBoom LiveWire conference about marketing to boomers last week. What a terrific experience–and even better in retrospect. What I learned will appear here and in my column for months to come.
What is most on my mind today is how important it is to know your market. Whom do you think your product or service will most benefit? I was fascinated to hear attendee after attendee (and if the truth be told, almost everyone was male!) ask how to reach the boomer market! As if boomers are one market!
There are left-handed boomers, blue-eyed boomers, boomers who like Birkenstocks, boomers who like earrings. You get the idea. When we come up with our great idea for a business, we imagine hoardes of people lining up for it, but we stand a far better chance if we take the time to understand clearly our best potential customers and get to work with them in mind.
This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 7:50 am and is filed under Marketing, Publicity, General Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.6 Responses to “Know Whom You’re Talking to”
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June 9th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Bonnie:
I’m glad to see your post. We get frustrated by marketers, and the media, when they talk about “boomers” as if they are a single-minded organism of 78 million.
We like to remind people that the “boomer” label is a demographic title, nothing more. Being a boomer isn’t like being part of an affinity group. People share interests not based on their year of birth, but their life stage, life style and attitudes.
So keep slicing and dicing boomers as many ways as you can. That’s the only way to effectively reach them.
By the way, what was the turnout at the event? We had heard they were scrambling to sell seats the last week. Was the event a success in terms of the numbers and quality of participants (in addition to yourself).
Best,
Matt Thornhill
Boomer Project
June 10th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Hi Matt,
I agree wholeheartedly! Thanks for adding your thoughts.
This was the first time I attended this conference, so I have no idea what their expectations were as far as attendance. I met very interesting and “appropriate to the conference” people and had a chance to meet nearly half of the attendees — a worthwhile percentage. I would also say that the content was thought provoking enough that I am still thinking about it and writing about it.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Hi Bonnie:
Knowing who you are talking to is such a vital step in a sales process. Not just from knowing your market, but also knowing what role the person plays that you are in contact with. Many sales people get frustrated because their deals are not closing and ask me for help. One of the things I quickly uncover is: the are presenting to the wrong person.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Michael,
Thanks for taking the concept and expanding on it. Connecting to the right person is absolutely critical–but sometimes you learn a lot on your way to that person. I’m always fascinated by where the web of connections takes us.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Hi Bonnie,
Let’s not forget the under-50 boomers, too. There are a plenty of us trailing-edge boomers that marketers have no clue how to talk to.
It’s pretty evident in their marketing. They’ve lumped all boomers into one generic category, assuming we all have the same interests, which couldn’t be any further from the reality.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:37 am
Patty,
You are so right! At the Conference one speaker put forth that you are the “Jones Generation” and equally ignored. I think that at some point marketing people looked at the number 78 million and all they could see were dollar signs to the horizon. AARP has not figured this out and don’t stay on point and now many of the marketing concepts and decisions are no where near the age of the people they are trying to reach — whether leading edge or trailing. There are huge opportunities if corporations and their marketing department would stop thinking of reaching 78 million people.
Bonnie