If you’ve had any success marketing to senior citizens on TikTok, you’re the first — congratulations. For the rest of us, building marketing strategies that are loud enough to reach older folks takes some serious effort.
But the difficulty of marketing to seniors shouldn’t put you off. There are effective ways to reach this high-value consumer class, which is growing faster and has more buying power than any other age group.
At Your Business Marketer, we understand how important it is for businesses to reach the right audiences with their marketing. That’s exactly what we help businesses do. For help understanding how to market to senior citizens, reach out to our team and see the five tips below.
1. Check Your Senior Marketing Message
Most seniors are not up with the current social media trends and latest internet lingo. That does not mean that they’re unsophisticated consumers. It just means that they likely won’t respond to the latest marketing tactics.
So, check your message. Is it making references seniors won’t understand? Does it oversimplify the point? Is it pandering or patronizing? If so, change it. Think of the marketing tactics seniors grew up with — longer-form ads with plenty of explanation of what the product does. Give them that kind of explanation, and give it to them straight.
Don’t try to sell seniors your hip brand identity or shiny new piece of technology. Don’t sell what your product or service is; instead, sell them what it does for them. It’s not the latest iPhone with the neural network processor. It’s the easiest, highest-quality way to do video calls with the grandkids.
2. Emphasize Customer Service
There’s one consistent marketing strand that weaves its way through the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers and Generation X: customer service. Personalized, high-quality customer service has been a core quality of the marketing older people have been exposed to.
Your product or service can have all the bells and whistles, all the latest and greatest, but if it looks like you aren’t going to provide great customer service, your message will fall flat with many senior citizens. So, emphasize your willingness and ability to help your customers both before and after the sale.
3. Explore Multi-Channel Marketing for Seniors
Multi-channel marketing is the practice of marketing in multiple mediums, such as online, on social media, on television and in print, all at once. You have to meet your customers where they are, and sometimes they’re on certain channels and not others.
This is true of all demographics, but it’s an especially important consideration when marketing to senior citizens. For example, more than 45% of people older than 65 use at least one social media site, but it would be a waste of your money to run ads on TikTok, a platform only 4% of seniors say they have used. Facebook is a different story. More than 50% of seniors say they use Facebook.
Of course, when you’re talking about marketing to older people, you can’t forget print. Roughly 23% of seniors read a print newspaper every day, while 13% read one several times a week and 18% percent read one once a week. As you can imagine, those numbers look a whole lot smaller for the younger crowd. But if you need your ad to reach seniors, print may be a great choice.
It’s all about meeting senior citizens where they are and remembering to let research inform your choice of marketing channel. Aren’t you at least a little shocked that 4% of seniors use TikTok? Sometimes, the demographic you’re targeting will surprise you.
4. But Don’t Discount SEO
Social, print, TV and even billboard ads are all great marketing tools, but in 2021, SEO is still king. That’s because everyone uses Google — even senior citizens. Way back in 2012, the latest year for which data was available, 80% of people older than 65 said they used search engines.
Fast forward a few years, and the senior population has had that much longer to be exposed to and become comfortable with online search. The point? If part of your marketing strategy is about ranking well for searches related to your business, you’re positioning yourself to capture online searches from older people with an organic marketing tactic that will yield long-term ROI.
5. When Marketing to Older People, Keep It Simple
This old adage of marketing applies two-fold when marketing to seniors: keep it simple. The more barriers you put between your audience and your business, the less likely they are to reach you.
To apply that to the real world, opt for offering a phone number to call rather than (or in addition to) an online form to fill out. Worry less about the sleekness and responsiveness of your website design and more about how clear the messaging is. Keep. It. Simple.
Marketing to Older People Doesn’t Have to Be Old-Fashioned
You need to reach senior citizens with your marketing, but you don’t need to bust out the typewriter and drafting table. The team at Your Business Marketer makes marketing to senior citizens easy with personalized marketing strategies that reach the right audience, right now, right away. To get started, call us at (800) 499-1996 or contact us online.