Let’s take a look at the elements I use when formulating a marketing strategy, which effectively means figuring out “what to say and how to say it.”
Welcome to Longevity Gains, the newsletter for marketers and entrepreneurs who want to succeed in the longevity economy, the largest and fastest-growing market in the world. It’s the $22 trillion opportunity you can’t afford to ignore.
Older consumers present an unprecedented opportunity for businesses of all kinds.
That’s because people over 50 currently tend to be lumped together in one large, undifferentiated bucket. Of course, that’s when marketers think about them at all, which historically hasn’t been often.
The vast demographic shift underway ironically reveals the inherent fallacy of overly simplistic statistical segmentation. This is why we’ve spent so much time exploring beliefs because they’re the foundation of psychographic – or psychological-based – marketing segmentation.
If you’re a digital marketer, you may think of segmentation as finding and noting classifications within an existing audience. Here, I’m using the term in the broader sense, which means choosing a specific segment of the entire market to build an audience and business around.
This psychological approach transcends mere interests or life stages as the basis for effectively communicating with older adults. Those elements are necessary, of course, but only play a relatively small part in the overall mix of psychographic ingredients for an engaging marketing recipe.
Before we dig into how to develop your own winning psychographic profiles of your ideal audience, you need to understand each of the components, how they differ from each other and interrelate, and what factors influence actual behavior when it comes to getting prospects to take action.
Let’s take a look at the elements I use when formulating a marketing strategy, which effectively means figuring out “what to say and how to say it.” Some of these are standard psychographic components that savvy marketers typically use, and others are aspects of my own unique approach.
The key point is they’re all psychological, not demographic. Hit the link to explore each one.
The Six Key Psychographic Elements for Longevity Marketing (Longevity Gains)
The 50+ Push
Ever since the mid-80s, Men’s Health magazine has been known to feature buff and shirtless young guys on their covers, to the point that they were criticized for making young men more prone to eating disorders and compulsive over-exercising.
So it’s notable when they do a montage of nothing but men over 50, some shirtless, some not, but all “hot.” We’re well past the Wilford Brumley era now, and the new face of the over-50 man is part of the larger shift toward the acceptance of new realities for “older” people.
Fifty isn’t past the halfway point any more. With potentially 35 years to go in life—up from barely 20 in the 1960s, when the average lifespan was only 69.7 years—it’s the new starting line for prime adulting. And spoiler alert: It doesn’t all go downhill from here.
This is significant because it’s not just that the media is beginning to understand that things have changed and will continue to shift. It’s also a recognition of who has the money, and that’s people over 50 in general.
This Is 50+ (Men’s Health)
Giving While Living
We know Baby Boomers and Silent Generation folks have lots of assets. And those assets are going to be passed down to younger generations in the coming years:
The Great Wealth Transfer is the forecasted hand-off of trillions of dollars from the older Silent Generation and aging Baby Boomers to their young Generation-X, Millennial, and Generation-Z adult children and grandchildren over the next 20 years.
Some of this will be in the form of inheritance, but not all of it. Changing attitudes about how to spend this accumulated wealth should provide an array of new business ideas. This is called “giving while living,” and some of that is shared spending with children and grandchildren.
Without thinking about it, parents routinely redirect savings that might have gone to retirement and family wealth to their children’s college funds. Later, those same parents may pay for weddings. Parents and grandparents may help purchase a new home for a young couple. However, a trend that has gained significant momentum is the shared gift of travel.
As we’ve explored in the past, travel is a huge longevity economic category already. But add in the desire for multigenerational experiences, and the travel tab starts to expand.
One key trend in the travel industry is multigenerational travel, where typically older adults organize, finance, share experiences, and make memories with their adult children and grandchildren ….
The 2023 U.S. Family Travel Association Survey of 3,300 parents and grandparents indicates that 50% of those surveyed have taken a multigenerational trip in the last three years. Moreover, more than half (54%), particularly grandparents, report being the primary planner and organizer of the trip.
The primary takeaway here along with the “die with zero” movement is that older consumers want to spend their money on experiences, not squirrel it away until they die. It’s a fundamental shift in attitudes toward accumulated wealth and what to do with it, so take note. Those who empower older consumers to have vibrant experiences will reap rewards.
The Great Wealth Transfer Is Happening, But Not In The Way You Think (Forbes)
Gen X Power
Ran across an interesting resource this week, the Generational Power Index. As you might guess, Baby Boomers hold a lot of sway, but so does Generation X, especially in technology and cultural factors.
According to some research, individualism is a defining feature of Gen X—this is exemplified by the generation’s pronounced entrepreneurialism. After all, Google, Amazon, YouTube, PayPal, Tesla, and other iconic companies wouldn’t exist without Gen Xers.
As of 2021, Generation X makes up 19.9% of the population. In our GPI, they punch above their weight with a 30.4% share of overall power in American society.
Gen X is particularly dominant in the film and TV industry, with roughly 50% of Oscar winners in 2020 being Gen X. Over half of America’s largest news corporations have a Gen X CEO.
This may be a good time to revisit my analysis of Generation X, which made essentially the same points. It’s a Gen X world, everyone else is just living in it.
Which U.S. generation has the most cultural power and influence? (World Economic Forum)
Until next time…
Keep going-