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Why Your Marketing to Baby Boomers Doesn’t Resonate

Most advertisers realize the value in marketing to Baby Boomers. They are a massive market with the most spending power – accounting for more than 70% of the disposable income in the U.S. But this very lucrative segment is more than just another generational marketing target audience. Baby Boomers are a complex blend of people who have lived through dramatically …

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Think Reciprocity to Meet Aspirational Needs of Baby Boomers

Contemporary theories of marketing are increasingly defined in the context of collaborative relationships between a marketer and consumers that operate on behalf of meeting needs of the latter. But honoring this idea, especially in Baby Boomer markets, is often problematic because a continuing focus on sales quotas pressure marketing and sales staff to concentrate more on making deals than on …

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Why Your Marketing Isn’t Resonating With Baby Boomers

Most marketers these days have realized the value in targeting Baby Boomer audiences. They are a massive market with the most spending power – accounting for more than 70% of the disposable income in the U.S. But this very lucrative segment is more than just another target audience. Baby Boomers are a complex blend of people who have lived through …

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Marketing To Baby Boomers – Is It A Game Of Chance?

by Jim Gilmartin – An esteemed colleague once told me that no category of business expense contains as much waste as marketing. The amounts are astounding. Some marketing-related activities are estimated to cost companies about $500 billion annually. There are those that consider that figure is double what it should be. That claim is not as outlandish as it might …

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Want To Connect With Baby Boomers? Get Your Messages Creatively Right

By Jim Gilmartin – Contrary to the perception that aging brings a calcification of shopping habits, many over-50 consumers diversify their spending habits as they grow older. That diversification, plus the narrower tactics of contemporary marketing practices, makes them much tougher to reach through advertising. As older consumers and the Baby Boomer cluster move from the crowd-think of their youth …

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People Make All Purchase Decisions

“All purchase decisions are made by people.” Gavin Finn, CEO of Kaon Interactive, wrote in a recent article. “While data science and analytics have become an essential element of every modern marketing arsenal, it is wise to remember that people make all purchase decisions.” He goes on to say, “Even in business purchases, the individual decision-makers are subject to the same …

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To Connect With Baby Boomers, Be A Servant Marketer

By Jim Gilmartin – Contemporary theories of marketing are increasingly defined in the context of collaborative relationships between a marketer and customers that operate on behalf of meeting needs of the latter. But honoring this idea is often problematic because a continuing focus on sales quotas pressure marketing and sales staff to concentrate more on making deals than on helping …

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Experiential Segmentation: Allowing Boomers To Personally Define Value

By Jim Gilmartin – Greater individuation brought into the marketplace by Baby Boomers lessens the usefulness of traditional customer segmentation for reasons of simple economics. The greater the degree of individuation (the older we get, the less alike we become), the smaller the sub-groups; the smaller the sub-groups, the less cost-effective it is to tailor marketing programs to such groups. …

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Understanding What Your Customers Can’t Say

By G. Richard Ambrosius – In the world of marketing, there is general agreement that emotions play a larger role in consumer decision making than rational thought. So, doesn’t it follow that research that forces rational answers is generally flawed? Since breakthroughs in brain science challenge basic assumptions about consumer behavior, isn’t it time to re-write the rules of market …

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To Connect With Baby Boomers, Shift Your Marketing Paradigms

By Jim Gilmartin – A paradigm is not a way of doing things; it is a way of thinking about things. A new marketing paradigm cannot be understood according to the rules of the paradigm it replaces. Says brain researcher Bernard Baars in In the Theater of the Brain, “Our inability to report intentions and expectations simply reflect the fact that they …