By Jeff Bell
Sales & Marketing Results
We previously talked about how baby boomers are the largest growing affluent market segment in the US. And that if you don’t already have boomer customers patronizing your business, you’d better be targeting them fast to attract their business and wallets. “But Jeff, I have a normal boring business and I don’t know what baby boomers would buy from me or pay more to get from my company?” Okay Mr. Commodity Seller, pay attention whilst I spoon feed you some long overdue marketing advice.
Boomers have, because of their accumulated wealth and age, the desire to have their life made easier and to save time. To them, it’s worth it to “pay a little (or maybe a lot) extra” to have things done for them.
What would make their lives easier? The first answer to that is to ASK THEM. It’s really pretty simple. Tonight think about your business, what you sell or the services you deliver to a “boomer” type person. And think about any and all potential hassles or time wasters your business (or companies like yours) causes baby boomer people.
It may be as simple as they have to get in a car to come see you, as opposed to you going to see them. One of my clients is a CPA firm. When I’m in their office during tax season their always an endless parade of older couples walking in the door with their tax papers. Over half the time when they meet with their accountant the comment is made, “Boy it
sure was hard to fi nd this place”.
What do you think it would take to have a senior or “boomer” type on the payroll who likes to drive, to go around town during tax season and picks up the clients tax information, instead of them having to get in their car and brave the traffic to just “drop it off”?
Who knows if this would be attractive or not? The boomer client would you dummy! All the CPA firm would have to do is ASK THEM. And that’s all you’d have to do to. But if you’re a bright one, you might have caught an idea here – that being the baby boomers might pay for the DELIVERY of certain products and services, rather than having to go get them themselves.
A small town grocery store or restaurant might deliver. If you give massages or run a day spa, you might consider a “go-to-them” premium priced service menu. Hair stylist, attorney, fitness trainer, pet-sitting service, general medical doctor, dentist, rental car service (think Enterprise), travel agent and so on.
With the wide availability of wireless internet access via a cell phone card you plug into your laptop, you can carry the internet world to just about anyone. The same goes for equipment. The automobile manufacturers have several commercial van and truck options for pulling your equipment along with you.
I’ve seen traveling, doctors, dentists, pet washers & groomers, storage units, billboards, circuses, libraries, carnival museums and more. Go to any art fair, food market or flea market in your city and you’ll see a variety of businesses carrying their products and services TO their customers and clients.
Again, delivery to boomers is just one idea. It might work for your business, it might not. The key is to ask. And there are several ways to ask. And different times you can ask. Here are some suggestions.
At the check out counter. Don’t ask what I hear now in every retail store I walk into, “Did you fi nd everything you were looking for?” People rarely tell you the truth and say NO. Instead ask, “Buy the way, what one thing could we/I do about what the products/services you buy from us that would make your life easier or save you some time?”
Write the answers down. Keep a list. Do this for a day. If you get responses, do it for an entire week. Then start categorizing the most common responses and start chicken scratching next to them to find out which ones are the most popular.
If you send out a monthly newsletter (you’d lazy if you don’t) next month put in a survey on a half sheet with a return envelope, or maybe put the survey on a postcard – and have them mail it back to you. Tally and score the answers to the same question.
Figure out what the top one, two or three things (ignore them if they tell you to drop your prices) your customers say would make their life easier or save them time, and then build a premium version of your products or services with a HIGHER and still PROFITABLE price and start test marketing it the next month.
You may not hit a home run the first time around but you might be surprised what you discover. It might be that the boomers that buy from you are more than willing to spend more money with you than you thought before because you offered them a “boomer” type product or service that is specifically geared to their wants and needs.
Next month we’ll talk about “packaging and bundling” to create boomer products and services. But before you set this newsletter down, start writing in the margins your questions because you have homework tonight you young whipper-snapper!
Jeff Bell flunked his 1st semester of college pre-med classes almost 30 years ago. So like his fellow underachieving fraternity brothers, he quickly switched to the School of business and majored in management and marketing. Since then he’s helped international companies, regional businesses and start-up entrepreneurs successfully grow their
businesses by creating highly effective advertising & marketing systems.
But if you need to attract more customers with your advertising, request his FREE Special Report at www.TheAdvertisingFormula.com or you can leave less than fl attering comments or questions about this article on his voice mail at 317-713-1244.
