A senior living marketing agency can assist you in the battle of understanding your audience to enhance one of the largest assets of your marketing plan.
The Baby Boomers created the counterculture — and our modern conception of youth culture along with it. One of the generation’s biggest bands, The Who, memorably sang the line “I hope I die before I get old.”
Yet age comes for us all. Though many Baby Boomers may hate to admit it, they are squarely in their Golden Years — and many of them are now exploring senior living, often with the help of their Gen X children.
So how do senior living facilities market to the demographic that invented youth culture? Certainly not the way they marketed to the parents of Boomers, a generation with vastly different lived experiences. Partnering with the right senior living marketing agency can help brands meet this challenge, and craft a marketing plan designed to resonate with the Woodstock generation.
Why Baby Boomers view senior living through a different prism
There are two reasons why senior living communities need to recalibrate their digital marketing efforts for Baby Boomers. First, this generation has a much different conception of retirement and aging. The notion of 40 years, a gold watch and a quiet life playing shuffleboard hold no attraction. Baby Boomers don’t believe they are “old” in the same way their parents’ generation was — even if the calendar says otherwise.
The second reason: This self-conception is backed up by a profoundly important trend. Thanks to advances in medicine and a cultural shift toward health and wellness, people are not only living longer but staying youthful and vibrant even into their later years. In 1980, a 70-year-old was often prematurely aged by a lifetime of red meat, smoking, drinking, and minimal exercise. Today’s 70-year-old is often well-preserved by a healthy lifestyle supported by advances in modern medicine.
How senior living communities can reach this demographic
In order to effectively market senior living communities, it’s important to keep a few important ideas in mind:
- Despite the popular misconception, Baby Boomers are not anti-technology, afraid of technology or hopelessly inept when using technology. Baby Boomers invented the Internet and the World Wide Web; they outspend millennials almost two to one on online purchases.
- Baby Boomers spend 27 hours each week online. Roughly 82% of them have at least one social media account. In other words, they are a perfect audience for digital marketing and social media marketing.
- Baby Boomers seeking to make an informed decision about which senior community to choose will typically turn to social media reviews and testimonial videos to get their search process started.
- When designing a marketing campaign, senior living marketing agencies should help you stress the elements that appeal to Baby Boomers. Recreational facilities, onsite enrichment classes, yoga, culinary offerings, group excursions, property amenities — all of these things should play a central role in any digital campaign. Baby Boomers want vibrant, healthy, stimulating communities and marketing messages should reflect this.
- Baby Boomers and their Gen X children want to make the most informed decisions possible about senior living. One of the best ways to approach this is through social media storytelling. Have existing residents tell their own stories about living onsite and share these across all social channels.
- Make sure you have accessible health data: Rate of falls, hospital readmission rates, etc. Prospective clients will ask for it.
Finding the right digital marketing agency
In order to connect with Baby Boomers, you need to choose the right senior living marketing agency — one that has demonstrated expertise marketing within this niche.
Our team has the digital tools — and the expertise — to help you appeal to Baby Boomers. Contact us today to learn what a creatively compelling digital marketing campaign can do for you.
