Influence With Vitality & Value

Now that we know Boomers show up as category influencers in a wide variety of product categories, what's the secret on how best to influence them? Boomer marketing hits the mark when Rainmakers create marketing messages that clearly portray the older consumer’s vitality, priorities and relationships, as well as the crucial roles that they play in their families, communities and in society at large. Boomers need you to know who they are and want you to acknowledge their value. The Jeep brand recently targeted grandmothers with a magazine campaign, placing personality and lifestyle front-and-center. The ad featured an image of a fashion-forward woman with copy that read,

Boomers Command Digital Influence

Word-of-mouth has always been a great way for Rainmakers to move the needle, but digital and social media has made sharing knowledge and opinions more prevalent and powerful, making it essential for brands to understand how to harness its influence. In every product category, there are consumers who become Category Influentials. These are the people who GfK Roper defines as highly trusted, well-informed consumers who make frequent recommendations across broad social networks. And the most significant group of social influencers are not who you might think.

Millennials Live To Share

I have three Millennials (12-34) at home to understand better, but this generation also represents a market size greater than the Boomers (47-65) and three times the size of Generation Xers (35-46). Digital marketers must be fluent in Millennial, as this generation of customers' purchasing power continues to grow, especially online. According to the "American Millennials" study recently conducted by Barkley, with Service Management Group and The Boston Consulting Group, Millennials, have the highest awareness and exposure to campaigns through social media platforms and 70 percent reported feeling more excited when their friends agreed with them about where to shop, eat and play. That's important because more than 30 percent reported liking brands who interact with them on Facebook and Twitter. Fifty percent of them are using their mobile phones to research while shopping and 82 percent opt to watch movies on either their laptops or DVR. These are very insightful statistics for marketers and I can personally corroborate them all, given what I see at home.