The teen and twenty-something market may get more attention from advertisers, marketers and the press, but the demographic with the most potential growth and opportunity for e-commerce businesses is adults aged 65 and up and their Baby Boomer children and/or caregivers.
While estimates vary, there are now more than 10 million older adults (who consider “senior” a bad word, though use it to search out products and services online) surfing the Internet, looking for information, products and services targeted just for them and analysts expect that number to soar as the Internet-savvy U.S. population continues to age.
“The mature market is really an immature market,” explained Connie Hallquist, the CEO of Gold Violin, a thriving multichannel business that provides “helpful products for independent living.” “Never before in the history of mankind have we had so many people living so long. This is virgin territory,” said Hallquist. “There are zillions of companies that have been marketing to teens forever. But we’ve never had so many old people, [people] with distinct or unique needs and companies and marketers and brands are [waking] up to that fact.”
To help ecommerce businesses capture a piece of this online market, I asked several experts to share their experience and provide some golden rules on how to market to today’s “Golden Girls” and Guys.
What I came away with were these seven golden rules:
Rule 1: Know who you are selling to
Rule 2: Show you are trustworthy
Rule 3: Offer products and services that provide value
Rule 4: Optimize your site for an older audience
Rule 5: List a customer service number on every page
Rule 6: Make checkout easy
Rule 7: Don’t forget SEO and traditional marketing
Btw, almost all these rules — or tips — apply to just about every ecommerce site.
Want to learn more? Read my article, “Selling to Silver Surfers.”
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