Jim Stroud’s The Recruiters Lounge

I recently read a very interesting white paper called, “Capturing the Exploding Senior Market: 23 Rules for Targeting Seniors” by Richard Tooker. Its written for marketers seeking to exploit the senior demographic, but it could very easily be used as a how-to paper for passively recruiting the baby-boomer generation.

Here is a snippet from the copy promoting the free white paper:

The job of marketing to seniors is complicated by the fact that no one can clearly define what a senior is. The senior population is wide and varied and is in reality made up of subgroups based on age, attitudinal information and behavioral data. Each factor affects the direction of a marketing campaign — as well as its success.

This white paper will tell you how to establish a marketing initiative that targets seniors in a way that addresses their needs for your products and services. Learn 23 guidelines that you must follow if you hope to have success with your senior marketing efforts. Plus, learn the differences between the various segments of the senior population and how those differences should be addressed in your marketing strategy.

Here are a few of eyebrow raising take-aways from the report.

• Don’t stereotype, and don’t lump. Trailing Boomers are different from Leading Boomers, both are different from individuals over 60, and there are usually actionable subsegments within each group.
• Don’t use humor about aging. Getting old is not funny, and they’re in denial anyway.
• At this writing, more than 60% of seniors still use dial-up access to go online. Some researchers place that number as high as 72%. For whatever reason, the broadband revolution seems to have mostly passed seniors by, at least for the moment. That fact has significant implications for the (usually young) people who design Web sites. Almost all large companies today build Web sites that assume everyone has DSL or cable access to the Internet. Designing sites targeted to seniors and assuming high-speed access can have truly disastrous consequences.
• Almost 60% of Americans age 50–64 are online, and more are plugging in each passing day. Even more surprising, 22% of consumers 65 and older use the Web regularly, up from less than 2% 10 years ago.

  Here’s how seniors use the Internet:

  * 95% use email
  * 66% have looked for health/medical information
  * 66% have done product research
  * 60% have visited a government Web site
  * 47% have bought something on the Internet
  * 4 % have made travel reservations
  * 20% have done online banking

Hmm… So if I was compensating for the “labor shortage” by recruiting senior talent, at the very least I would not make jokes about growing old, I would get a strong handle on which type of baby boomers are visiting my company website and I would create a special website that runs smoothly on dial-up.

After reading the entire report, I had even more ideas, but why ruit it for you? Click here to download your copy of Capturing the Exploding Senior Market: 23 Rules for Targeting Seniors.

.