Brittany Smith's Blog

We are all aware that the baby boomers are now becoming senior citizens that will dominate the current market place. EMarketer forecasts that:

“By 2030, the senior population, which eMarketer defines as all US consumers ages 65 and older, will reach an estimated total of 72 million, nearly 20% of the projected total population.”

The senior demographic consists of primarily white (80%) women (57%), although this is expected to further diversify in the future.  Making this demographic group easy for marketers to target due to its similar and specific nature. Their current online usage consists of mostly newspaper and email reading but they are beginning to utilize the web for different activities such as social media.

Although they are not the largest demographic on social networking sites, they are the one that is growing the fastest.  They have already sextupled from 4.7% to 28% in 2 years and eMarketer forecasts that they will amplify to 36% in the next 2 years.

Seniors motivations for using social networking sites are very different than Facebook’s typical users.  They are mainly prompted by the connection and communication to their families that they receive through this social medium.  For example my grandparents had moved back to Ontario and they were worried that we would fall out of touch. Thus to stay connected and to monitor what I have been up to they both created a Facebook account.

“For brand marketers looking to appeal to internet-savvy, doting parents and grandparents, Facebook could be an important venue to sell gifts for life-stage events like birthdays, graduations, weddings and new grandchildren.”

Therefore seniors should be an essential part of every companies online target market.