• by Andy Oakes  @andyoakes, November 22, 2013

Last week, I wrote about the teen market leaving Facebook, partly because the network was becoming more and more popular among more mature users. I had read an awful lot about how this would devalue Facebook and how the new messaging based networks were the new big thing.

But, of course, what I should have gone on to say is that this is a great opportunity to get in get in front of this more mature and more affluent audience. A couple of stats from a recent eMarketer report put things in context:

• Twitter’s fastest-growing age group is 55-64 year olds, +79% compared to 2012

• Facebook’s fastest-growing age group is 45-54 years olds +51% compared to 2012

Not only do the over-50s have a higher disposable income on average than their younger counterparts; they are also growing fastest in terms of numbers in the population. Today the over-50s already number nearly 19 million – one-third of the total population.As well as living longer, they’re healthier and more active. As a group, they are more likely to have substantial assets, cash and the time to enjoy life. Whilst they are less likely to have mortgages, school fees and nine-to-five jobs.

And then factor in that, according to McAfee, 97% of adults ages 50 to 75 go online daily. It seems that the majority use the internet primarily for online retail and personal finance matters. But the stat that leaps out is that eight in ten are active on social networks as well, with over a third logging onto social networking sites daily.

So, my question is, are brands adapting to this? Are the finely honed social messages working to target this demographic as well as they should? Or are many marketers missing this opportunity?

According to Dick Stroud managing director at 20plus30 and author of Marketing to the Ageing Consumer, the answer is yes. 

“I doubt if there are many brands that give any consideration to the 55+ in their social media plans. If they consider the issue at all, I think they look at the level of use of social media by older people and decide that the penetration levels are too small to worry.”

Stroud is pretty disparaging of the digital marketing industry’s attempts to market to this demographic. He went on to tell me, "In approximate terms there are two approaches to marketing to the older age group. Age-silo marketing — this means you have products developed for older people and marketed to older people such as stairlifts.  This also applies to the older-old or financial services products. Then you have Age-neutral marketing — this means products that not produced primarily for any single age group and purchased by all ages (e.g., airline flights, white goods).

The trouble is marketers confuse the two types. The default position for many marketers is to approach age-neutral product marketing but with an approach that is optimized for younger people. In most cases, it is best to use ‘generalized’ campaigns but these need to be done in such a way so they do not exclude any age groups. This is something that Apple is great at doing. Look at the advertising for the iPhone that either only talks about the product features but when it does include”.

So it seems that there is a massive opportunity here and the digital marketing industry needs to learn fast.  Much of what is being produced seems to be of a patronizing and overly general nature and does not understand the needs of the target group either in terms of the message or the delivery of the message.  

However getting to grips with defining and marketing to the over-50s is actually more complex than to their younger counterparts. The over-50s are an economically diverse group with unequal disposable income. They are more individualistic, and less able to be divided into groups and segments than younger consumers. And most importantly, age in itself is not and should not be a defining factor.  As Stroud told me, “Don’t think you can extrapolate the older age group from the likes and dislikes of your mum/dad or grandparents. Old people come in all shapes, sizes and variants. Apply the same rigor to your marketing as you would to any age group”

So we need to sort this out and soon. The stats about the growth and the spending power of the 55+ group should be enough for CMOs to start demanding more from their agencies and for agencies to learn a whole lot more about marketing to this group. It’s not just matter of financial sense, it’s a matter of respect.