Boomers and seniors primed for digitial marketing

The under-30 sector may be “the tech generation,” but seniors are far from newbies when it comes to technology and digital communications. Marketing your senior living communities means paying attention to the technology and media streams your future residents are using today.

Many of the marketing assumptions about older adults are wrong, since many boomers and seniors are “neither slow to pick up new concepts, nor resistant to the ever-changing digital world,” notes Koeppel Direct, a media direct-marketing giant whose portfolio includes specialty marketing to baby boomers and seniors. “Parodied in pop culture as ‘behind the times’ and unable to stay abreast of rapid changes in the technological landscape, those fifty and older have been misrepresented.”

Nearly half of all people age 50-64 have at least one online profile, and most of them (90%) use e-mail, Koppel Direct says. Americans age 50+ are the fastest-growing sector of social media users, especially Facebook.

The use of mobile tablet devices (including iPad and Android devices) has exploded in just the past two years. In 2012, the #1 activity on tablet devices, by far, was accessing content and information, not reading books or playing games, notes an Online Publishers Association report.

The following infographic from Koeppel Direct shows the variety of ways seniors and boomers are becoming increasingly wired:

Via Koeppel Direct

Pamela Tabar

Pamela Tabar was editor-in-chief of I Advance Senior Care from 2013-2018. She has worked as a writer and editor for healthcare business media since 1998, including as News Editor of Healthcare Informatics. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Kent State University and a master’s degree in English from the University of York, England.