Strategies for the Impending Baby Boomer Crisis
Financial marketers have a serious problem to get their heads around. As the Director of Marketing Strategy for Merkle, Stephen Donohue, points out in his article Banking and The Impending Baby Boomer Crisis for The Financial Brand, despite the fact that younger clients “represent major, and long-running growth opportunities” seniors are poised to outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history by 2035. And as he warns, with more older customers comes less retail lending, leading to more weight on growth and interest rates and putting a massive amount of pressure on bank profits.
Taking Japan as an indicator of what’s to come, Donohue highlights how financial institutions have begun resorting to riskier forms of lending in response to the same shift already occurring there, and stresses the need for North American banks and credit unions to take steps to alleviate the pressure before it comes to a head here. This is where marketing comes in. If those in the FinServ industry want to remain stable and competitive during the coming period, Donohue stresses the importance of continuing to devote resources to the senior segment. He even goes so far as to suggest that some financial institutions may need to fully retool their entire business model and product lineup.
There’s a lot to take in in Donohue’s outline of the situation. Luckily, he also outlines some steps that marketing can take in achieving these goals and keeping growth on track. It all comes down to understanding your audience, and tailoring your message to adapt. Below I’ll outline the 5 Keys to Success that he provides, and outline how Coconut Software can help you to unlock the full potential of this valuable demographic.
1. Audience Targeting
This is simple Marketing 101, but at the same time it’s a common stumbling block for many marketers when it comes to today’s generation of seniors. As Donohue points out, these days, there is no one definition of a boomer lifestyle. There is clearly far too much variation in the financial needs and goals of a demographic who might be anywhere from raising their young children to enjoying retirement to lump them all together. But by taking advantage of comprehensive, real-time analytics to provide insights into individual client needs, you can tailor your messaging to deliver appropriate marketing to each individual — better understanding their personal financial goals and going beyond the standard boilerplate materials of traditional generational targeting.
How Coconut fits in:
Through Coconut Software’s solutions, your marketing team has access to a centralized system of analytics on individual client booking trends. Messaging can be fine tuned to address each client’s needs across the board, extending from targeted ads online to materials promoted in-branch by advisors.
Learn more about how appointment analytics can help you gain marketing insights.
2. Clear and Relevant Messaging
When seeking to bring clients in to enrol in or purchase new financial products, it’s important for information to be easily accessible, with direct and concise messaging and clear directions on next steps. And as mentioned in Donohue’s article, this is especially important with the boomer audience. As a group, they seek simple, straightforward information relevant to their needs. By creating marketing materials that provide this information alongside direct and prominent calls to action that make the simplicity of the process clear to the audience, you provide a way for your boomer clients to gain the information they need quickly, and provide a quick and simple way to take action.
How Coconut fits in:
Coconut Software’s appointment management solutions allow for clear CTAs to be utilized in all forms of marketing. From online appointment scheduling to call centers and in-branch visits, clients can be quickly directed to take action on a centralized system that ensures a smooth and accurate booking process.
Read more about optimizing your CTAs to improve marketing results.
3. Simplify the Experience
There’s nothing worse than taking the time to decide on a product and then attempting to move on to fulfillment only to discover a convoluted process full of extra steps and uncertain wait times. As already mentioned, boomers as an audience desire simplicity, and any extra steps can easily lead to abandonment. One way to provide a simple way to take action is with an always-on online booking channel, but it shouldn’t stop there. Ensure that all booking channels are centralized, from contact centers to the branches themselves, so that if a client moves from one method to another, the information already entered on one system is available on all others instantly.
How Coconut fits in:
Through Coconut Software’s integrated appointment management solutions, all information collected through any channel is available to your staff. From online to in-branch, your representatives will be able to quickly access client information that has been provided, allowing them to provide the smooth, personalized experience that consumers have come to expect.
Read more about the risks of channel switching on ways to reduce (or eliminate) them.
4. Connect
Boomers are skeptical of marketing, so connecting and building trust is important. One of the best ways Donohue outlines for building that trust is through genuine messaging, reinforced with examples of how others have benefited. How can you do it? Generate positive word of mouth by boosting your NPS and CES scores through custom tailored services and a streamlined, effortless experience, and leverage that in marketing materials targeted at others in similar situations. By ensuring you have a method that provides the hassle-free experience your clients are looking for, paired with products that perfectly fit their needs, you can gain all the material you need to create genuine testimonial campaigns that resonate on a higher level than traditional marketing.
How Coconut fits in:
When looking to boost your Net Promoter and Customer Effort Scores, some of the biggest barriers are channel switching, repeating information and difficulty in making contact. Through Coconut Software’s solutions, you are able to eliminate these barriers and create an experience that your clients will happily endorse.
Learn more about the benefits of reducing customer effort in our Webinar Replay.
5. Utilize Social Media
We’ve covered the importance of social when it comes to millennial marketing in previous blogs and infographics, but with 87% of seniors accessing some type of social media daily, Donohue emphasises the importance of including a social component to your boomer marketing strategy. By pushing out information through precisely targeted social ads, you have a surefire way to ensure your marketing is being seen by the most relevant audience. Take it one step further and provide a way for that audience to take action directly on the ad, giving them the ability to move straight to booking an appointment and drastically reduce the opportunity for abandonment.
How Coconut fits in:
Create custom landing pages for targeted ads, directly embedded with a prominent and simple method of booking an appointment for that specific product. Coconut Software allows your social ads to quickly and easily convert prospects to sales by making the process as streamlined as possible.
Check our Product Overview for more information on what Coconut can do for you.
What’s Next?
Baby-boomers represent one of the largest, and most overlooked groups in current marketing trends. Interested in learning how appointment scheduling can help your entire organization engage more efficiently and effectively with this high value demographic? Download our Customer Experience Whitepaper.
Ready to get started? Schedule a consultation today.