Generational Marketing: What Is It and Why It Matters

1. Generational Marketing: What Is It and Why It Matters Generation marketing is exactly what the name suggests. It is when a business markets products and services to a specific generation such as Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millenials. Part of your marketing plan involves knowing your Audience and sometimes that means knowing characteristics of a whole generation or a mix of generations. Generational Marketing has been used all the way from classic print media to the more recent targeted social platform ads. Generational Marketing matters because your product will have a specific audience for it. Knowing which generations you are targeting will give you a better understanding of their general buying behaviors and attitude. Here’s a quick guide:

2. *Pre-Depression GenerationBorn: Before 1930 • Buying Characteristics: Conservative, Value others and their community over material possessions, prefers face-to-face buying and selling, value one-to-one conversations, and more inclined to traditional advertising and marketing practices.

3. *Depression Generation a.k.a Silent GenerationBorn: 1930-1945 • Buying Characteristics: Stick to what is tried and tested, they listen to who they deem as an authority, they value consistency and may dislike change, value family and home life, like their independence and being able to make their own choice. • *Often grouped together into a generation called Traditionalists

4. Baby Boomers GenerationBorn: 1946-1964 • Buying Characteristics: Buy based on personal values and convenience, more tech-savvy than previous generations, values financial stability and security, values responsibility for family, likes to have options when purchasing or making a decision, prefers direct language, likes attention and responds well to marketing strategies directed towards what they deem as important in their lives.

5. Generation XBorn: 1965-1976 • Buying Characteristics: High brand loyalty, less traditional than previous generations, considers hard work as a necessity, prefers directness and results-based data, more informal, likes to be engaged with humor, appeals to family-related messages, prefers short, direct to the point messages.

6. Millenialsa.k.a Generation YBorn: 1977-1995 • Buying Characteristics: Strong beliefs in making their future better, skeptical about brands and their authenticity, grew up around digital advancement and consider that a normal part of life, prefers emails or social media over telephone conversations for the first contact, self-absorbed persona, respond well to companies who are genuine about change for the better, more child or career-oriented generation, values honesty from brands.

7. Generation ZBorn: 1996 onwards • Buying Characteristics: Never known a time without technology and the Internet, value fast-paced information exchange, prefers short burst messages, they will look for and validate information via multiple channels and sources, they respond better to companies who are seen as ‘real’, ‘genuine’, and ‘credible’, they find information about products and companies faster as they are more tech savvy. • There will be a lot of occasions where you may need to market your product across multi-generations. This should be part of your marketing plan and creating your audience profile. • What you need to remember is that each generation is different and doing your research on what they value and how to appeal to generations will make a lot of difference. Generational Marketing very important for online busineess.