The Mature Market – A Unique Area of Expertise
Doing it Right for Older Adults is Right for Your Business

When businesses are responsive and respectful, older consumers respond with their feet and their wallets. “Doing it right” makes good business sense.

Superficial Attempts Don’t Generate or Retain Business
From product design to packaging, many businesses are only giving lip service to mature consumers – and they are missing out on potential profits. Placing “older” faces on an ad without changing anything else in the copy or the product is not target marketing. It’s a waste of money and can alienate the very consumers you are trying to attract.

Physiological Changes Matter
Where businesses are falling short is in their failure to recognize and respond to the physiological changes that occur with normal aging. Changes in vision, hearing, taste, and smell, some age-related arthritis, and changes in mental functioning such as short-term memory and retrieval affect how older consumers respond to your products, services and promotion.

The Marketing Strategists Listen and Test
Lynette Loomis, president of The Marketing Strategists, has worked with thousands of adults over age 65 to capture their views on products and services and their opinions on topics from money to manners. Through her guidance, your business can increase its market share in the mature market.
The Marketing Strategists acknowledge that people between the ages of 50 and 100 comprise two to three generations each with different values, expectations, and spending patterns. Critical to any product launch or promotional campaign is testing. (Pet peeve with many ad agencies “we don’t test – we all have grandparents so we know what they want”). Just because an agency has conducted campaigns to older adults doesn’t mean they are appropriately designed – case in point tiny print type and reverse type

The Marketing Strategists are a team of marketing professionals who help companies increase their share of the mature market. We do this through the custom design of affordable market research programs and translate findings into product design and promotional strategies.

• 1. Who are your customers? (Which “older” consumer are you targeting? 50, 60, 70, 80+ at what income level and what health status? Or are you interested in their adult children as well?)
• 2. What do your customers and prospects want? (Don’t guess – ask.)
• 3. How can your product or service be refined to be more attractive and user friendly to older consumers? (Have you taken normal age-related physiological changes into account?)
• 4. What do you need to do to increase sales volume? (You may need to start with product re-design.)
• 5. How do you compare to the competition? (Not just the obvious competitors but the substitution threats well.)

Our most recent older adult experience includes: Medicare, retirement communities, Medicaid, respite care, long-term care, adult day care, outpatient service, emergency roadside services, and financial planning.

Methodologies
We can design virtually any project you need or you may use our local older adult research panel from Rochester New York (a test market for many products and services).

As a former vice president of Medicare and Marketing for a regional health plan, Lynette was responsible for a Medicare+Choice plan with annual revenues of $100+ million; membership tripled in four years and grew to be the #1 rated plan in the country. She also has held management positions in a multi-level long-term care complex and is a consultant to many organizations and businesses and is a frequent speaker. Her most recent publications include:

• The Aging Workforce: Is Your Company Ready? Workspan, July 2006.
• Save Intellectual Capital, Tap Talents of Older Staff, Rochester Business Journal, June 23, 2006
• Twelve Easy Steps to Communicating with Those That Can’t Hear, Employee Benefit Advisor, June 2006.

Lynette holds a MA, a MBA, is accredited by the Public Relations Society of America and is a certified coach.

To talk about your business interest in the older market, or to discuss the topics on which Lynette can speak, please contact The Marketing Strategists here or call 585-624-1300.