Recently I have discovered that my wife is much younger than I thought? I didn't find this out from her birth certificate or anything like that. She was in fact born in 1996. However, after sitting through several presentations talking about how to market to Gen Yers and what they do and how they buy, etc, I have come to realize my wife is really a Gen Yer (lucky me, huh).
Okay, all kidding aside what is my point? I don't think we should get so caught up in marketing to a specific age as we should be looking at lifestyles. My wife, friends at work, etc are more Gen Y than some of the people who are categorized by their age to be Gen Y. As marketeers we have to market by lifestyle but can't and shouldn't use age and income to determine that lifestyle marketing preference? So if we can't use age and income, what should we do? How about creating permission marketing and asking our members how they want to be marketed to and what they want to know about. And, yes, we find a place for them to make changes to those preferences as their lifestyle or stage changes. Silly idea? Maybe, but even if 20% of our members would give us true permission marketing in the form of what types, etc that they want then we would be better off than if we didn't offer it wouldn't we?
And, let's not forget that the people in the same household may not share all the same lifestyle characteristics. I might be married to a Gen Yer but I am definitely a Gen Xer so don't expect to market to me like you do my wife. This is a scary new world for us marketers isn't it?
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