Want to Reach High-Income Baby Boomers?

Published June 2, 2014 | By Elaine Fogel

If you’re targeting high-income Baby Boomers with your marketing, you’ve got to see this new research from the Luxury Institute. It surveyed consumers 21 and older from U.S. households with annual income of at least $150,000 about the types of media that they consume and the time they spend on each.

Affluent Baby Boomers are spending almost twice as much time with print and TV than their Millennial counterparts, while lagging in their usage of social media, online radio and online video. Not surprised? There’s more.

Here are the findings:

On average, Millennials (ages 21-34) watch 4.15 hours of live television weekly, compared to the 7.04 hours spent by Baby Boomers (ages 50+).
About 70% of all age groups are DVR television viewers, each setting aside about 4 hours per week to watch recorded programs.
Baby Boomers devote 2.87 hours per week to reading newspapers and magazines, an activity enjoyed by 80% of Millennials, but they only spend 1.12 hours with printed periodicals. Gen Xers (35 to 49-year olds) are in between, dedicating 1.58 hours to reading magazines and newspapers on a weekly basis.
Millennials are the most likely (85%) to spend time using social media, and the most frequent users (3.4 hours per week) of sites like Facebook and Twitter. Generation X comes next at 73% and 60% for Baby Boomers.
Two-thirds of wealthy consumers between 21 and 34 listen to music on sites like Pandora and Spotify for 3.28 hours per week on average. Just 41% of Baby Boomers listen to online radio, but 53% do watch videos online, a popular behavior among both Millennials (82%) and Generation X (65%).

According to MarketingCharts, fewer than half of Americans aged 75 and older even go online! So, if you’re marketing products or services for older folks, or hope to capture planned gift donations for your nonprofit, try traditional media as part of your multichannel marketing mix.

“Even though technology is constantly evolving, older generations are still keeping pace, though they do have habits that prevail,” says Luxury Institute CEO Milton Pedraza. “While averages are important, they don’t tell the entire story. Marketers need to go beyond stereotypes and propensities, and start doing real one-to-one marketing now.”