Digital Marketing Insights for Older Demographics

Chuck Forbes - March 30, 2022

The fifty-five and older demographic is often advertised to the least or neglected all together when finalizing both paid and organic digital strategy. If this demographic truly serves your business no purpose, then naturally allocating a large number of resources doesn’t make sense. However, if they can be a part of your business model and help your sales grow, but you haven’t explored the potential of this demographic – here are further insights on why it may be worth doing.

Recent data from ecommerce apps and platforms, such as Pinterest and Etsy, show that this older demographic not only spends a healthy amount of money, but their engagement is increasing. This age group likely has more disposal income to use. We also do not give enough credit to older generations being active on social and ecommerce platforms. Take a look at these recent statistics from a UK company Ofcom who gathered information from 55 and over groups:

Age 55-64:

• 86% use a smartphone.
• 94% use the internet at home.
• 70% correctly identify advertising on Google.
• 73% have a social media profile.

Age 65+:

• 55% use a smartphone.
• 77% use the internet at home.
• 58% correctly identify advertising on Google.
• 59% have a social media profile.

There is a huge opportunity to target and increase your brand awareness to this demographic based on the above statistics.

Another part of your brands content should be authoritative content that educates your audience. This will establish strong brand identity and keep your audience engaged overtime. The older demographic groups seek this type of content and unlike the younger audiences, they are more loyal to a few sources once they like the content. I have seen this with returning visitor data when looking at the age group of 50 and above for some of my clients. My advice would be to build educational content when targeting an older demographic.

Another great tip is to keep your content and website experience simple for this age group. As mentioned above, this demographic does not surf web content as much as a younger audience would – therefor, if you are “too fancy” with your site experience, you could lose their interest. The best way to know if your content is set up for success in this area is to ask yourself:

1. Are my instructions, steps, messaging and copy easy to read and written in a simple, informative way?
2. Can I eliminate steps within the conversion process?
3. Am I using more CTA’s than I need?

In conclusion, these are a few core insights that can present an opportunity for your brand to look more closely at this age demographic. With technology getting easier to use and understand combined with continued education – I would expect the older demographic to be a large contributor to overall market revenue through digital advertising in the future.