Marketing Financial Services to the over 50's

Thought that only "young people" or as some of my colleagues say, "the kids" use social networks?

Not true, Dick Stroud, an expert on using interactive channels to communicate with the over-50s market, posted a blog on his website that includes a link to his presentation on the subject of marketing financial services to the 50+ age group.

Why should it matter? Because 11-12% of SA is between 50 and 65, which represents a large portion of the population.


Here are some interesting snippets from his presentation.

• Use of online banking is distributed evenly over the 25-55+ age demographic
• More than 30% of 50+ Internet users search for brokerage information (this is significantly higher than any other age group)
• The 50+ users have an average of 42% longer viewing time of web pages - this means they actually READ the information on the page.

Dick also gives five walk-aways:
"1. We spend lots of time talking about the 50+ market but most of the time we are really talking about the 60+ - probably the 65+ and in many instance the 70+ market. Certainly in the Finance Industry."
2. The consumer’s property is critical to so much of their future livelihood. I know that is an obvious thing to say but it really, really, really is."
3. How little we understand about the real reasons why older people behave the way they do. So much of the time we view the older market through the corporate window of generalisations and how we would like older consumers to behave"
4. There are large country differences, especially with regard to the post work finance available to people. But, there is a hell of lot in common between countries, certainly within Europe."
5. The impact of the credit crunch on consumer’s choice of channels to funnel their hard earned cash has probably changed forever. I don’t think the Financial Services industry has started to come to terms with that fact."