I was born on the fringes of the Baby Boomer
years; a Boomer outlier, still a Boomer, nonetheless. Demographically speaking,
marketers love me as a Boomer. They have been throwing personalized marketing
pitches, based on my birth year, since the day I arrived on this Earth. And I
have bought almost everything they peddled: the SUV, the retirement plan, the
mortgage, thousands of music CDs and the one-job career. Still pending are the
teeth whitening, cosmetic surgery and the retirement home — it’s still early
for me folks.
Baby Boomers remain very important to our economy
today since we still represent the majority of the workforce — 75 million
strong. Throughout the 90s, Boomers worked into our peak earning and spending years,
driving the economy to levels never before seen in our history; yet, time
marches on and we Boomers, slowly but surely, are making room for the hordes of
Generation Xers and Millennials filling in our slots in the big machine.
As a Boomer marketer myself, I learned a trick or
two about selling to my peeps; however, I feel the tide has been turning and
there are just too many non-Boomers out there buying auto parts for me to
ignore. Truth is, I never ignored any customers (or more precisely, potential
customers); I occasionally waste my time on the pursuit of “what if.” However,
with a bit of accumulated business acumen and a lot of luck, oftentimes new
customers bubble up through the pack to connect with us. Boomer businesses
sometimes grow old along with their aging customers, and that’s not necessarily
a bad thing; yet, we all know that at some point we need new customers to keep
the machine churning. A Boomer-only business simply won’t last.
So the question is, as a Boomer, how do you
connect with younger customers? How can we learn the needs and wants of
Millennial business owners coming up in the auto parts industry? These are
important questions my seasoned peers and I need to ask ourselves in our
quickly-evolving world.
Clearly, adding Millennials to your team is one
sure way to fast-track your company’s knowledge of their 80-million plus
demographic. Collaborating with Millennials has been very rewarding for me, and
in a way it has kept me “young at heart.” And collaborating is really my thing;
I just don’t see myself as a mentor, and as such I try hard not to play that
role. Collaborating, managing and selling to Millennials makes me feel that I
have remained relevant, not only to my company, but to myself.
Technology got a hold of some Boomers, though not
all. Maybe being a Boomer outlier helped me be more inclined to embracing
technology. I have many Boomer peers who don’t even do email (!) while others
are über geeks through and through. Not so with Millennials — these guys are
all about tech, social media and speed. While it is estimated that only 30
percent of Boomers rely on social media, 50 percent of Gen Xers and a whooping
75 percent of Millennials use social sites to connect with friends, family and
customers. They also use social media to make purchasing decisions every day.
Knowing this, can our Boomer businesses survive without catering to Millennials
online?
Today, almost every new potential client I meet
is owned, managed, staffed or directed by Millennials. At a recent auto parts
trade show almost every new lead that visited our booth seemed younger than me
— and I’m only 50! These are hungry new entrants into our industry who are
ready to rock the boat and dissect their piece of the pie. They have websites,
Facebook pages, take orders via texting apps like WhatsApp, carry smartphones
and email you at night. When they engage us, they expect us to run as fast as
they run and they want to connect with us at a technological level.
Relationships are still important, but they’d rather fire a quick and short
text message than call you on the phone to check the status of an order.
No more hakuna matata — exit Boomers, enter
Millennials; it’s the Circle of Life. We need to worry about demographics to
ensure relevancy. Technology is a big part of being relevant to new customers
(and I’ll let you in on a little secret, too: “older” customers will love you
for it as well). So think about all the generations of customers you want to
target and go where they are.
Originally
published in the August 2014 issue of Counterman magazine.
