Does Influencer Marketing Work For Baby Boomers?

When you picture influencer marketing, you are probably picturing someone in their teens to early 30s, aka the Millennials and Gen Zers. However, influencer marketing doesn’t stop there. Baby boomers may actually be more reachable with influencer marketing than you’d think.

The number of baby boomers on social media has climbed in recent years. This means that businesses that cater to broad demographics need to include the baby boomers in their social strategy. In addition, baby boomers also prefer personal recommendations when researching different products and services. This makes marketing through influencers a method that appeals to how boomers shop already.

Here are some baby boomer stats that may surprise you:

• On average, boomers spend more time on social media than millennials.
• Boomers are also the largest economic force, among the different generations.
• 93% of boomers say that they trust the recommendations of their friends to help with purchasing decisions.

Using Influencer Marketing to Reach Baby Boomers

Go Where the Boomers Are: Facebook & YouTube

As more boomers adopt social media, two social networks continue to hold a larger portion of baby boomers — Facebook  and YouTube. 70% of baby boomers use YouTube as of February 2019, and 68% of boomers use Facebok. By comparison, only 27% of boomers use Pinterest, and 23% use Instagram.

If you are looking to market to baby boomers, you’ll focus the bulk of your budget on Facebook and YouTube. Facebook Groups can reach the baby boomer demographic, especially if your business is focused on reaching a particular interest group. In sponsoring influencer content on YouTube, brands can rely on reviews and unboxings to reach baby boomers, as boomers rely heavily on reviews in their purchasing decisions.

Use Nano-Influencers to Close the Social Gap

Nano-influencers, or influencers with 1,000+ followers, work well for influencer marketing that targets baby boomers because of social proximity. Social proximity is the perceived social distance from the audience to the influencer. While a larger influencer may appear distant, a nano-influencer is regarded as a peer by their audience of baby boomers.

Rely on small influencers to help boomers receive information about a brand. The information is easily digestible and trustworthy because the influencer is generally regarded as a friend and peer.

Use User-Generated Content (UGC) to Reach Baby Boomers

Boomers love social proof and it legitimizes your brand to them. Building a strategy that uses influencers should also use user-generated content to help promote your brand.

Creating a UGC strategy can be as simple as using an insert in each package that advertises your brand’s unique hashtag and asks them to share their purchase online. Brands can also send post-purchase emails asking them to share online, or motivate sharing with social contests.

These images can then be reshared to your brand’s social accounts to help spread the word and provide social proof to baby boomers. If you are trying to reach more than one age group, then you should also be looking for UGC from a variety of age groups.

Encourage Offline Use of Online Resources

If you’ve built up a large library of resources for your brand, providing boomer-friendly uses can help boomers make a purchasing decision. For your influencer campaigns, you can send links to your main resources for the influencer to share with their audience. Implementing print buttons or making the resources downloadable pdfs can help boomers to use and consume these resources offline as well as on your website.

Restructuring Influencer Content for Baby Boomers

When an influencer is sharing with baby boomers, the message format can make all the difference. Since boomers use online resources like Yelp and Amazon reviews more than other age groups, the content can go in-depth. Influencers can share about each feature of the product, like a review. Boomers also read more than other age groups when researching, so influencers can create longer content without risking audience fatigue. Boomers also prefer candid, less-produced pieces of content that appear more genuine.

Start a Word-of-Mouth Campaign with Offline Options

User-generated content can be an effective way to spread the word online, but offline options cannot be ignored. 84% of boomers make recommendations in-person, while just 45% of boomers make recommendations online. Baby boomers are one of the most connected generations and they prefer in-person communication over all other mediums. If an influencer is sharing about your brand online, then preparing them for offline communications can help your campaign go even further.

To allow your influencers to better discuss your brand in-person with boomers, you can send them print marketing materials, like postcards or flyers, to distribute, and you can encourage the influencer to share a coupon code that is unique to them. These methods will bridge the gap between the influencer’s online content and their offline sharing about your brand.

Reaching Boomers Means Going Where the Boomers Are

If you want to reach boomers with your influencer marketing, you’ll want to cater your message to where and how they get their information. Facilitating offline uses also allows boomers to extend the message past social media and brands who structure their content for boomers will see the results in a widespread word-of-mouth campaign that continues both on social media and in the real world.

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