Baby boom generation provides a huge marketing opportunity

Kathleen Casey-Kirschling will receive her first Social Security payment next month. That's mostly a symbolic event; when she was born on Jan. 1, 1946, Casey-Kirschling was the first of what would become known as the baby boom generation.

For small businesses, however, the first Boomer's first Social Security payment should be a heads-up that opportunities can grow as the population ages.

Allan Browne already has noticed some changes.

"People approaching retirement are looking ahead," says Browne, president and co-founder of Extended Home Living Services Inc., a Wheeling accessibilities contractor. "Baby boomers are looking at things a little differently" by making plans now that hopefully will allow them to age in place.

Although much of its business comes in response to unexpected health crises, EHLS increasingly is called upon to add such for-the-future amenities as residential elevators -- from the second floor to the basement in a single family home, for example -- and accessible bathrooms in households where they're not yet needed.

Whatever your niche, you have to find Boomers before you can sell to them. And baby boomers aren't the only piece of the seniors market where small businesses have opportunities. Individuals 65 and beyond, still active or beginning to slow a bit, are a viable demographic as well.

EHLS tries to "contact people seniors contact." That's appropriate hospital and therapy staff, seniors' organizations and caregiver groups.

Here are some additional ideas to get you thinking:

• Adapt Browne's find-the-referrer approach to your own business. Add attorneys, accountants, independent medical practices to the list.

• Look for advertising and public relations opportunities in media that have readers or listeners who skew older.

• Boomers may be prone to use the Internet to explore travel options but travel agents, for example, have opportunities. Organize group trips around a theme, perhaps an intergenerational grandparents-and-grandkids trip to Disney World or a golfers' tour of Scotland.

Find a market at age-restricted (55 and up) subdivisions and housing complexes with homeowners ripe for excursions. Park districts with seniors' programs need travel organizers; they likely have providers, but come up with a unique trip or service and make your pitch.

• Attorneys shy away from marketing, but if wills and estates are your specialty you should be able to figure out a way to reach the marketplace. Ads in seniors' publications? Maybe, but tie the ad to a regular seniors' column you write.

• Boomers who have been accumulating retirement funds now need a distribution plan. Surprisingly, according to Terry Hannon -- owner of Theresa Hannon Financial Group, Wheaton --many seniors and near-seniors don't have financial planners. If that's what you do, that's opportunity you hear knocking.

• Early bird dinners and senior discount coupons can work, especially if your restaurant is located reasonably close to senior housing. Or offer deliveries, maybe on otherwise slow Tuesdays, of one of your house specialties.

© 2008, 121 Marketing Resources Inc.