Targeting Millennials May Mean You Are Missing Out
If you’ve hired a lot of millennials lately to market to millennials, you may be taking your eye off a large and lucrative prize.
Epsilon’s latest report on generational marketing shows that baby boomers are still outspending the other generations on an annual basis. Boomers are spending a total of $548 billion, and millennials are spending $322 billion. The forgotten Gen Xers are spending $357 billion.
In the study, boomers have fewer average total transactions, but the boomer average spend per transaction is higher. The largest median income is $63,832 held by Gen X, yet baby boomer median income is twice that of millennials.
Before you turn over your entire marketing budget to one generation, you may want to consider the diversity of buyers who have spending power to spare. Even the Silent generation (age 76 and older) spends more than $162 billion annually.
Time to make sure you have your eye on the prize and your focus on the actual results. There’s no room for crying and age bias in marketing, especially when there is money on the table.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.