Businesses Just Don't Get it

If we assume business owners, entrepreneurs and executives are neither lazy nor stupid, then we must assume they just don't get it. What is "it"? Marketing and sales success. Here's what "it" isn't: It isn't about reach, so why is most of the marketing budget spent on mass advertising and mass marketing. It isn't about doing what we did 10 years ago, so why are so many still doing it the same old ways?

Instead, it is about segmenting to the smallest communities possible, and communicating with them to learn about their wants and needs and then exceeding them. It is about gathering customer data, analyzing it and using software to predict behavior. It is about alignment; it is about multi-channel marketing; it is about inbound marketing; it is about listening, watching, observing and responding to what we hear and see. It is about customers; it isn't about us.

So why aren't we getting it right? I know most businesses aren't doing those things correctly. Observation, personal experiences, listening, consulting and watching tell me loud and clear that businesses just don't get it. The following story is but one example of what's wrong and what business needs to do to start getting it right.

I just climbed down a ladder after cleaning my gutters for the fourth time this fall. Not unusual in New England. Just Saturday, I cleared leaves for the sixth time, and it won't be long before the snow flies. I also run a consulting business and don't have any plans for retirement or for collecting Social Security any time soon. Why is this important? Because I belong to an aging group of Americans who are setting a path where one-part of the American Dream is diminishing, and might even disappear--retirement.

I was born in 1946, which makes me a leading-edge member of the baby boomers in America, estimated at 78.2 million born between 1946 and 1964. I was in the group that turned 60 in 2006. Today, more than 7,900 of us turn 60 each day. That’s about 330 every hour or more than four million a year in 2006. One-third of us have at least $100,00 in investable assets. Eighty percent of us intend to keep working and earning in retirement. Half of boomers plan to launch into an entirely new job or career in retirement.
   
Richard Croker thought the generation important enough to write “The Boomer Century: 1946-2046.”  PBS is broadcasting a two-hour documentary of the same name premiering March 28 that looks to boomers' past for clues to how this generation will shape the future. The program focuses on the boomers’ formative years to reveal the personality traits of a generation that has since rewritten the rules for work, marriage and parenthood, and is now redefining retirement and aging. The final question the program poses, is what kind of future will the baby boomers lead and leave for succeeding generations?

In business, we represent a major group of consumers, and since our economy depends on 75% of its wealth via consumerism, one might expect that our generation would be catered to in very special ways by most sectors of consumer business, especially health care; insurance; financial investing, automobiles, pharma; pharmacies; apartments, condos and town homes; food and beverage; home repairs and clean-up; and retail outlets.

If my experience and that of my boomer friends and family are typical, just the opposite is true. Except by AARP, we are being mostly ignored. Yet 80% of us plan to forsake retirement (a 20th Century addition to the American Dream along with owning a home with two cars in the driveway). The Greatest Generation, our parents, aunts and uncles, worked long hours to educate us so we could enjoy a better life. I suspect many are disappointed with the results.

We went to college, but only 60% of us have more than $10,000 in retirement savings, and whatever that number was, it is now 40% less. So, instead of retiring, most of us will continue to work, to earn, and to buy. But where are the ads designed for us; the direct mailing with content that relates to us; magazine and newspaper coupons to meet our needs (yes, we still read them); and product placement on TV shows that we watch? They minimally exist, at best. Why?

Are we so driven by an out-dated marketing and sales philosophy that says the only numbers that matter fall between 18 and 34? Do business marketers not know the numbers? Have they failed to take the time to learn about us? Probably. But that can be said about every group. Very few businesses are taking the time to learn about individual needs and then grouping us with other like individuals so that we can begin communicating with and about things people care about. Using the demographic data above is simply a starting point for understanding a group of people and then segmenting them with others of similar wants and needs. In fact, baby boomers, or Gen x or Gen Y is not a segmented group.

Look, it isn't about demographics. It is about people's specific wants and needs, regardless of age, ethnicity, color or location. All baby boomers or everyone in the middle class or all engineers or all white, single women are not so alike in their buying habits that they can be put in a box and talked to in the same ways, about the same things. A 62-year-old white male might have more in common with a 34-year-old black female than he does with other 62-year-old males. You can't know unless you ask. And even after you ask, you need to apply the data in ways that result in predictability.

If we want to grow revenues and maximize profits while minimizing costs, we better get it. And "it" focuses more on inbound marketing than on outbound, and when we do outbound, it is very narrowly focused based on data we accrue mostly through our inbound channels and then apply that date using assumptions to reach our ideal customers. CRM is only a small part of the solution. Analytical and predictive software used within a multi-channel aligned system of marketers, sales staff and customer service representatives who ask the right questions are a big part of the solution.

So, to paraphrase Rodney King: Can't we all just get along and get it?

Questions: In modern marketing, where we talk so frequently about messaging to the right people at the right time in the right place, are we just blowing smoke? Is any business doing this? Why does all marketing seem so generic, so focused on reach instead of on ideal customers and the appropriate data that tells us how to reach them? Are 78 million people being ignored because marketers don't know how to reach them?

Author's Note: Much of the data for this post comes from PBS.