Boost your Sales and Marketing Strategy by Targeting 'The Grey Pound'

High net worth leads are as active – possibly even more-so – than your average internet user. Especially younger, millennial success stories; they communicate through social media and use search engines to discover new opportunities, too. So, if you want to find them then you need to check out our blog “3 secrets to high net worth lead generation”

Many companies these days focus their sales and marketing strategy on millennials. With enough suggestion, endorsements and peer pressure, these young impressionable consumers will buy just about anything for several times its actual worth. For companies who focus on this demographic, paid social is the holy grail for engaging the masses. However, these companies may be neglecting an untapped and extremely valuable (albeit greyer) audience.

Age before beauty, pearls before swine

According to reports by The Drum, there is nearly £15bn in revenue up for grabs from the 55+ age bracket. Funnily enough, this is the biggest growing demographic across most social networks. It's likely this trend will only increase as life expectancy improves.

While Snapchat stories, Gorilla marketing and LAD Bible posts are all fun mediums for a sales and marketing strategy, they don’t always sit well with all demographics.

If you're selling investments, insurance or property, Millennials might not be the people you really want to speak to.

You need to match your product to your target persona. For many industries, this is not the under 25s. Fear not though - below we explore the best channels and approaches to engage and attract qualified and informed leads to your sales team.

The Grey pound – Perfecting the Persona

The Grey Pound, just like the Blue pound and the Pink pound, is another way of highlighting that people are different and require different marketing approaches.

However, if you start with a stereotype, you often miss pockets of activity which perform well. The best way to appeal to any group is to market “for” them, finding interests that they relate to, and creating content and a process that appeals to them.

When we start creating a sales and marketing strategy at Grain, we aim to match customers and channels as closely as possible. We form our strategy based on data sets rather than opinions.

We recently started working with one high net worth client. As we completed our set up activities, it became apparent that millennials just didn’t factor into the equation. Our client wanted informed investors with good levels of asset liquidity and high incomes. Being the intrepid digital marketers we are, we didn’t want to restrict our initial campaign based on age assumptions alone. However, once we trialled a number of channels and generated a good data set, the findings were very clear cut.

Individuals under 25 equated for a large part of the audience, but simply did not have the assets or understanding needed to invest. As a result, they made up less than 5% of conversions. Those aged 25-45, termed “upwardly mobile” consumers, had good engagement and reach. However, the conversion rates were average at best. The real gems came from those aged 45+. These individuals received 26% of overall impressions, but provided 51% of all leads.

Once we saw how well this older audience fitted with the product, we took steps to maximise the relevance of our sales and marketing strategy. This meant delving into what devices, messages and channels worked.

Back In My Day - Matching Devices to Demographics

Older demographics interact with technology in a very different way to millennials, and are a lot less addicted to their devices. Believe it or not, Iphones are only nine years old and Ipads are only six years old. As a result, many individuals over 45 years old are not used to these gadgets being a constant feature in their lives.

The uptake of these devices within older demographics has been substantial. However, you may be hard pressed convincing your Nan to send a Snapchat story.

Older users were far less likely to use their phones out of habit. They are less focused on visuals, and more on the clarity and relevance of content - less selfies, more substance. Research also shows that their buying behaviour is influenced more by reviews, blogs and feedback as opposed to infographics and videos.

Silver foxes don’t care about what dress some made in Chelsea “star” was wearing, or Kim's latest nip slip. They use the web for its intended purpose - the gathering of information to inform action.

The key to engaging with the “grey pound” is creating clear and concise information, not aggrandised claims. Even negative comments, when responded to promptly and factually, have had quite positive outcomes which surprised our own social team.

How we Created A Cohesive Sales and Marketing Strategy

So back to our own experiences. We looked at issues aligned with the older personas that our client wanted to target - such as retirement planning, for instance. We then used clear and factual content to grab attention, focusing on the headline more than the visual. Finally, we linked all of this together in a funnel workflow to ensure maximum engagement.

Whilst we did use mobile for attraction, we had a stronger focus on desktop for conversion. We selected channels which we knew were more established, and had higher levels of targeting (avoiding Snapchat, Blindspot etc.) We aligned our social efforts with a strong PPC element to ensure that we captured and linked the proposition and brand to enquiries.

Paid social posting worked as an attention grabber. This led consumers to the client site, where a clean page structure, strong calls to action and genuine reviews were paired with remarketing lists and contact workflows. This succeeded in driving them to conversion.

Our client wanted to speak with more mature, informed consumers who could afford to invest significant amounts of money.  We were able to deliver highly targeted, highly converting leads to them on a consistent basis. The results of the sales and marketing strategy speak for themselves - in just six months, the client saw a fivefold increase in revenue and lead volume, and enjoyed over 3,000% ROI. Just take a look for yourself.