This is a business-to-business blog, not really of much interest to the general public.
Advertising to Baby Boomers has been around since 2005, and serves its purposes:
- Introduces and educates marketers, advertisers, entrepreneurs, etc. about how to reach Baby Boomers with their advertising and marketing.
- Prompts prospective clients to consider me for copywriting, creative direction, consulting.
- Promotes my book and speaking engagements around the world.
- Alerts media so I’m interviewed and quoted in magazines, newspapers, radio and television networks. (Breeze through the In The News section in the left column.)
Gives me a virtual megaphone to holler about this or that.
How many folks turn up here? Sitemeter says about one hundred a day. Out of that one hundred, maybe a third show up by mistake (they’re really looking for something else), a third pass by, a third stick around, like what they read, and stay awhile. Lots come back regularly.
So each day, 33⅓ businesspeople wanting to know about advertising to Baby Boomers read my posts. That seems to be pretty good numbers for a one-person B2B blog, certainly worth the time and effort.
Alexa measures traffic on websites. Google is #1. Facebook is #2. And so on…
Where is my blog on the list? It fluctuates, but at the moment:
Let’s use my measly, little blog as a barometer, and take a look at some ‘major’ sites that target Baby Boomer consumers, especially the ones that tout themselves as social networking sites. After all, there are 76 million Baby Boomers (give or take) in the United States alone, something like 50 million using the Web. Social networking is the big buzz phrase for marketing folks. According to social media gurus, you must have a social network marketing strategy.
In 2008, PC Magazine had this to say:
Six sites featured in the link above were Social Networking sites. Of those six, four (BoomJ.com, BoomerTowne.com, TeeBeeDee.com, Boomer411.com) failed miserably and no longer exist. Millions of dollars wasted.
Alexa rankings (as I write this) for two Baby Boomer social networking sites receiving press recently:
No rank available for U.S.
Let’s dig a bit deeper: page views. Without mentioning names, two high-profile Baby Boomer social networking sites are unpacked by Alexa:
- ****.com has a three-month global Alexa traffic rank of 32,289. Approximately 68% of visits are bounces (one page view only).
- *******.com has a three-month global Alexa traffic rank of 411,987, and roughly 58% of visits to the site consist of only one page view (i.e., are bounces).
Ready to spend your marketing nickels or your gazillions on Banner Ads or coercing members to be ‘fans’ on these sites?
Maybe you should just stick with Facebook:
Click this ad. 0.051% do.
… A tiny fraction of people ever click on an ad. In fact, 99% of stable cookies examined never click on an ad … Average click-through rate was 0.051 percent … The worst performing ad category on Facebook, per Webtrends, was healthcare, which generated 0.011 percent click-through rates and an average cost-per-click of $1.27.
Yeah, I’ve been screaming about this for years. From my book ©2005, 2007:
And a handful of moldy posts:
Sleepy Baby Boomer Internet Villages
Invasion of the Baby Boomer Pod People
Invasion of the Baby Boomer Pod People Returns
5 Reasons Why 90% Of Social Media Efforts Fail
For the umpteenth time:
The Most Effective Marketing/Advertising Model For Reaching Baby Boomers: What is now called (silly retronym ahead) traditional advertising pushing you to an age-friendly, informative product/services web site.
