How to Build a MASSIVE Home Improvement Business!

Hey, everyone, this is Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Business Boot Camp podcast. Today is a very important episode. It's one that I feel is going to be imperative that you implement within the next 5, 10, 15 years in your business if you want to cash in on one of the biggest opportunities we've seen in decades. Before we get into that, though, a big thank you. Today's sponsor, if you haven't already, go to gusto.com bootcamp that's G U.

Boot Camp. Once you go there, like, this is something, you know, I've talked about CRMs and making sure you're not doing your numbers on a spreadsheet and. Or worse off, even with your hand and paper and things like that. Yeah, that's true for CRM when it comes to payroll. I don't know about your state, but it seems like more and more tax things are coming out. More and more deductions, more and more regulations, and the last thing you want to be involved in is some sort of problem because you simply put the wrong number in the wrong category, and your accountant or you submitted something wrong to the state, and all of a sudden you're in trouble. Worse yet, you spending hours every single week trying to figure out something that really could take a few clicks using Gusto. Gusto is extremely, extremely cheap compared to you or an accountant filling out payroll every single pay period. Like, you got to remember that you, as the business owner should be paid a lot of money in terms of what you're worth. If you have 10 employees and you're paying and they're all $50 an hour to get hired out, you're worth a whole lot more than 50. And if you're spending a couple hours every week trying to figure out payroll, I promise you Gusto is going to be a cheaper option. It's going to be much better in terms of making sure you're state compliant. Check it out today. Go to gusto.combootcamp and try out for 90 days completely free for all your employees. And then after that, it's like six bucks a month per employee. Absolutely worth it. Check it out today. So today I'm going to be talking about the baby boomers. And the reason I've been so really looking into the baby boomers and what they mean for this country, the United States. You know, most of my audience is from the US So I'm going to be speaking in terms of, you know, the United States. But basically, I feel that the baby boomers are a huge market that's going to be coming in to play in the next 10, 20 years. And that's really the reason why at Augusta Lawn Care with the franchise, we've actually all our marketing is toward residential baby boomers. Like our target demographic is that individual. Yes. We're gonna have like young professionals, people that don't wanna do their lawn, things like that. But the baby boomer market that is affluent and willing to pay more for a better service is huge. And that's what we're really building Augusta Lawn Care, the franchise on. So that's why I've been really looking at it a lot. I've been researching a lot, reading some of Dan Kennedy's books about marketing to this demographic. But I came across an article that I thought was really good and concise about some of the main points about the baby boomers. Gave some really great statistics. And I think it's a wake up call for us early on because in 10, 15 years there's gonna be brands that will go under because they haven't adapted to this market that is going to become a larger and larger population in the United States and hold more and more of the dollars that are being spent on products and services. And so this article came from Vendhq, so you can find it on their website and I'll have the link below in the description. But I'm gonna give some stats and kind of just talk about the baby boomers. But then I'm gonna talk about five different ways that you can market to the baby boomers and what you should do and should not do too. Number one, you don't want to offend them. Number two, how do you get into their psyche? How are they thinking it? For someone like even my age to think the way that a 50, 67 year old might think in terms of what they put value on, what do they like, what do they not like, what things attract them to a certain business, what things repel them from your business. So I've been educating myself a lot for the past year, building the franchise around that. But I wanted to share some of the things I've kind of thought about, some of the things that I've changed with Augusta to make sure that we are compelling to this demographic. And before we get into that though, I want to talk about some of just the stats. So I'm going to give you some facts and statistics from this Vendhq article and then we'll talk about five different ways that in terms of your marketing, how you can really cash in on this baby boomer. Market. So first of all, in case you don't know who the baby boomers are, or you don't know whether or not they're really relevant in the market, let's go over some facts. So this article says baby boomers are now between the ages of 52 and 71. And there are an estimated 75.4 million of them in the US alone. Boomers are healthier than ever. And thanks to medical advances, they aren't slowing down anytime soon. Spending by people 50 years and older is expected to increase by 58% to 4.74 trillion over the next 20 years. So over the next 20 years, the 50 plus market is going to be spending an extra, increasing their spending by 58% now, while spending by Americans age 25 through 49 will grow by only 24%. So 50 and above the growth of the money that they're going to be spending in the next 20 years is 58%. Over those course of the next 20 years, that same 25 to 49 year old, that age slot is only going to be increasing their spending by 24%, the amount of money that will be spent in the economy. So baby boomers, 50 to 70 approximately right now, over the course of the next 20 years, even on the tail end of that 70 year olds, they'll still be living at 90 years old. Again, medical advances, people are going to be living longer. And so this market in the next 20 years is ripe for us as marketers and business owners to capitalize and make sure that our businesses and our services and our marketing compels these individuals. So this is the biggest fact that I actually want you to realize that I saw in this article. 70%. 70% of disposable income in the United States is governed by baby boomers. That 20 year window of baby boomers, 50 to 70, 50 plus 70% of the disposable income in this country is held by that group of individuals. That is staggering. The reason that it's important is because 70% of disposable income, that's income that doesn't need to be spent on food, shelter, making sure that they have their bare necessities. This is disposable income. Vacations, luxury vehicles, luxury clothes, computers, technology, devices, things they don't absolutely must have. 70% of the disposable income in the United States is in the pockets of baby boomers. And if you have a service that's high service and costs more than the average, you know it's not bare necessities. And you're not the Walmart of your industry. You're more the Whole Foods High service, lots of compelling design elements. You're focusing on the customer experience.

This is a massive interest to you because you're targeting people who have disposable income. As someone that's going to lawn care, landscaping and Augusta the franchise, we are not targeting people that just are barely getting by. We are not targeting individuals that are clipping coupons and making sure that they do all the work around their house in order to save money. We're looking for people that have disposable income and are willing to hire out their lawn care and landscaping services so that they can spend time with their family, with their kids, going on vacations, doing whatever they want to do. This is disposable income. If your product, if your service centers around disposable income, the baby boomer market is ripe for the picking and you must make changes now or not cash in in the next 10, 15, 20 years. So another fact that is also staggering, less than 5% of marketing is geared towards the baby boomer generation. So this brings out two facts. Number one, brands and companies are going to have to adapt and change the way they market as more and more money is shifted towards this baby boomer market. Number two, is a great opportunity for you to advertise to these individuals and separate yourself from the competition and make sure that they know you are speaking to them by governing and making sure that your marketing is targeted towards these individuals. Another fact that this baby boomer generation, because now their parents are 80, 90, 100 years old and are passing away, the baby boomer generation is set to inherit $15 trillion in the next 20 years. As their parents are passing away. $15 trillion is going to be inherited by the baby boomers over the next 20 years. What that means again, big amounts of money coming into the pockets of these individuals that already have disposable income. If you have investment services, if you have banking services and financial insurance, these are all things that around this time of life when they have, they have a large amount of inheritance. Second, homes being purchased by this group of baby boomers is going to skyrocket when they start getting inheritance money. All right, so these are all things to think about. If you have experiential things that you do for your business like kayaking or rafting or concerts and some sort of or like high end food experiences or wine and dine, whatever you do, if it's geared towards this market, this is something you want to be thinking about as we go into the next decade. So now I'm going to talk about some of the things that I got from not just this article, but some books that I've been reading and just studying this age demographic. And I'm going to actually read this book or listen to this book hopefully if it's on Audible, called Richistan, which is about marketing to the affluent as well as baby boomers. Haven't read it yet, so I don't know how good it is. But I kind of take away five things from my research so far on how to market to this group of people. How to make sure that your company is relevant and that the advertising that you create is relevant to the baby boomers. Number one thing that I am still learning about and I'm not very good at and definitely has to be refined for the Augusta franchisees as we work on their marketing. And everything is not age stereotyping. So what I mean by that is they do not want to be known as old people. You can't say, hey, we're giving discounts to senior citizens. Like they do not want to identify themselves as being old or washed up or anything like that. If they're 55 plus or 60, even with modern medicine, they're only 60, 70% of their way through life. Like they got a lot of life left to live. And they do not want to admit or concede to the fact that they're in the aging years or almost done their life or like whatever, you know, they're old. Like they do not want to identify with those things. You know, a lot of them are buying products and identifying with brands that are making them feel younger and so not age stereotyping or throwing them into kind of like throwing them all into a basket and saying seniors or senior citizens, that's not gonna be the way to capture them. Just throwing up a discount for seniors is not going to attract this market of baby boomers. Alright, so my example for this one is the terminology around what used to be called old folks home used to say, hey, I'm gonna go live at the old folks home. And that was commonly held language even in the baby boomer market. Now over time that's evolved to now we call it retirement homes and even that now retirement is something that is even more looked upon perhaps in a stereotyping way. They don't want to retire, they want to go have a second career, own another business or they want to go do something and they do not want to be retired. There's certain stereotypes around that like you're washed up, you know, you're, you know, out to the field. Like you're just, you're done. And so now even retirement home has changed to assisted living. You know, we don't even want to call it nursing homes because that sounds like you're dying, but assisted living. So these are all terminologies that are evolving and changing simply due to the fact.

That people do not want to, in this demographic, in this baby boomer, they do not want to be perceived or thought of as old or washed up or like they don't have anything left in life to live for. So that being said, that's number one, is not age stereotyping. Don't throw them using linguistics or terminology, throw them all into the same bucket and say like old people or make them feel that way at all. Because that's not the truth, number one. And number two, they don't want to be seen that way. The reason it's not the truth is because they do have 30, 40 plus years of life yet to live. All right, number two is they like to be rewarded for loyalty. So the brand loyalty for this demographic of consumers is very high. They're very loyal to the brands that they love. You know, if they've bought Ford since 1970, they continue to buy Fords in 2019 and beyond. Like, they continually stay with that brand.

If they like a brand, the loyalty of that brand. However, they like to be rewarded for that loyalty. So what does that mean, loyalty programs? This is something they're interested in.

So basically they've done these studies and comparative between baby boomers and millennials. And millennials are much less likely to choose a brand based upon whether or not they have a loyalty program or they get a discount. Or they're much more about, you know, brand in terms of the appearance, where is it at, how easy is it to get to me, how easy to purchase things like that? Whereas a baby boomer is much more brand loyal, especially if they are being rewarded for their loyalty. So loyalty programs are super valuable to them. And this, this article in question talks and says they also place a high value on program simplicity. So you say, well, I have a loyalty program and there's like tiers and all these different levels and all this. They also place a high value on loyalty program simplicity with 78% saying they will continue to participate in a loyalty program because it is easy to understand. Alright, so the takeaway from this is you want to opt for a straightforward loyalty program that doesn't involve a bunch of tiers And a whole bunch of hoops they have to jump through. Like you got to sign this and then mail this in and then you're going to get this email and you got to opt into the email and then call this number. Make it simple. This is something they are not going to be able to follow the bouncing ball, right? They're older, they're maybe not as tech friendly with their mobile device. They might not want to give as much information, they might be wary of that because all the publicization of their baby boomer generation being scammed and all of that. So when you come and you do a loyalty program, make it simple. Don't make them have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops and don't have a whole bunch of confusing tiers and things that they can't just simply understand that when they come to the checkout and they have the cash register, the register person says, you have $23 on your loyalty account. Would you like to put that towards Dave's purchase or would you like to continue to save that up? That's simple. It's basic. There's not percentages and then numbers that you. And then you get more off and then you become like gold and silver and then you have points and all this stuff. Make it simple. That's something that they really value. And 78% say they will continue to participate in a program because it's easy to understand. And that ties into. Number three is about keeping things simple in your marketing, keeping things simple in your ad slogans, things like that, your website.

And that kind of ties into like not rushing them. So they do not want to be treated like they're slow or stereotyping them as old and things. However many times as they age into 70, 89 years old, they are going to be a little bit slower, they're going to be less, the reaction times a little bit less. And so you can't rush them through things. You can't just give them a five page document, scan it really fast, talk really quickly and tell them to sign it. Like you're gonna have to take some more time. They're gonna want to see things, touch things, et cetera. So in terms of not rushing them, you also want to keep things simple on your advertising. So while they're healthier, so this comes from a quote from this article. While they're healthier and more active than generations before them, their eyesight is often not what it used to be as a retailer. Stay mindful of the size and color of fonts used in Marketing, again, keeping it simple. They also like things that are simple. So using Trendy acronyms like 24.7or YOLO will most likely be lost on them. When it comes to your online presence, make sure your website is neat and uncluttered with high quality content that will keep them coming back for more. If you're an E commerce site, make sure you clearly state your return policy and offer a one page checkout as too many steps could potentially annoy and turn off your older customers. So what is this saying? Simplify, simplify, simplify. Alright, don't have a whole bunch of terminology they're not gonna understand. And make sure that in your marketing you show their age demographic. This is something I find really funny is that millennials are being shown on products that are marketed towards seniors. Like a senior discount with a picture of millennials. That does not make sense. Okay, so this is, you know, in your terminology, 24. 7, YOLO. These are some of the examples. They're not going to maybe catch on to those things. They're not going to be on the cutting edge of acronyms or emojis or that sort of street talk lingo. Making sure your logos, your colors, your fonts are simple cursive. Writing that small is going to be tough for them to read. Fonts that are integrate too much with the colors behind begins hard for them to see. Again, taking into account your end consumer is where the game is at for these older customers. Number four is that this older generation, this baby boomer market is online. Alright, so they are online and I'm gonna give a bit of a disclaimer on that. So they are online. 96% of baby boomers use email on a regular basis. About 80, about 82% of boomers belong to at least one social media site with Facebook being their most popular site of choice. That's why I talk about so often. If you're targeting this market, Facebook ads is the place to be right now. Yes, you can mark it on Snapchat. Snapchat, sorry. Maybe. Yes, Instagram is good too, but those are skewing towards a younger demographic, whereas Facebook is going to be towards that older baby boomer market.

They are online. They spend 27 hours per week online on average. And people ages 50 and older spend $7 billion per year online. So the baby boomer generation is online. But.

67% report that if an item they want is available online or in a nearby store, they prefer to purchase it at their local retailer rather than order online. This is directly tied to satisfactory customer experience. So 2/3 of baby boomers, if given the choice between an online option and a local retailer, will choose the local retailer. Alright, this is also another thing to realize. Look, yes, there's a mass $7 billion being spent from this demographic online. That's a massive opportunity. The other side of the equation is that 2/3 of their total spending is being spent at a local retailer.

Because 67% I should say, that's not really right. Basically what I'm saying is 67% would rather buy it from a local retailer if given the option. What that means is that can you come from your online store and make an offline option? Is there a way to take your delivery service that's online and somehow make a pop up shop or make something where they can come touch it and talk to you and make that connection and then purchase it online, having that interaction with you? Because what they're looking for as we're gonna get number five is personal engagement. Is that customer service, is that relationship with you or a person?

They love salespeople. I as a younger person hate salespeople on the floor. I just wanna, I know what I want, I wanna go in, I wanna get it. They love to talk. An older person's gonna love to talk about the clothes, talk about the brand that they used to wear, get to know the salesperson, get to know what they like. Look at multiple options. These are all things you want to think about. They're more interested in touching it and looking at the piece of the garment or the pants that they're going to buy. Whereas I'm going to order three pairs online, I'm going to have them shipped here, I'm going to like one of them and send the other two back and return them. And so I think it's again, there's no like they're online, they're on social media. But still 67%, 2/3 of them, if given the option between online and a local retailer, would still like the online, would like to go to the local retailer. They'd rather go locally, go to a store where they can touch, feel, speak to somebody. And that's a key point we want to look at. And I think too from that it's not so much like hey, if I'm online I have to go offline to reach them. I don't think that's what I'm saying. What I'm saying is how can you make the experience on your website as we're going to get into number five, how can you make the experience on your Website, more like an offline experience where there's they actually feel engaged with customer service and they feel connected to an individual. Can you have a chatbot that actually has someone's, a real person's face in their name that immediately pops up when they're on your website that allows them to interact as if they were speaking to someone. Live instant that they would get on an offline at like a retailer store. So just a thought. Number five is that this demographic, this baby boomer generation, values personal engagement and experiences. So again, from this article, VendHQ, it says if they felt the sales associate did not appreciate their business, 54% of boomers were very or somewhat unlikely to return compared to millennials, only 33% of them answered in that way. So basically what this research is saying is that if the sales associate did not appreciate their business and didn't say, thank you for coming in, thank you for, it was great meeting you, thank you for doing your business with us today. If they didn't appreciate the business, 54% of boomers were very or somewhat unlikely to return back to that store, over half, whereas only a third of millennials would feel that same way. Why? That baby boomer market is going to appreciate and put value on that personal engagement and the experience. And they want to be appreciated. When they do patronize and they do give loyalty to a brand, make sure that's baked into your program as well. Another stat here. I want to read this one. It's a little bit long. While the younger generation might be in a rush, boomers are often retired and have more time to spend in the store. They're comfortable interacting with people to get the information they need. So having a knowledgeable sales staff on the floor that can offer advice, guidance, and the time to make a personal connection is especially appealing to this generation. It can be as simple as asking their name or remembering their name the next time that they come in. That can guarantee you have a customer for life and they won't mind paying more if you meet or exceed their high expectations. And for some of you, you're like, well, I can never remember the names of all my customers. Okay, well, can we use technology in your CRM to make sure that when they do come in the store, they're in your system and then you do know their name and you have notes on them. In terms of the last time they came in, they mentioned that they were going on a vacation, and that was four weeks ago. So they must have gone the vacation. Now you can come to them and ask them how the vacation went. Maybe they're coming in to buy something from the store because something happened on the vacation. Making that connection is going to foster that personal engagement and that experience that will lead to the loyalty that this demographic is bound to give. And why do you want that? Because they have 70% of the disposable income of this country in their pocket. So I really feel like this is worth noting. It's something that we're starting to talk about now. As the baby boomers become more and more wealthy, they begin to have more and more of the disposable income. They become more and more of a larger percentage of the demographic within the country. It's enormous. I think a huge opportunity. I think we all need to start thinking about how to advertise and how to market, how to create services and products that are going to appeal to them. And if you have a service, if you have a product that is directly geared toward this market, like we do at Augusta, you got to start thinking, how do we adjust our marketing? How do we adjust our fonts, our colors, how we look at our uniforms, our website? Is it clear? Is it simple? Does it create an experience? When people do come into my store, are we creating that personal relationship? Are we fostering the loyalty that they want to give by giving them rewards for that loyalty? These are all things that can be learned. These are all things that we can adapt to. But I believe in 10, 15 years, there will be brands go out of business because they don't adapt. And make sure that they, instead of spending 5% of their budget on this market, they should be spending 40 and 50%. If you're a cruise liner, if you're financial services, if you're in a high end dining experience or clothing experience that is marketed and tailored towards this market, you've got to be paying attention. We got to stop thinking about the millennial generation as the ones that we're always trying to market to, because that's the hot new trendy thing. And there's new slogans and they're into hashtags and they're into social media. When at the end of the day, your consumer, if you're targeting, if your service and product is geared towards this market, those are not the things that those things that might seem cool, they might be appealing, they might get more awards, they might be better videos, better social posts, more shares, more likes. But if you want to sell product, if you want to actually move your business forward, if you want to get market share and you actually want to get profitable. Customers are willing to pay more for high search service. Got to be paying attention to the baby Boomer market and how to market effectively to them. You've been listening to Mike Andes on the Business Boot Camp podcast. Until next time, be great because nothing else pays.