We're so glad that you could be here today to learn powerful techniques for building a baby boomer ready marketing strategy. Your moderators for today are me, Ted Annis, Senior Marketing Specialist. And me, Suzanne Hill, Professional Development Supervisor. Our expert presenter today is Curtis Alcock. Curtis began his career in design and marketing before making the transition into hearing health care 13 years ago. He now runs an independent family-run hearing health care practice in the United Kingdom. He is founder of an online think tank for hearing called Adira.info. We're very excited to have Curtis as our presenter today, but before we get started, we have just a few housekeeping items. Please note that we're recording today's presentation so that we may offer it on demand through the IHS website in the future. This webinar is available for one continuing education credit through the International Hearing Society. You can find out more about receiving continuing education credit on our website at IHSinfo.org. Click on the webinar banner on the homepage or choose webinars from the professional development menu on the left side of the page. There you will find the IHS CE quiz. Also on the webinar page at the IHS site, you'll find the slides from today's presentation to help you gather the information that you'll need for the CE quiz. If you haven't already downloaded the PDF, feel free to do so now. Tomorrow you'll receive an email with a link to a survey on this webinar. It is brief and your feedback will help us create valuable content for you moving forward. Today we'll be discussing the following topics. Why the baby boomer market is so important for us hearing health care professionals. Why our profession is still not baby boomer ready. Becoming baby boomer relevant and building a baby boomer ready marketing strategy. At the end of the presentation, we'll move on to a Q&A session. You can send us a question for Curtis at any time by entering your question in the question box on your webinar dashboard, usually located to the right of your webinar screen. We'll take as many questions as we can in the time we have available. Now I'm going to turn it over to Curtis who will guide you through today's presentation. Take it away, Curtis. Well, hi, everyone. I'm Curtis Olcock and I'm really thrilled to be joining you today for this webinar on what is becoming an increasingly hot topic for us as hearing health care professionals. Marketing to baby boomers. Now for the last ten years or so, we've been hearing at conferences and product launches how the baby boomers are coming. And when they arrive, it's going to bring about a new era in hearing health care where you and I will be inundated with people seeking our services, or so we're told. Now the question is, should we just wait for that day to arrive? Or should we be doing something to make it happen? Now to answer that question, we need to start at the beginning by asking why are boomers important to hearing health care professionals? Now on the screen there, you'll see a chart that shows the number of babies that were born in each year from 1925 through to 1975 in America. Now if we take the average number of births for most years apart from the bulge there, you'll see that the bulge between around 1946, just after the Second World War, and 1964 increases dramatically in the number of babies that were born. This is what's commonly referred to as the baby boom. And during that time in America, around 76 million babies were born. It was a huge increase to the population. Now the way to remember 1946 to 1964 is if you take the year just after the Second World War, you've got four and six. If you reverse those numbers and 64, that's the duration of the baby boom. So if you have a client that comes in to you and they say that their birthday was anywhere between 1946 and 1964, those individuals are classed as baby boomers. Now famous baby boomers include President Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Jamie Lee Curtis, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary Barra, who's the chief executive of General Motors. The oldest baby boomer will be turning 69 this year if they haven't already. And the youngest baby boomer turned 50 last year in 2014. That means that every baby boomer in America is now in the over 50s category. Now why is this important? Well if we take 76 million individuals, that's around a quarter of the population of America. Now if we look at their spending power, they control around 70% of the discretionary spending power in America. That means that after people have spent out everything they need to spend, like taxes and their mortgages, it's what money they have left over to spend on whatever they want. And it works out in the baby boomer population to be around $15,000 per capita or per person. That doesn't mean that every baby boomer is wealthy. On the contrary, around a third of baby boomers in America are actually broke. But between them, because of the size of them and because there are some very wealthy baby boomers, then there is a discretionary spending power of 70% of all the spending power in America. Now when you add those two things together, the sheer number of them and the spending power, you have a disproportionate influence on society. So whatever takes, whatever becomes relevant to baby boomers, whatever takes their interest and whatever they see their peers doing, then that is going to affect the rest of society. And in fact, whatever takes their interest, there's a good chance that they will end up redefining that particular thing for the rest of society. Not just those generations that come after them who are younger, but also their influence tends to flow up towards older people as well. As a result of this disproportionate influence, businesses and whole industries have risen up or fallen based on baby boomers' needs and desires. So let's take a look at how that works. If, for example, we actually manufactured baby food in the 1940s and the 1950s instead of hearing devices, then we would see our business increase around five-fold because of all the extra babies that were around needing feeding. If we were a toy manufacturer, then it was even better for us, because we would find our business increased by around 15 times. So their turnover would go from something like $84 million up to $1.25 billion. Now you'll notice that there's a huge difference between 15 times for the toys and five times for the baby food. That's because there are only so many mouths that you can feed and so many meals that a baby can have. But when it comes to toys, you can never have too many toys, especially when you see the adverts on television and you know that all your friends have one, and so you put pressure on your parents so that they allow you to have it. Because baby boomers' parents lived through some very difficult times, and they wanted to give their children everything that they couldn't have. At the same time, you had Dr. Spock, the pediatrician, advising parents to go with their heart, to show love to their children, and give them what they believe that they need. So this is a good example of how relevance to baby boomers, their interests, and what their peers are doing affects the rest of society and the rest of the economy. As the baby boomers get older, they start to discover hot dogs, attendance at baseball games and other sporting events increases. When they discover records, it's the same story. Now this increase of three times for records is before the teenage years. This is when they were between around 8 to 12 to 14. So this is before the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan and all of those great artists of the 1960s. As they get older and they enter their teenage years and their young adult years, they start to discover other products. Like here, if you were a manufacturer of cigarette paper, then you would have seen your business increase by around 18 times. In fact, one manufacturer alone went from $400,000 worth of business up to $7 million worth of business in just six years. And I'll leave it to your imagination to guess what they were using the paper for. As baby boomers reach their mid-40s and early 50s, we see the same story for prescription drugs. The number increases by six times. Now with all of these things, remember there have to be three things, relevance to baby boomers and interest and what their peers are doing. And so when it comes to prescription medicine and prescription drugs, the motivation there is how can I stay healthy? How can I stay youthful? When it comes to the cigarette paper, it's is there something more in life that we should be looking for? And now when we bring this back to hearing health care, and we think that all baby boomers are now in the over 50s category, we could say that the baby boomers are in the building. Because every seven to eight seconds, another boomer turns 60, and they'll be continuing to do that for the next 10 years. That means that by the time we finish this webinar together, there's going to be an extra 450 to 500 baby boomers who will be in the 60 and over category. And traditionally, this is where hearing health care is focused on. So if we can get the baby boomers to consider hearing to be relevant, and we can spark their interest, and we can show them that it's what their peers are doing as well, then there is a very, very good chance that we could be on the brink of something really, really special for society in terms of how society regards their hearing, providing we get this one right. So if we then look at the number of hearing devices sold, by year on year, we find an increase from 1984, where in America, we reach the one million devices fitted mark. Twenty years later, that increased to around two million units per year. Just ten years later, so last year, America almost hit the three million devices fitted mark. Now, if we take that growth, and we apply it organically, then the predictions are that there could be around five million devices sold within ten years' time. That's an extra 200,000 additional units per year. So naturally, a lot of people within our industry are getting very excited about the baby boomer market because just the fact that there are so many of them will provide an organic growth to the number of devices fitted. What they're, of course, they're forgetting is how many people still aren't doing anything about their hearing. But if this is the case, if there is this type of organic growth, and what we have to remember is that even though the average should be around 200,000 extra units or more a year, currently it's a lot lower than that in the United States. But if this organic growth is coming, then the marketing strategy is quite clear. All we really need to be doing is carry on what we're doing at the moment, don't change a thing. We can just sit back and we can wait for the orders to come in. But let's hang back there a minute because this assumption, this is based on several very important assumptions. First of all, it's based on the assumption that when people reach a certain age, then they start taking action with their hearing. The second assumption is that baby boomers will act in a similar way to their parents and other people of previous generations, how they've acted towards their hearing. And the third assumption is that baby boomers will accept our image about the typical hearing age user and they will be happy to apply that to themselves. If those assumptions don't come to fruition, then the growth that we've been all looking for isn't going to happen. Not for many years to come. So, let's take each of those assumptions and think about what's really going on here. Because the question we need to be asking ourselves is are we actually ready for the baby boomers? Let's take that first assumption. The assumption is that when we turn 65, we suddenly stop being the same person we were the day before. We start having a different set of emotions, a different set of thinking processes, a different set of attitudes. Now can you really imagine this woman here waking up tomorrow morning and saying that she's finally reached old age and that she can now fit in with all the stereotypes of people who fall into that category, one of which is to wear hearing aids. I remember when I first became a hearing health care professional, my sister asked me whether I had any dummy hearing aids that I could have, that she could have, so that she could give one as a present to one of their friends who had turned 65. I refused. Now the thing is that this lady here is the same person today as they were yesterday, just as you and I are the same person today as we were yesterday. Yes we've had a different set of circumstances and experiences, but we're the same person. In fact, we tend to consider ourselves to be the same person we were 10 years ago and 20 years ago. Yes we've grown, yes we've matured, yes we've improved in certain areas and deteriorated in other areas, but we still consider ourselves to be the same person. That's why when we look at what baby boomers are interested in and what they find important, we see things like travel and socializing and technology and dating and enjoying music and changing their career and staying fit and personal development and even extreme sports and computer gaming. These are the sort of activities that you would not expect somebody who is in the elderly category to be doing. These are the sort of activities you would expect most adults to have some interest in at least some of those things. In other words, the way for us to think about baby boomers is to think of them as being a 30 year old but with 20 years plus of extra life experience. Because that's often how we see ourselves. We see ourselves as being younger than our physical age. The second assumption that we need to consider here is that baby boomers are going to act in the same way as their parents, that they will follow in their footsteps. And history has shown us that baby boomers tend to go against the status quo. They tend to go against what their parents have done in the past. They may have considered their parents to be old when they reached the age of 50, but baby boomers consider themselves to be old when they reach their 80s. The third false assumption is that baby boomers will be happy to fit into the social identity that traditionally has been associated with senior citizens or the retired or the over 60s. And because of the way that we have marketed hearing care in the past and the way that we have marketed hearing technology, it's almost saying that once you get hearing aids, it's a symbol or the key for your new social identity. Now would you or I want to be put in a box like that? Can you imagine that when you reach the age of 60, if you haven't already, that all of a sudden a light bulb will go on or off and you'll start to see yourself being boxed in like this? The point is that none of us like to be boxed in like this. The reality for boomers is this, that over 80% of them will continue working after the official retirement age. Now the reason they'll be working is several reasons. Some of them because they need the money, some of them because they haven't got savings, some of them because they actually enjoy working, and some of them because they want to keep stimulated and keep their mind sharp and keep connecting to other people. Baby boomers are actually twice as likely to start a new business as an 18 to a 34-year-old. Many of them are going back to school to get professional degrees or get graduate degrees, either because something interests them or because they want to improve themselves or because they want to be more effective at work, particularly as the world around them is constantly changing, as it is for all of us. They're very active on social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter. A third of them are single, either because they're divorced or because they're never married or because they're bereaved. A quarter of baby boomers are looking for romantic connections and are very into dating. Many of them are looking after both their kids and their parents, or one or the other, and they're very active looking after their grandchildren. Some of them are experiencing empty nest, where their children have now just left home and they're having to deal with an empty house and thinking, well, what can we now do with all of this extra time and this extra money on our hands. And many of them are looking for opportunities to give back to society. They realise that they've had a good life. So when they look at their parents, their parents are old but they're middle aged. So now the question is, will we try to fit them around our perception of a baby boomer? Or do we need to fit around them? Now we need to ask ourselves, is hearing actually relevant to boomers? Well, a survey 10 years ago found that 50% of all boomers were even then reporting difficulties in hearing. So in theory, we have got both relevance and potentially interest and potentially peer pressure or looking to see what others are doing like them. So we've got potential relevance, yet when we ask baby boomers what they say, they will tell us that most of them haven't even sought professional advice. Most of them are not using hearing technology, yet most of them know how their hearing is affecting their work and their home life. So in theory, we should have relevance, but in practice, we don't. So something is clearly wrong. So how do we become relevant to boomers? To answer that question, we need to throw the book that we have been using for years and years and years on marketing to our potential audience. We need to take that book and throw it out of the window and instead start seeing the world through the eyes of boomers. Because then we can look at hearing healthcare and we can look at your practice and my practice and say, okay, well if I was a boomer, what would I be looking for in this practice? What would I be looking for from technology? And to get a better idea, we need to look at the past and see a boomer's formative years. So in other words, the experiences and the emotions that shaped their coming of age. Because those types of emotions, those types of attitudes and perceptions stay with us right the way through our lives. In fact, most of our perceptions and attitudes tend to endure from about the age of 30 onwards. We need to look at the present and see what's important to boomers at this particular moment in time. Remember how businesses have risen or have fallen based on how well they aligned themselves to the needs and desires of boomers at the time. And we need to think about what's important to the boomers for the future. Are there any risks that we can help them to reduce? What are they afraid of? And how can we help them to overcome those fears? So let's take a step back into the formative years of some of the earliest baby boomers who grew up in the 1950s. Now the 1950s were a time in America of great affluence. Yet there were so many children being born that the country wasn't ready for them. There wasn't a big enough infrastructure to cater to them. And so we see the rise of the suburbs where new towns are built with new houses and kitted out with new appliances. So baby boomers are looking around them and the whole world is being made new especially for them, especially because of them. New schools are built. New teachers are trained because there aren't enough of them. New textbooks are published. Everything is made new. And this is the first generation to grow up all the way through with television but also to be driven before they could walk. As they grow up in this time of peace, in this time of optimism, in this time of affluence, and in this time of increasingly good technology, there is this sense that they are a special generation. Their parents are telling them that they are better educated. Their teachers are telling them that you are better fed by your parents. You are healthier than previous generations. And you have more spending money. At the same time, the television is uniting baby boomers around the nation because baby boomers are giving for the first time, no matter which town you grow up in, no matter which village you grow up in, there's this shared experience where you are seeing the same programs, you are learning the same values, and having the same world view. Advertisers start to use this medium to say, we've got all of these children out there, they're all watching the television. We can influence their spending power and they can influence their parents. So advertising gives boomers these shared interests. And so you get these rises of fads. You get this shared purchasing power. So instead of being in different parts of the world, different things grow, you get things like the fads of the hula hoop. You get things like Barbie. All of these things take off because of that combination of advertising and the baby boomers, their size and their spending power. As they grow older, they become more aware of current affairs. They start watching the news. And they start seeing what's happening in the world. They start seeing how America's position in the world. And they start developing a sense of purpose. And so when President J.F. Kennedy becomes inaugurated, many baby boomers listen to that speech and they're at the age where they're starting to think about what it means. Many of them are just coming to the age of 14, 15, 13, 12, far more aware of their place in the world. And so President Kennedy talks about handing the torch to a new generation. And many baby boomers see that as being a reference to them. So this combination of the advertising, the television, the fact that there's so much being new around them gives baby boomers this sense that there's always more to life. And secondly, there's this sense that there is a responsibility on them to make the world a better place. So when President J.F. Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you, but instead ask what you can do for your country, baby boomers see that as being a call to them or many of them do. And so now as they're coming into adulthood and they're realizing how special they are as a generation, they're thinking, right, what do we do to change the world? How do we make the world a better place? And they listen to J.F. Kennedy and they hear him talking about being able to put a man on the moon in the future. He talks about the Peace Corps and bringing democracy throughout the world. They know that the president saved them from nuclear annihilation. And then all of a sudden, in 1963, tragedy happens when President Kennedy was assassinated. The oldest baby boomer was 17. It was shown on national TV. Again, there was that shared experience across the country. And many baby boomers are left thinking, what now? We had this dream of a better future. We had this dream of ending war and bringing peace to the world. And now our leader has been taken from us and we didn't expect it. And during that time of grieving, many baby boomers say that they experienced the sensation that time stood still for them. And then a few months later, this happened. These four people from England came across. The Beatles. And it completely electrified the baby boomers. You get images like this. Can you see the raw emotion on those girls' faces? And it became the birth of something. It became the birth of the 1960s. It became the birth of this great music. And what was important about this music for boomers was it was their music. It was for their generation. Before, they'd listen to their parents' music. But now this was something creative, new again, something new for them. And what was more important is not only did it unite the boomer children in America, but even across in England and other countries, there was this sense that now the youth were part of something much, much bigger. In fact, one of the movements during the 1960s was the Yippee Party, which stood for the Youth International Party. But at the same time, during the 60s, there was this great time of turbulence. Boomers saw around them, around the news, all this racial inequality and injustice. And again, those things that they've been brought up with, to believe that they can change the world, run through their minds. And they think, how can we change the world? How can we make the world a better place? They look at gender inequality and social inequality, and they think, how can we change the world? And they start standing up for what they believe is right. They start opposing the Vietnam War of drafting the boomers into the army and sending them into a country to fight what they believe is an unjust war. They see events like the assassination of Martin Luther King and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, and they think, what is this world that we are growing up in? What is this world that we have to be a part of? And they see that there are things that need to change. And then in 1969, something amazing happens. Because on TV across the world, America put a man on the moon. It is the fulfillment of the mission and the dream set by their hero, J.F. Kennedy. It's come to pass. And they see with technology and by having a vision, it is possible to achieve the impossible. And so when Woodstock happens, not only is it a major music festival, but it's also a symbol for many boomers, even the boomers that weren't there. Many boomers see it as being symbolic of so many things that were important to them. The idea of changing the world, of bringing peace, of making love, not war. And of course that theme of the music that unites them and bonds them all together. Which interestingly, I was speaking to a boomer who is one of my clients the other day, and he was saying that he still is often listening to the music of the 60s, that for him it is the soundtrack to his life. And there's this sense of Woodstock that finally we are going to change the world. We are actually making it happen. Here we are, all united, and we can do it. And so things like the Earth Day, which is when environmental conservation started to become serious across the world, and particularly in America. And the youth are there joining in that campaign to stop pollution and to stop what we would now call the climate change. But when they start in places where they are standing up for what they believe in, tragedy happens at the Kent State Massacre, where some students are shot, and these students were unarmed, and they were shot by the National Guard who were brought in because of the protesting. And even innocent bystanders, students are shot. And there is this sense that no matter what we try to stand up for, there is always somebody out there who is going to try and crush us. And then when the Watergate scandal happened, that's when many baby boomers became far more cynical. Because here was this president that was claiming to be good, and yet behind the scenes all sorts of other things were going on. So how could you trust the status quo? And if you can't trust the status quo, then where does that leave you? You have to do something different. You have to create the status quo yourself. You have to redefine it. You have to make the world a better place with technology, by connecting with people, by having visions and seeing those visions through. And so it's no accident that the people who invented Apple computer, for example, were themselves baby boomers, and Steve Jobs particularly was known to be a hippie. So if we look at the formative years, the eyes of a boomer, we can see several themes that are running through that. First of all, why accept the status quo when it's wrong, or when it doesn't agree with principles of social justice and equality? Secondly, how can we trust other people to write our destiny for us? They could easily be taken from us. It's up to us to make the difference now while we can. And thirdly, with technology and by joining with other people who are like-minded, anything is possible. We can change the world. And to effectively market to boomers, hearing care and hearing technology must somehow come to symbolize the values of baby boomers. And we must be seen as helping to empower them to redefine the world as they see fit. So how do we turn all of that, how do we take all of that and turn it into a marketing strategy that makes sense? Let's begin with this idea that we can redefine the status quo. Well, what is the status quo for boomers? Well, the status quo is telling boomers at this particular moment in time that you've had your time, you're now a senior, you've grown old and you should retire, the world has finished with you. And yet, when we look at what they're currently doing and we saw in an earlier slide that 80% of boomers are intending to carry on working after retirement, these are not the things that people who are slowing down and who have finished with life do. These are people who are looking to say, you know, we were told by JF Kennedy to not ask what the country could do for us, but to see what we could do for the country. And many boomers have been so involved in families and with work and things that they're starting to think, I need to leave a legacy, I need to change the world, I need to rekindle some of those dreams that I had once. So the message of hearing care has to be that boomers and anyone is the same today as yesterday, that we respect who you see yourself as and who you are and what you can be. But now, not only are you the same person as you were yesterday, but you also have this incredible wealth of life experience that few can match. Who has been through what you have been through. Which means that now your time has come. Some of you have not got the same responsibilities to your children anymore, because they've left home. Some of you have got more time on your hands. And you are looking for something to do that will give back to society. So with our technology and your connections, anything is possible. What we're giving you is the power to be yourself and not some shadow of yourself. Let's take this idea of creating your own destiny. How on earth does that link in with hearing? Well let's think about what hearing actually does. Hearing connects us to a particular time and a particular place. It connects us to the now, to everything that's happening around us at this particular moment in time. If we hear things today, we can often change the course of our lives for the rest of our lives. Think for example, if somebody gets married and they say the words, I do, and they hear those words. Does that not change the course of their destiny forever? And so with hearing being at its best, you have more access to opportunities in life. You have more access to the moments that life gives. And you have more chance to bring all that you are and all that you can be to that moment. So hearing and keeping your hearing at its best is a way of redefining tomorrow. What about a message along the way that anything is possible? How does that tie in with what we do? Well let's think about what's going on for boomers. You know, a lot of articles out there on the internet and in magazines and newspapers are kind of implying that boomers have now had their time. They're saying that you can't do this, you can't do that. And for boomers, some of them are experiencing this themselves, that they might be going into work, into meetings, they might be trying to hold phone calls and they're realizing their hearing isn't as sharp as it used to be. Now they've got a choice. They can either fade away from those things or they can say, well hang on a minute, I remember that during my life I've seen how technology has made it possible. So hearing, enhanced by hearing technology, gives people the power to write their own future. Let's think about what associations that we want to link with hearing technology. Because you'll notice that we've been talking a lot about hearing rather than deafness and rather than hearing loss or hearing impairment. And there's a very good reason for that. You see, we could link the idea of using hearing aids to a hearing impairment, which is a traditional approach. Or we could link it to hearing. Let's see where both of those routes go. If we take hearing impairment, the idea and the association is that you were growing old. That's one of those stereotypes in society. Everybody knows it. But if you are hearing as well as possible, that's something that we associate with youthfulness or staying young. Now if we go further and look at where those associations go, if we take growing old, it leads to things like becoming dependent on other people. And if there's anything about baby boomers, many of them like their independence. One of the predictions around ten years ago was that boomers were going to move into retirement villages together. Well actually, most boomers would rather keep their own house and stay independent because they do not see themselves at the end of their lives. They see themselves as being middle aged. Growing old leads to lack of abilities and becoming incapable, becoming powerless, becoming frail. And these are qualities that we as human beings tend to find unattractive because we associate them with being on our way out and the end is death. So these are things that generally speaking people avoid. Whereas staying young, the qualities and the associations with that are independence. So remember what we were saying about the baby boomers? They are the original youth culture. About being capable. About being strong and virile. And of being attractive. Think again about some of the things that we've been talking about baby boomers and the things that interest them. So these are all qualities that people want to approach. So it makes no sense to link hearing technology to hearing impairment when actually we can link it to a device to enable people to keep their hearing at its best because it's maintaining the brain's connection to the world around. Now, when we think about staying young, these are the sort of qualities that enable somebody to care for other people. To work and be effective at work. To date and have romantic encounters. To change the world and give back to society. To improve oneself through education. To go off and travel. To do extreme sports. To do all the things that baby boomers want to do. Now it's a mistake to think that baby boomers are out there Googling hearing aids. The reason is that they've got so many other things to be thinking about. Also things that interest them. They want to know how to stay healthy. They want to go out and travel and see the world and to eat out. They want to stay effective at work, particularly as the skill sets need to constantly evolve. They want to connect with others, either romantically, socially or professionally. And they need to care for their loved ones, both those who are older than them and those who are younger than them. So where is hearing on all the things that are relevant to them? The point is that actually hearing underlies all of those things. It's part of staying healthy. It's part of travelling or going to restaurants. It's part of being effective at work. Of connecting with other people. Of caring for loved ones. Because one of the skills that we need as human beings when we're caring for somebody is to be able to listen. And very often as people get older and as people become more frail they tend to reduce the volume of their voice. There's less energy there. So having best possible hearing is important for all of these things. So these are the sort of things boomers are likely to be looking for that is relevant to them. Our job is to piggy back on them and show that hearing underlies all of those things. So we need to be looking rather than deafness or hearing impairment, which remember is a symbol, is a sign to many people of growing older. Instead we're thinking about maintaining health now. So hearing and a healthy brain. Are there things that we can be advising people on that? What about in the workplace? Are there tips that we can give people to be effective in meetings and be effective on the phone? Is there technology that can help? What about hearing in relationships? When somebody's looking for information on that, does information about hearing come in? What about when they go to gigs? What about when they go to see their favourite bands? Both modern and comeback tours. What about how hearing fits in with travel and learning a language? Are there things that we can be advising and informing on that? And what about tips for eating out when there's a lot of noise going on? What can we tell them about that and how hearing is important and how to keep it performing at its best in that situation? And then there's the things that they'll be searching for and the things they want information on for their teenagers' hearing or their grandchildren's hearing or their parents' hearing. They might not be Googling hearing aids for themselves because they see hearing aids as being linked to older people. But they might be finding out for their parents. So here is an opportunity where we can have a dialogue with boomers. And of course, we always recognise problems with our partner's hearing, even if we don't recognise it with ourselves. So can we give them advice that will enable them to start thinking differently about hearing care? In all of these types of outreaches, we're not trying to sell them a service. We're not trying to sell them a product. What we're doing is we're educating and entertaining them. And the reason we do this is to give them things that they can talk about with other boomers. We're giving them something that we call social currency. Just as we give people money in exchange for goods, socially, if we exchange information with other people and tell people something interesting that we've read, then we start to share that and it increases our social standing. So that's what we have to do. We have to get hearing onto the agenda of the conversations that boomers are having with one another. And with all of the information that we're putting out there, we have a twofold objective. We are normalising the idea of having routine hearing checks throughout life. Not when you're old, not when you reach a certain age, but throughout life. That includes all ages. We're also normalising the idea that hearing technology is to keep hearing at its best. We normalise routine hearing checks by linking it with the idea of regular eye checks and regular teeth checks. We normalise hearing technology by linking it to a tool that can make situations easier. We're not linking it to an impairment or a condition. So it's not because of age. It's not because of hearing loss. It's to maximise and maintain health, wellbeing and human potential. That's our message. That's our goal. And when we start getting the interest of boomers, then we have to make sure that we're ready to receive them as they expect to be received. Boomers, as we saw earlier, like to experiment and find out what's more, what they can get more from life. So let's give them opportunities to explore different options. Otherwise, if we don't give them, they'll go somewhere else. They'll shop around. But if we can manage that for them in one handy place, then there's no need to go somewhere else because we've fulfilled their criteria. And remember that boomers lead busy lives. So it's important that we don't try to get them to fit around our schedule because it's convenient for us and because we have certain opening hours that in the past have worked for elderly people. But instead, that we fit around their busy schedules. So if 80% of them are working, how are we going to be open when they can actually take time off or come when they're not working? And how do they book an appointment? Do they book online or do they make a telephone call? And if they're too busy to make a telephone call, when will they do it? In the evenings. Do we have some way for them to get in touch when our offices are normally closed? And we'll just finish off with a few do's and don'ts. First of all, don't stereotype and don't poke fun. If any boomer responds to such marketing, they're going to look bad in front of others. And they won't do that. Well, you and I wouldn't do it, so why do we think boomers are any different? Don't show people who are 55 or older, even in the testimonials. Because boomers do not relate to people who are seen to be themselves or older. They see themselves as being younger. All of us do. And so they relate better to models who are 10 to 15 younger than them. So we need to practice this idea of ageless marketing. That it's not specific to boomers, it's not specific to seniors, it could be anyone at any age. Make it about all peoples. Remember, you or I, in the future, could need hearing care services. Would we fit in with the stereotypes and the images that we've been putting out there for years? How would we want people to see us? We don't want to be boxed in. Make it about individuals. Even though we've been talking about this demographic population. Remember, it's made up of individuals. Remember to engage in dialogue. It's you and baby boomers together creating solutions in partnership. None of this, the things that have worked in the past where we are the expert, they are the patient. It has to be a partnership. And finally, respect your audience's intelligence. Remember, they are better educated than any generation before them. They've often done their homework. They often know more about certain things than you or I do. And I've experienced that time and time again. And that brings us to the end of our webinar. And I just want to finish with a quote from the Whole Earth Catalogue, which is a magazine that was around in the 60s. And there's this great quote from the introduction of it, which is this, personal power is developing. The power of the individual to conduct his own education, to find his own inspiration, to shape his own environment, and to share his adventure with whoever is interested. Doesn't that just sum up so much of what we've been talking about, boomers? And so our role here with our marketing is that we want to get that message that having the best possible hearing throughout life empowers boomers to achieve exactly this. Not just boomers, but anyone. It enables people to be all that they can be and all that they want to be. And our marketing strategy is actually boils down to this. It's to get boomers to make this connection for themselves rather than us telling them. Because when they make this connection for themselves and they start spreading that word amongst themselves, they will do the work for us. They'll do the rest. Because if you look at the history of boomers, they always do. And that's the end of our presentation. Thank you very much for listening. There's a couple of references and further reading on the boomer generation. The last link on there is a very, very good summary of boomer marketing that you might want to download. Thanks, Curtis. Wow, what a great presentation. Curtis, we're so excited. We've had over 250 attendees that have joined us today on this webinar. We do have some time for questions. If you have a question for Curtis, please enter it in the question box on your webinar dashboard. And let's see. Curtis, our first question is from Juliana. Juliana would like to know if you have any tips for marketing to baby boomers via the Internet. Interestingly, if you read the research on marketing to boomers on the Internet, follow the strategy that you would for millennials. So millennials are the 18 to the 35 category because it works for boomers as well. There's this temptation for us to box in boomers into a particular age group or category rather than thinking of them as people just like us. They're no different from us. They're like you and I searching on the Internet. So ask yourself if you were looking, if hearing was relevant to you in some way, what would you be looking for on the Internet? And if you didn't know that hearing was relevant to you but everyone else around you knows how it is, how would you go about it? So things like blogs, things like videos, things that you can give people to share information. Remember what we talked about with social currency. Get boomers to do the work for you. So give them interesting things and they will spread the word for you. Great advice, Curtis. Thanks. Curtis, our next question is from Lindsey. And Lindsey asks is there any media that is better than another for baby boomers? For example, do they still read newspapers? They read, everybody is reading less newspapers. People are going more towards the Internet for information like that. There's still avid watchers of television, though not quite so much, again, because of the Internet. And many of them are avid readers. Magazines, radio is still a big thing for boomers. So what I would suggest is it's going to be different for every area of every part of the country. So find out what media is around there. Speak to people who are experts in your particular vicinity about what boomers are reading or watching. You can't go wrong with the Internet and social media. And also it costs a lot less money normally to do so, whereas newspaper advertising tends to be expensive. The other thing that seems to be quite an effective medium still for boomers is direct marketing, direct mail. But make sure it's interesting. Make sure it doesn't stereotype and doesn't patronize. And let it be something that is not just for boomers but could be picked up by anyone and would still be considered relevant to them. Thanks, Curtis. Curtis, our next question is from Susan. And Susan asks do you have any tips for marketing to baby boomers in small local communities? Okay. That's a very good question. First of all, it depends how well you know your local community. There is this temptation that, again, we categorize baby boomers and put them into a group where it's easy to get hold of them all in one place and market to them en masse. There's only two times in life where people are all together all at the same time. One is at the beginning of our life when we're in school together and college together and university together. And the other time is at the end of our lives. Now, most of us listening to this seminar, we will probably only ever meet each other in something that interested all of us together. So if you can find something locally that is of interest to all baby boomers in your area, then that's where to look. But the chances of you finding that are quite remote. So the thing is that there's different ways of looking at this. One is that you could get involved with the types of things that boomers are going to be interested in. So if, for example, we know that they want to give back to society, are there things that you can do to give back to society that will attract boomers to be part of what you're doing? But you're not specifically marketing to them. What you're doing is building a relationship with other individuals who just so happen to have a birth date that falls between 1946 and 1964. Great. Thanks, Curtis. Curtis, our last question comes from Amy. And Amy says, can you please give me an example of how we as hearing aid dispensers can convey a sense of empowerment to baby boomers when we are in a face-to-face setting? Okay. So the first thing is that if we're empowering people, we need to put our focus on the positive aspects. So often when people come into us, in the past, we've been trying to, there's an expression, isn't there, sort of like we're almost trying to make them feel the hurt that hearing impairment has caused so they'll look to us for a solution. So that's the opposite of what we want to be doing with boomers. Instead, what we need to be doing is focusing on what they want to get out of life and then aligning hearing with that. So for example, instead of asking people what difficulties are you having with your hearing or instead of asking people how long have you had a hearing impairment, which is all this categorizing language and boxing people in language, instead, why is your hearing important to you? What do you need your hearing for? And then ask them about their lives. Ask them about their interests and then ask them how do they find their hearing in those situations. That's one thing in that personal encounter to empower. Also, when you're showing the audiogram, instead of sort of saying you fall into this category of hearing loss, talk about their hearing range and talk about sounds falling outside of their hearing range and that your goal together is to bring those sounds back within their hearing range so they don't miss a moment. In other words, people want to minimize future loss. They don't want to accept loss that they can do nothing about. And then the final thing is make sure that the imagery that you are showing, even when they walk into the practice, when they walk into our practice, we have a great big projected image which changes showing all sorts of people of all different ages engaged in active lifestyles where they are enjoying or using their hearing to be the best that they can be in those situations. All of those flavor our sense of empowerment. Great. Thank you, Curtis. We want to thank you for an excellent presentation. We want to thank all of our attendees for joining us today on the IHS webinar, Baby Boomer Marketing, It's Not What You Think. If you'd like to get in contact with Curtis, you may email him at curtis.alcock and ardira.info. For more information about receiving continuing this webinar, visit the IHS website at IHSinfo.org. Click on the webinar banner or find more information on the webinar tab under professional development. IHS members receive a substantial discount on IHS CE credits. So if you're not already an IHS member, you will find more info at IHSinfo.org. Please keep an eye out for the feedback survey that you will receive tomorrow via email. We ask that you take just a moment to answer a few brief questions about the quality of today's presentation. Thank you again for being with us today and we will see you at the next IHS webinar.

baby boomer generation

hearing healthcare industry

buying power

hearing technology

values

interests

challenging stereotypes

engaging boomers

overall health