Marketing to Millennials and other age groups

When it comes to insurance marketing, it’s important to realize that a one-size-fits-all approach might not yield the best results. In any business, marketing for more specific audiences can often help messages land more effectively, and in a nuanced business like insurance, it can be particularly helpful to understand your prospective customers. 

Instead of taking the same approach with all prospective customers when marketing commercial insurance policies, consider adapting your marketing efforts to fit the preferences of certain types of leads. Doing so doesn’t have to mean taking on exponentially more work but could instead mean tweaking some marketing strategies to better fit the preferences and needs of your target customers.

For example, if you know that some types of customer groups respond well to email marketing, whereas others seem more reachable on social media, you could repurpose the same type of content but send it to different groups across these different channels.

While there are many ways to segment your audience, in this guide, we’ll explore in more detail how to market insurance to different age groups so that you can form stronger connections and turn more leads into customers.

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Consider Generational Differences

One way to improve your marketing is to take into account the different age groups or generations that you’re trying to reach. While you want to be careful about making sweeping generalizations — not everyone in one generation has the exact same preferences — you might be able to initially improve your outreach before taking into account individual wants and needs as you progress leads through the customer journey.  

Marketing to Millennials 

Millennials are now the largest generation in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center. Many of them largely grew up with the Internet, but many can also remember a time without it and have learned how to use new tools as they emerge.

When it comes to marketing to Millennials, one area to keep in mind is that they often want to engage with communities online, and this generation is most likely to say that social media is a key part of their lives, according to a study by The Harris Poll conducted on behalf of SproutSocial.

More specifically, the study finds that 75% of Millennials think social media helps them interact with brands. “That interaction opens the door to connections with other fans across the world,” explains SproutSocial.

So, for insurers, that might mean thinking about marketing to Millennials in a way that involves facilitating interactions, like creating a LinkedIn Group for young business owners to share advice and network with one another.

Marketing to Baby Boomers 

When marketing to Baby Boomers, don’t assume that you have to stick with offline methods like direct mail or cold calling.

“Boomers didn’t grow up with technology but have seen its capabilities quickly unfold and are fascinated with how it has progressed. This group relies on Google for information and favors Facebook over other social media platforms, and you’ll more likely catch them on their computer than a smartphone or tablet,” notes MorganMyers, a marketing and PR agency for food and agriculture sectors.

So, insurance agents might try approaches like creating Facebook Ads targeted based on age. You also might have better luck finding organic success on Facebook if you’re engaging with Baby Boomers on this platform. 

Marketing to Generation X 

When marketing to Generation X, those who are younger than Baby Boomers but didn’t grow up with the Internet the way Millennials and Gen Z did, consider some of the ways this generation stands out. 

For example, a study by Fractl and BuzzStream (a marketing agency and marketing software company respectively) finds Gen Xers have more appetite than Baby Boomers or Millennials for articles over 500 words. So, if you’re creating blog content, you might want to market longer posts to this generation while saving shorter ones for others. You could even promote a longer post to Gen Xers while cutting the same post up into short social media posts, such as to share on Facebook for Baby Boomers.

You also may want to take life stages into account when figuring out how to market to Generation X. For instance, Gen Xers might have older parents that they’re taking care of while also having their own kids who are perhaps teenagers or college students, so they may have a lot on their plates. Thus, you may want to frame insurance as a way to take some pressure off of them and reduce financial risk.

“Gen X is in their peak earning years, and are therefore the engines of much of American life right now. But make no mistake: It’s an intense moment for Xers, with ever-mounting familial responsibilities, expenses and savings vehicles vying for attention,” notes Firstly, a budgeting/financial wellness company.

Marketing to Generation Z

Marketing to the youngest of these four generations, some of whom are now finishing college and starting their own businesses, can also involve a lot of online interactions. But one thing to keep in mind when marketing to Gen Z is that they often want more two-way interaction between themselves and brands, as the SproutSocial study finds.

In particular, 64% of Gen Zs “expect a more personalized experience on social media based on previous interactions.” Plus, 61% “want companies to know them better based on their social media activity.”

So, insurers may want to follow any Gen Z prospects on social media and aim to more directly understand them on an individual basis, rather than expecting these prospects to just come to you and absorb what you have to say. 

Aim to Understand Your Audience

By learning these different types of preferences and life circumstances, insurance agents can often tailor their marketing to better align with their target customers. Aim to understand your audience — whether that’s on social media, email, your website, etc. — so that you can develop messaging that resonates with them and so that you can deliver your marketing in a format that they’re receptive to.

In addition to looking at different types of surveys about generational differences, you can also learn more about your audience by analyzing your own data. For example, if you use email marketing, you might want to try segmenting leads into different age groups and test different types of messages to see what works best. You can also see what type of engagement you get from different groups on social media.

Once you have a better understanding of what different types of leads and customers respond well to, you can further tailor your marketing by using tools like Wheelhouse. With Wheelhouse, you can easily create targeted landing pages. So, if you create different types of social media campaigns geared toward prospects in different generations, you can drive traffic from these campaigns to the targeted landing pages.

Overall, finding ways to understand your audience better can help you improve your marketing. As you learn more about generational preferences, such as around how prospects want to engage brands, and how different age groups may respond to different types of marketing messages around insurance, you can increase your marketing effectiveness.