Our last two “marketing” posts have dealt with “the generation thing” and “the trust thing.” Today’s post will attempt to bring those two things together, with a specific example. As we noted earlier, the two oldest generations — the Matures and the Baby Boomers — value stability. They like companies and organizations that have been around for a long time. So to a Mature or a Boomer, a statement like “serving our town since 1975” provides evidence of promises kept, and that evidence tends to reassure them that promises will be kept in the future.
How about the X’s and the Y’s though? They don’t seem to equate longevity with stability. After all, in their lifetimes, they’ve seen long-established companies fail — including companies that their parents and/or grandparents respected greatly!
The point of all this is that stability and longevity won’t help you with X’s and Y’s like it probably will with Matures and Boomers — unless you take it to the next level. Don’t just tell them that you’ve been in business for XX years, tell them why you think that’s important to them! Tell them about the problems you’ve solved during those XX years, and about the lessons you’ve learned. Tell them how you’ve evolved in order to serve them — or their community! — as well as they served your parents and grandparents and their communities.
In a large sense, marketing is about telling your story. The lesson for today is that you may have to tell more of your story to get the results you really want. Especially to the X’s and Y’s!
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