I've refined my thoughts on marketing to seniors, learned new things about interactive marketing, and given more thought to employee training and retention. This month's column will touch on these subjects.

At a recent convention there was an excellent session on marketing to seniors which brought out some things I had not thought about before. The first thing I learned was the concept of "cohort traits or likes".

Marketing to Cohorts

Cohorts as you may know are groups or associates. Cohort traits include, among other things, a preference for a type of music. For example, I know many seniors like big band music from the thirties and forties. The Baby Boomers won't suddenly start liking that music when they become seniors, they'll prefer rock and roll or what ever they enjoyed during their formative years, Bottom line, many items which appeal to today's seniors won't appeal to seniors a decade from now.

That's not to say they won't need some of the same features. Big alpha numeric characters to compensate for poor eyesight could probably be marketed just that way to today's seniors, but in a few years, the same feature may have to be marketed as convenient or modern!

Self Perception is Reality

How people perceive themselves is also very different. I asked the speaker what age the people in photographs used in promotional pieces, such as brochures, should be if my target audience was 60 to 75 years old. The reply was about 15 years less as that is how people perceive themselves. How true, I'm almost 49 and certainly don't picture myself as being that old. I imagine when one is packaging features some items which cross the boundaries of age should be included. We've been promoting the availability of complimentary bicycles at one of our hotels. Until I attended this workshop it had not occurred to me what a broad appeal that feature had. We need to look for more like that.

Male/Female Ratio

One must also consider the disproportionate number of women as a ratio to men in the current batch of seniors. The fact is that at the oldest ages the ratio is approximately four to one. That may be useful in targeting one's marketing efforts to be more efficient. The number of true seniors had actually been failing off recently because of the lower birth rates during the depression and World War 11. Starting next year, however, the full impact of the post World War 11 baby boom will begin to be felt as those people born in 1946 begin to reach 50. Supposedly someone will turn 50 every 8 seconds beginning next year.

Think about how different a 45 to 50 year old is in their interest and activity level than a person that age when I was a child. Almost everyone that age was a grandparent and acted like you and I might picture grandparents acting. No in-line skating, no aerobics classes or SCUBA diving! We all know many people of that age today who, whether they are a grandparent or not, undertake those activities! The scariest thing was that the presenter was a woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties. She was in her mid-forties and had children five and eight years old. This isn't my grandmother's generation, it is mine!

Marketing to Boomers

How do we market to ourselves? For the next twenty years the boomer bubble will be going through their biggest spending years. As the session on seniors brought out, the people we consider seniors are children of the depression with all the baggage relating to financial security that goes with that. The following generations are all more prone to using credit or otherwise spending to the limit. So not only are the numbers of people huge, but so is their willingness to spend.

We really do need to get ready to market to our own generation and we need to do it efficiently. How many of these people are surfing the Internet? How many of these people will respond to interactive marketing?

Look to the 'Net

I suppose everyone thinks they know what the World Wide Web and the Internet are. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I'm just starting to use them. Much to my surprise, even these columns are available on the Internet. I've heard the lnternet described as the world's largest library, but that its books are all laying on the floor, There's some truth to that in that one really needs to know more than the Dewey Decimal System (or what ever replaced it) to find something on the lnternet. From everything I've heard and seen the lnternet and World Wide Web will become exponentially more important every year.

Interactive Marketing

I guess I should explain what interactive marketing is. You may be familiar with in room city magazines which are heavy in advertising in addition to having a few articles about local history, culture, restaurant reviews, etc. Imagine putting this magazine on the guest room TV. You select the channel that has the magazine when you want to read it and you decide which ads you may want to see based on what you want to know about at the moment. The ads may be categorized under restaurants, night life, movie theaters, etc.

After selecting the subject, you might also want to select some sub category. You then page through the main part of each ad pursuing more detail when you want it. For each ad you can have a map and coupons printed out on a laser printer at the hotel's front desk to pick up later. You can even have the TV dial a particular advertiser and put them on your guest room telephone so you can make reservations or get more information.

Interactive marketing is not like TV advertising in that you don't have to watch it except when you want to and need the information, It is more like a high-tech yellow page directory. The question is, of course, who is benefiting and who is making money? The answer is that it is a win-win-win situation for everyone, particularly hotels which have the demographics to appeal to the interactive marketing company.

The advertisers win because they get high quality advertising in full color with high graphics in hotel guest rooms. Full motion and animation is available, but should be used with care so that the guest doesn't get the feeling they are watching intrusive (regular TV) advertising. The advertiser gets a record of the inquiries, calls forwarded to them and an audience that is very focused. It is truly efficient advertising.

The advertisers, of course, pay the interactive media company a fee to offset that company's expenses. This is no different than paying a magazine publisher or a radio station.

The interactive marketing company adds benefits to their programs to entice the hotels into allowing the program to be placed on its guest room TVs. The first of the benefits is obvious: a no cost additional amenity for its guests. A second benefit is free advertising for the hotel and its various profit centers on the system. Not so obvious are other features such as voice mail and fax reception. These last two features free up the hotel's staff and can be provided with a higher quality than typically found in other programs. When the guest wants the fax printed out it comes out at the front desk on the same laser printer used by the advertisers. The voice mail simply comes out of the television's speaker thus leaving the telephone free. Clearly these products won't find their way to the limited service economy lodging and rural markets in the near future. Major markets and full service mid and upper-tier hotels should start seeing these offers outside of the test markets in the next year or so.

Employee Retention

On to employee retention and motivation with a quick idea my wife, Vicki Richman, picked up at a workshop she went to at the International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show. One speaker suggested testing different groups of employees to see what motivates them. Questions might include, but not be limited to, "what would you rather have: $25 gift certificate to a store, lunch with the General Manager, or an acknowledgment in the company newsletter?". The speaker's idea appeared to be that we should learn what motivates different groups of employees because each of these options reflects an individual's unique hot buttons.

An adaptation of this idea which we're considering using in our company is to test every employee hired for motivational and disciplinary ideas and alternatives. We would file the results of the test in each employee's personnel file and refer to the test results when necessary so we can tailor our leadership style and methods to each individual employee. Obviously a lot of discussion and testing is needed before we implement this, but on the surface it seems to have possibilities. There is nothing worse than thinking that you are providing desirable rewards for behavior and never knowing that your staff has no desire for those rewards.