There are two challenges when it comes to finding your best 50+ home buyers. The first is that there are more than 90 million of them out there — so finding your customers can seem a little like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. The second challenge is that their responses to lifestyle and housing surveys may not always match their actual behaviors. But before throwing in the towel, builders should be aware of the tools they can utilize to solve these challenges and, in the process, improve their marketing results and reduce their costs.

There are numerous data sources available that can provide builders with a wealth of demographic information, migratory trends and lifestyle habits that is quantitative and based upon past behaviors of 50+ consumers. Data is available from the Census, the American Community Survey, the Economic Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis — just to name a few of the sources. And yes, compiling and pouring over this data can be costly and very time consuming, but there are solutions to this challenge as well.

Companies such as Claritas, Axiom and Experian Americas have long provided industries of all types with demographic and socioeconomic data designed to help companies locate potential customers. Years ago the information gathered and provided by these companies was combined with customer attributes such as personality, values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles and morphed into a term that has gained recognition within the home building industry.  That term is psychographics. 

In today’s form, psychographic research segments our population into dozens of distinct groups to which companies have attached catchy names such as “belongers,” “achievers,” and “wannabes.”  By profiling your own customers, you can identify the population segments that would be most attracted to your community and product. But as with any research tool, they must continually evolve to keep pace with the changing nature of our society — and business.

Who could have predicted ten years ago that the 55 and older segment of our population would become the sweet spot in the home building industry? Certainly companies such as Del Webb reaped great success and developed a strong brand identity with its Sun City communities that served the 55+ market. Today, we are finding more and more companies seeking to learn about and serve this lucrative market segment with both age-qualified and age-targeted communities. 

Although there are many market research companies, few have responded to the challenge of understanding what motivates the mature homebuyer. Fewer still have developoed the research tools to analyze this market segment. Such analysis requires finding geographic, climatic, socioeconomic, and amenity data on all potential retirement destinations. Those who have this data can use it to infer the lifestyle desires of prospective mature homebuyers in a given retirement destination. Combining this information with migration trends, they can identify the best mature homebuyer prospects and where they currently live.  

For home builders catering to the active adult market, here are a few tips that will help you become better target marketers and as a result, lower your marketing costs and improve you traffic and sales results.

• Understand the make-up of your local community before you develop your marketing campaign. You will find that active adults have a propensity to locate with people who are in a similar socioeconomic group. That’s the first step in narrowing your market.
   
• Understand your competition based upon factors such as geography, climate, socioeconomic and lifestyle considerations. This will help you market to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses, especially as they relate to the availability of the amenities your customers desire.
  
  
• Understand the migration streams of the 55+ population as they relate to your region. Today, it’s possible to create a tiered hierarchy of the U.S. counties that send the most 55+ consumers into your market. And, you can compile this data right down to the zip code level.

In essence, by using quantitative, behavior-based data, builders can pinpoint who their very best prospects are, and where they will come from. The benefit of these types of analysis is the potential to double response rates to direct mail or advertising, greatly improve traffic generation, and dramatically improve conversion rates and the bottom line because their marketing campaigns are now highly targeted to reach only the very best 50+  housing prospects.  

Thomas, Warren +Associates is an economic analysis and market research firm that specializes in the 50+ market.  The firm regularly hosts informational webinars to help builders better understand the applications of target marketing tools such as its new SeniorStat product.  For information about the webinars visit www.twaaconsulting.com. [Return to top]