According to a new poll by Harris Interactive reported my www.marketingcharts.com, print advertising is still king when it comes to adults 45 and over looking for bargains.  Not surprisingly, online marketing is the place to reach the biggest audience 18-44. Among all adults, print (newspaper/magazine) edged out online by 23% to 18% followed by direct mail and catalogs. Radio barely earned any tick marks, practically rendering radio advertising useless.

Right now, I would tell my more “mature” clients who target older adults and want to grow their business to look at their client demographics.  If this is your case and you don’t have data available,  ask them to fill out a brief questionnaire or survey them informally and write down the results on a score card.  You don’t necessarily have to ask them their actual age, just break it down into ranges like 18-34, 35-44, 45-54 or 55+.

Use print and direct mail as needed.  But, begin throwing some online marketing and new media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) into the mix.  Avoid radio.  With MP3 players, iPhones, Pandora, and Sirius/XM satellite radio which are all pretty much commercial-free, nobody is really tuning in to radio anymore.

At 47, I am conditioned to look to print for bargains. My 19 year-old-daughter, however, never reads the newspaper for ads.  She finds bargains online.  So I would tend to agree with the study.  What will be interesting to see is if these statistics shift over time.  When today’s 18-34 year olds reach 45, will they still stay with online or will they shift to print (if it’s still around).

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