Alert: Expanding into the Boomer Market

Fact: Many aging Boomer women live alone. They have for some time. And they plan to keep doing that, risks be-damned.

Enter Life-Alert with a new twist on its old marketing campaign. Life Alert 50 Plus: Personal and home security, including video surveillance.

Never mind that the video alone is rich fodder for Saturday Night Live.

It doesn’t matter what the rest of us laugh about, Life Alert 50+ isn’t targeting the entire world. Likely, this marketing campaign isn’t even targeting all Boomer women who live alone, although the company would gladly sell to any and all.

The target persona for Life Alert 50+ is probably a particular kind of Boomer woman, described in detail only in internal company documents I’ve never seen and never will.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t all learn from what Life Alert is doing.

If they’re following current marketing best practices, Life Alert is targeting a particular target “persona” — a Boomer woman hopefully not just imagined, but thoroughly researched and verified through market research before significant hard-dollar marketing costs are spent.

Marketing research work that verifies there really is a problem to be solved for these women, and Life Alert 50+ can solve it.

Perhaps these market research efforts led to the introduction of the “video surveillance” service, the apparent major difference between Life Alert Classic and Life Alert 50 plus (for “younger” adults).

Welcome to real-world Client Driven Marketing — the bigger market research budget version.

But the premise remains: It’s not enough to have a product you believe in, a service that’s top-notch. That product or service has to solve a real (or perceived) problem existing or potential customers have.

Otherwise, who’s going to buy what you offer?

As far as Life Alert 50 Plus goes, those of us watching from a distance… we have to wait. Only time will tell if they’ve hit a chord with their target market.