The 4 Demographic Segments Of The Over 50 Market

In this episode, Rick speaks with Jay Croft, Content Director of Prime Fit Content, to discuss the different demographic segments of the 50+ market. Jay is an expert in marketing to the over 50 avatar and explains how the customers differ in this market.

Jay creates content for the 50+ market and he calls it Prime Fit content. He provides content and marketing materials to fitness gyms and studios to reach clients and prospects for the over 50 age group.

A couple of things happen in our lives, right around 50 – socially and biologically.

Socially, they are getting close to retirement; they are more settled in careers, and mortgages might be closer to being paid off. Their kids are grown-up, moved away, and perhaps starting to have grandchildren.
Physically, women and men both have hormonal changes. Men often experience a drop in testosterone levels, and women begin to go through menopause. It’s easier to gain weight and we need more protein, etc.

Jay works with many franchise businesses and when he talks with potential franchisees, he will describe how each franchise concept is different. Typically, the people that can also afford to invest in a franchise opportunity are in the same age bracket as the demographic market Alloy addresses.

The 4 Demographic Segments Of The Over 50 Market

Broadly speaking, Jay puts these subcategories into 4 buckets:

50-70 year olds in good shape
Over 70 year olds in good shape but with unique challenges
50-70 deconditioned
Over 70 deconditioned and with unique challenges

Your marketing and content messaging for each demographic segment will be a little different for each subcategory.

The over 50 demographic is underserved in the fitness industry, yet they have more money to spend than the younger people who are still finding their footing in life.

So when you build your marketing and writing content for this over 50 customer avatar, you aren’t creating materials based on class-based concepts, or the very fit or muscular persona. Those concepts are more of a high churn rate model.

The fitness industry is youth obsessed. Just look at most of the ads and marketing content you see from gyms, and you notice that very few fitness facilities are speaking to the older demographic, those that are over 50 years old. Since the fitness industry is youth obsessed, most fitness facilities have content picturing men with big muscles and six packs abs and the women are fit and youthful.

But there’s more to running a good gym than appealing just to those people who are youth obsessed and don’t have a lot of money to spend. They will not stay with your gym for long, causing low retention rates, more churn and less customer lifetime value.

Alloy helps people enjoy and live life to the fullest by making them stronger, helping them be at an appropriate weight, maintain their agility, and take part in their preferred activities. At Alloy, our target demographic trends from 40 to 70, so we push the borders of the over 50 category. People over 50 have more time and money. So Alloy has concentrated on that demographic segment, causing higher retention rates and higher customer lifetime values because they stick around longer. This over 50 age demographic segment has over 70% of the nation’s disposable income, so you’d be crazy not to look at this market.

In this episode, Rick speaks with Jay Croft of Prime Fit Content to discuss the subcategories of the 50+ demographic. Jay is an expert in marketing to the over 50 avatar and explains the difference in customers in this market.

Tune in to this episode for tips to market and service these 4 subcategories of people and the opportunity that exists within them. Develop your marketing messaging and content around these 4 categories. Listen in for specifics marketing tactics for each segment.