Entrepreneurs: Expanding Your Market and Talent Pool
by Miki Saxon
This post is for entrepreneurs (and thinking people everywhere).
If you aren’t actively working to engage the fastest growing segment of users you are missing a very large boat—seniors.
According to usability expert Jakob Nielsen, from 2002 to 2012 senior users increased 16% each year, while those 30-49 increased only 3% a year; research from Pew backs this up.
52% of wired boomers are using social networking sites. 32% of online seniors over 65 are using social networking sites. 57% of boomer Internet users are using Facebook, along with 35% of online seniors.
Those are hefty numbers and growing and their social media use is growing even faster. They also have financial resources that many under-30 don’t have.
Women are the other powerful market force that is often ignored, so those startups run by, and (benefit of the doubt) unconsciously for, men, may want to think again.
A record 40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family…
That’s money, honey.
Not only money, but talent. Yesterday we looked at the legal dangers of not hiring women, but that almost pales in comparison to the lost talent and productivity inherent in not hiring/promoting women.
Warren Buffett stated cause and effect elegantly and effectively.
Cause: But an even greater enemy of change may well be the ingrained attitudes of those who simply can’t imagine a world different from the one they’ve lived in.
Effect: The closer that America comes to fully employing the talents of all its citizens, the greater its output of goods and services will be. We’ve seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity. If you visualize what 100% can do…
Flickr image credit: jeff_golden
