A month ago the nation was in full heat wave mode. You? You were busy servicing every whining, warm-air sputtering, froze-up air conditioning unit in the $11 billion dollar homeowner air conditioning pie you had time for.
Don’t look now, but the first day of Fall just passed you by and heat for the Winter months is on every renter, home dweller and business owner’s mind. In no time, Nor’easters will rev up and El Nino will begin to bawl, signaling time to batten down hatches and service your clients’ furnaces, ASAP. Do you ever get a rest? Nah – who wants rest when there’s money to be made! May as well capitalize on Mother Nature’s bad behavior!
Instead of spreading yourself thin, it can be beneficial to analyze the market and target it down to where you can make the most money. In warm or cold weather, and basically year-round, no bigger demographic than baby boomers has more money to spend on the HVAC industry. Don’t believe it? Let’s take a closer look at some interesting baby boomer statistics:
- The 55+ age group (aka: the boomers) controls more than three-fourths of America’s wealth.
- Boomers’ median household income is 55% greater than post-boomers and 61% more than pre-boomers. In other words, if boomer households need heating, air-conditioning, service, repair or new units, they are more likely to purchase than pre and post-boomers, who might try to go without to save money.
- Baby boomers outspend other generations on consumer goods and services by an estimated $400 billion each year, including A/C repair, air duct cleaning, or full system installations. Don’t you want to claim your piece of the multi-billion-dollar pie?
- 55-64 year olds outspend the average consumer in nearly every category. This spend includes vital and disposable income, useful for when it’s hot, hot, hot or they want to keep their cool.
With a market segment that has this much buying power in a growing industry, can you afford not to address baby boomers as a profitable target market? Let’s do a little math. With the average HVAC system cost, including installation, starting in the low thousands and regular maintenance into the hundreds, it really pays to consider boomers and possibly even make them your main target demographic.
So get cracking on your boomer-inclusive marketing plan. Need some hot ideas to get you started?
- Remember how big that target market is? Service one customer, get three. Institute a referral program where you give a discount on maintenance or free monthly service to happy customers who send you friends and family.
- Boomers are busy! They’re retired – not tired. Make sure you have operating hours that work around their schedules, not just 9-5pm on weekdays.
- Have you checked your website lately? (Do you even have one?) Make sure it’s easy to navigate. You don’t have to have giant type (not all boomers wear glasses!), but it should be fairly intuitive and make it quick and simple for visitors to book appointments and get going.
Now the good news. It’s six months later! Your business is – pun intended – booming! You’ve got more appointments, more service agreements, more stock, more everything. Oh, there’s a downside. With bigger business comes risk. You may find that an uptick in revenue brings a potential for late or lost payment. Before your blood pressure rises and it gets too hot, download our free guide to choosing a collection agency. We’ll show you how to freeze bad debt in its tracks.
