Offer Grandparent/Grandchild Experiences

Carol Banks Setter with online marketing consultants Band Digital has written a tactic-filled MediaPost article recommending that travel retailers offer up experiences which affluent grandparents can enjoy with their young grandchildren. I believe many of her ideas would be profitable for a broader range of retailers and shoppers:

• Most grandparents want to buy experiences their grandchildren will enjoy along with them. Consumers are often operating on the assumption that they'll have more time in the future, but not necessarily more money. This doesn't mean at all that the consumers are satisfied to be wasting time. On the contrary, they want to feel in control of their time. To sell family-oriented experiences, advertise the benefits for shared enjoyment. 
• If the item is, like a cruise or construction project, one in which the adults and children will be together for a prolonged time, the grandparents almost surely will also want activities the children can do with other children, giving the older adults an opportunity to rest and recreate. 
• Build in anticipation. Tell shoppers where they and their grandchildren can go online to see photos and descriptions of family groups like theirs enjoying the activities. Be sure the variety of ages, ethnicities, and other demographics in the photos and text are broad enough to establish identification for the spectrum of family groups you’d like to attract. Keep in mind the value of showing older children, since this can start the mental wheels turning about “what we’ll do next year when we come back here again.” 
• Build memories. Have opportunities for photo shoots of the whole group who are participating. Check that the activities are in places without any internet connection dead spots. Take photos yourself and get endorsements you’ll use both to build memories for the cross-generation participants and to enhance the influence of your marketing materials for future sessions. 
• Sell all-inclusive packages. Use the ocean cruise business model. Grandparents will get irritated with you if you require them to say no too often to a grandchild’s requests. 
• You might offer a family activity for free as a traffic-builder. The travel retailer could hold an event where grandparents and grandchildren plan a cruise together. A grocery or kitchen implements merchant might hold a grandparents/grandchildren cooking class, where any fee would be only enough to defray expenses. 

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Offer Family-Oriented Experiences