No, this article is not about the Marvel supervillain and the arch-nemesis of the Fantastic Four – Silver Surfer. No, we’re talking about the influx of over-65 internet users that has been growing in the last couple of years and how your Spot the Ball competition site can reach them.

Internet use by the over-65s has been growing for years and digital services and products aimed at the older market are becoming more visible. A good example is Barclays’ Digital Eagles, which aims to introduce older customers – and the not-so-tech-savvy – to the world of digital banking. So how can your competition site that doesn’t have the resources of large financial institutions, target the spectrum of pension-age internet users and non-users?

Before we go on to the marketing strategy, we need to establish the behavioral patterns and specifics of the silver surfers as a competition site audience.
Statistics show that most over-65 choose Facebook as their social environment of choice. Well first things first, Facebook is obviously the silver surfer’s preferred mode of social networking with 35% of over 65s on Facebook, compared to the 2% on Twitter and 1% on Pinterest. Your competition site’s marketing potential clearly lies with Facebook.

Posting engaging, valuable content with clear CTA’s is a no-brainer for Facebook marketing, but there are a couple of different approaches. Considering silver surfers are lees time-constrained and have longer attention span they expect more information provided to them and an easily comprehensible manner. That’s why inboxing them Facebook messages to provide them with extra information yields better long-term results than with any other age group. Tell them more about your site, about Spot the Ball, and the goals of your campaign – and they will come and spend more time on your site than anyone else.

The same approaches work email marketing. Combining your Facebook efforts with an email list works the best since silver surfers check emails every day and opening rates are comparatively higher among other metrics. Remind them about the game, offer referral programs, build a long-lasting relationship with your 65+ audience.

A market of millions of older people is not to be laughed at and brushed off, especially one with a growing disposable income that is generally ignored by most businesses. To encourage brand loyalty and get some good PR there are lots of ways to engage older people in digital; whether using your Facebook page and competition site for reconnecting old friends or recreating old memories by using your products and offering fun and engaging tutorials. The call is yours.

But you’ll only have the time to make the right marketing when you let a professional skilled game provider like Tentacle Solutions take over the design and development of the game and the competition site, We let you focus on the important things, while we handle the rest and provide you with a clean turnkey solution.

At least that’s how Tentacle Solutions handle the competition.

drop us a line if you are considering a skilled game competition site and need a consultation.

A market of millions of older people is not to be laughed at and brushed off, especially one with a growing disposable income that is generally ignored by most businesses.