The news rules of segmentation: Demographics in decline and rethinking tired stereotypes

Marketing Week Explores: Marketers are moving away from demographic segmentation in favour of behaviour, life stage and attitude, but many are still failing to effectively reach the over-50s market.

In the latest Marketing Week Explores podcast, features editor Lucy Tesseras and senior writer Charlotte Rogers discuss the shift away from demographics, as behaviour becomes the most popular form of segmentation for marketers.

From Hotel Chocolat’s nuanced approach, which avoids making assumptions based on purchase behaviour, to MoneySuperMarket’s hybrid method combining life stage, demographics, customer needs, attitudes and behaviour with 700 data points, the podcast looks at how brands are evolving their segmentation strategies.

READ MORE: Why behaviour beats demographics when it comes to segmentation

Marketing Week also discusses how brands are failing the over-50s market and what can be done to better understand this diverse, savvy and financial liberated consumer demographic.

Too many brands are guilty of treating anyone past the half-century mark in exactly the same way, no matter if they are an active 50-year-old with an who runs their own business, or an 85-year-old who is retired.

There are brands bucking the trend though.

READ MORE: Stop defining over-50s by age alone or risk long-term brand decay

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