Senior Online Dating - Who Came Up With THAT Marketing Ploy? by Alison Braidwood

Senior online dating is all the rage. Dating sites for the over 40s are popping up all over the place.

Yes, you’re considered a senior dater at forty - online anyway. This may come as a bit of a shock if you said goodbye to your thirties a while ago and have been sailing along quite happily, assured that your continued good looks and vitality mean you’re still youthful.

Not according to the senior dating site marketers.

This label may just be a cynical attempt to sell to the huge Baby Boomer market - “corralling” them in a virtual sense. Or it could just be because they don’t know how to market to Boomers. It’s a difficult demographic to sell to - ranging in age from early 40s to 60. The younger Boomers are still kids, in their own minds at least.

So how do you market to a group of people who perceive themselves as youthful, have money to spend, the urge to spend it, but are increasingly outside the 18-49 age group marketers traditionally target?

You call them seniors, of course! That’s sure to get them in the mood to buy.

If you’re closer to 40 than 60, finding out that you’ve been labelled senior anything can backfire. If nothing else, someone who’s just turned 40 needs time to prepare, psychologically, for the “S” word. If you’re 50 or older, you’ve had a few years to get used to the idea that you’re approaching the age when you might start to be considered senior.

The upside of this pigeon-holing, in dating terms, is that you can pick and choose between “senior dating” sites and the mainstream online dating services. Popular sites like Match.com report that the over 40 demographic is the fastest growing segment of their membership. You can enjoy the best of both worlds.

Many singles are joining the senior dating sites because the membership is self-selecting; they’re over 40, or over 50, and want to meet people in the same age bracket. So if you’re a forty or fifty-something woman and are tired of dating sites where the men all want women twenty years younger than they are, the senior online dating sites might be for you. They’re designed for grownups who are looking for grownups. Which is refreshing.

Just allow your eyes to glaze over when you encounter the “S” word.

Alison Braidwood is a contributing writer for www.senior-dating-site-review.com and has no plans to act her age anytime soon.

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