Visibility
Many of the companies we meet are having trouble getting the word out to their target customers about their product.
Who are the Thought Leaders & Early Adopters?
Before trying to mass market a product, it makes sense to start by impressing the thought leaders and early adopters in your target customer demographic.
But who are the thought leaders and early adopters among older adults and caregivers?
They are rarely to be found at the various “agetech” conferences. There are hardly any older adults or caregivers at those shows at all.
They are probably not the industry pundits and startup advisors who attend those various “agetech” conferences, although those advisors often have excellent advice about the industry as a whole, and can help a lot with visibility among vendors and industry insiders.
The true early adopters and thought leaders among the audience of older adults, caregivers, and “children of aging parents” are those individuals who spend hours online searching for solutions to real world problems; or who lead “tech committees” at various senior living communities and Villages; or who are trail blazing new modes of “aging in place” and seeking others like them to share ideas with.
These thought leaders and early adopters are exactly the people who are joining our Tech-enhanced Life community, and reading the content we publish — created by “people like us”.
Reach the Thought Leaders & Early Adopters
For several years, we have been curating a “Useful Products & Resources” database as a resource for the older adults, caregivers, and children of aging parents who come to Tech-enhanced Life in search of useful insights into products and resources they can use.
As companies asked us “How can we reach older adults and caregivers?“, we realized that this database is an important first step for companies who want to get visibility for their product or service or resource among the hard to reach, thought leaders and early adopters in this demographic.
Visibility, Step 1: Useful Products & Resources Listings.
Make sure your product or service has a “listing” in our database of “Useful Products & Services” — so it gets the attention of our audience of older adults, caregivers, and those “children of older adults” seeking solutions to the challenges of aging parents.
Our Longevity Explorer community decides which products to add to our “Useful Products & Resources” database each month. If you think your product belongs in the database, and want to be sure we know about it, feel free to contact us.
Visibility, Step 2: Add a Showcase Section.
Take advantage of the “Showcase Section” of the listing to highlight specific features and benefits that you think our readers will care about — in more depth than our explorers have included in the “basic listing”.
Learn How to Add a Showcase Section to the Listing of Your Product
About the “Useful Products & Resources Database”
We have curated a listing database of “Useful Products & Resources” for older adults, their familes, and caregivers. To be included in this database, products must be “accepted” by a panel selected from our Longevity Explorer community. The criteria for “acceptance” is that the explorers think the products or resources “look useful, noteworthy, and interesting“.
The database is searchable (by theme or topic) by visitors to Tech-enhanced Life, and enables people to seek out products that are relevant to their specific life situation. New listings in the Useful Products & Resources database are mentioned in our monthly email newsletter.
Sometimes, the more popular “listings” in our “Products & Resources database” get noticed by our Longevity Explorer community as well as the wider readership of Tech-enhanced Life. This sometimes leads to the explorers deciding to try out and discuss a product. Products discussed in our monthly explorer meetings get their own “audio-recorded evaluation” that appears on Tech-enhanced Life.
The listings have links to the company’s website so readers can “learn more or purchase the product” if they wish.
How We Select the Products & Resources
The vast majority of the Useful Products & Resources Listings are in the database as a result of being submitted by members of our explorer community. Companies whose products are not yet listed can draw them to our attention by applying to be listed (see below).
The criteria for “acceptance” is that the explorers think the products or resources “look useful, noteworthy, and interesting“. A small panel of members of the Longevity Explorer community meet periodically and make the decision whether a specific Product, Service or Resource fits these criteria.
We tend to be fairly liberal in how we interpret these criteria, since our goal for the “Useful Products & Resources database” is for people to be able to find useful resources. We rely on other things we do, such as the reviews and comparative evaluations, and explorer discussions, to add color regarding which of the products are especially good (or bad).
So, while Products & Resources that are listed have passed the hurdle of looking “promising” to our explorers, some will be better than others and readers need to go to other portions of this website (Analysis & Exploration, for example) to make a final decision of which products are best.
The Showcase Section
Our basic “Product & Resource Listings” are fairly bare-bones. Our explorers summarize what they see as the essence of the product or service offering, but do not do hands-on evaluations or any type of in-depth review when they create the basic listing.
Some companies want to add additional information about “features and benefits” to the listing, and our readership also likes to see this additional information — so long as it is quite clear what material comes “from the company” and what comes “from Tech-enhanced Life and the Longevity Explorers”.
To address this, we have created a “Showcase” section on each listing, which can be claimed by the company and used to include whatever material they wish in that showcase area on the listing page. The “Showcase” section is clearly demarcated as being “from the company: sponsored“.
How to Get a Showcase Section for Your Product
If your product or resource already has a basic listing in our database — and you would like the listing to include more details, or some images, or an embedded video, or other useful material to help readers better understand the features and benefits, you can add a Showcase Section to the listing.
Learn How to Add a Showcase Section to the Listing of Your Product
Draw Our Attention to Your Product, Service or Resource
Most of the listings in our database are there as a result of being suggested by our explorer community. We only include products that our explorers think “look useful, noteworthy, and interesting“.
If your product, service, or resource is not yet included, but fits those criteria, you can be patient until our explorers discover it on their own, or you can apply to be considered for inclusion.
At present, if your product is not yet in our Product & Resource Listing Database, the way to “apply” for it to be listed is to contact us and tell us about your product or service.
Once you do that, our explorer panel will review your application and make a decision whether the product fits our screen (useful, noteworthy, and interesting).
If your product is accepted we will create a listing, and you will be able to add your own “Showcase Section” to that listing.
If your product (or service) does not pass this screen as being “useful, noteworthy, and interesting” in the eyes of our explorers, then we would suggest that you are not really ready to think about “getting visibility”. Instead, you need to think about tweaking your product concept until it does meet this screen. [We can help with that too. See “Services“.]
The Economics
There is no charge to the companies whose products are “listed” just to have a basic listing. We maintain the listings primarily as a service to older adults and to our explorers.
If companies choose to add a “showcase” section (see above), they pay a subscription fee for that, and the showcase section is clearly marked as “sponsored”.
Some of the links back to the company websites are affiliate links (although most are not).