For starters ...: you can't' ignore the young-adult market (sometimes called the 'starter market'). The age group 15 to 25 spends $460 billion annually. But don't expect them to follow the same banking behavior of their parents. To connect with them, you'll have to alter your marketing mind-set.

• Author: Bernstel, Janet Bigham

What's more disruptive to a financial institution than millions of baby boomers retiring at the same time? Having no one to take their place in the teller lines and at ATMs, that's what. That recurring nightmare finally pushed Boone County National Bank of Columbia, Mo., into cultivating the youth market in their three-college town, despite years of a love hate relationship with students.

"We always wondered if it was really worth our time to market to them," says Mary Wilkerson, vice president of marketing. "But we found that we had a very heavy skew toward older customers. We wondered how we could continue to grow and build our customer base when they were aging so significantly."

Attempting to attract urbanite 20-somethings to what she calls a "stodgy, old-fashioned, big marble bank that old people come to to put CDs in" was a big leap for the marketing department.

"We have no objection to that image because people who have a lot of money want us to be safe and predictable," explains Wilkerson. "But we quickly realized we had no clue where and how to find new customers who will stay with us, not just at 22--but when they're 42 and 52."

Indeed, there is no easy way to buttonhole this $460 billion dollar youth market, made up of high school and college students, young married couples with children, single "blue-collar" workers and post-graduates living with their parents. This upcoming "starter market" is a different breed from the old "moneyed" set, and it calls for a whole new marketing technique.

"You're talking about two generations, the end of Gen X and the start of Gen Y," explains Ann A. Fishman, president of the New Orleans-based, Generational Targeted Marketing (GTM) firm. "This is generational marketing, which is not selling, but matching what you do with what they need." (See table, "A Field Guide to the Younger Generations.")

Ask the students themselves

That's one reason why Wilkerson went to the source to develop the bank's marketing plan. When University of Missouri marketing professor, Dr. Ken Evans, who had been doing the bank's customer surveys for years, asked for ideas on a "real-world" project for his marketing services class, Wilkerson was ready.

"I said I need to "know how to capture the younger market so that it makes sense for the long term, not just student loans or checking accounts," recounts Wilkerson.

And that's what the class did. The student suggestions were so oil target the bank implemented some of them...