Missing Link Marketing - UPDATED

The New Landscape - It's an ocean out there. 

The new landscape into which advertising and marketing programs are launched today is dramatically different from the "old world" of one-way media such as TV, print, and radio advertising. 

The "ambient information" available today also empowers customers to do as much (or as little) research as they want before they decide to make any purchase. 

The "always-available-ness" of this information makes it more useful to consumers because they can find it when they want it rather than be hit with it when they don't -- e.g. when checking email, watching TV, etc.

The Modern User's Expectations and Habits - Give me what I want, when I want it, where I want it. 

That said, "too much information" also presents a challenge for modern consumers -- how to hone in on the right bit of information that he or she needs at that moment in time from the ocean of available information. 

In the new landscape, modern consumers have developed habits and finely tuned skills to help them find and use information as well as cope with its abundance, variety, and differing levels of trustworthiness and timeliness. 

Consumers ... if they can't find your information on the first few pages of search results, you don't exist. 

If answer to the missing link is not found, they may simply not buy, postpone buying, or just buy what they know (previously purchased product, service, or brand). 

The right info, at the right time, to the right person, through the right device.

So, couldn't every person have a different missing link? Yes. Doesn't that mean that it would be very hard if not impossible to identify every customer's missing link, let alone solve it? Yes. And even if we could identify each user's missing link, wouldn't it be cost-prohibitive to get a message out to each individual addressing his missing link? Yes.

All of the above would be unfathomable in the age of one-way media. But in the new digital landscape there are new tools, services, and methods which can help solve these missing links

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Original article from October 22, 2007. 

http://mktsci.com/missing-link-marketing-executive-brief.htm

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Missing Link Marketing™

Author: Dr. Augustine Fou, Marketing Science Consulting Group, Inc.

In the "age of too much information" marketers need to focus on the information that customers need to get from "considering to buy" to actually buying. These missing links force a re-focusing of marketing messages and methodologies from pushing a benefit message out to allowing the customer to pull the information they need during their own research process.

Missing Link Defined     

What's the missing link?

- works for any product or service - reveals consumers' actions during the purchase decision - deliver practical information efficiently - give consumers what they want rather than what advertisers want to give Assumption

- the next evolution of marketing exists in a landscape where users reach out when they need something and ignore EVERY SINGLE marketing message that is "shouted at them" through traditional one-way channels such as TV, print, and radio. Instead at the moment they want something, who can better and more efficiently deliver the exact info they need (and no more) to help fill that "missing link" that gets the customer to the purchase. How missing link marketing works

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