Missing Link Marketing

A Lens to Focus Marketing Efforts Aimed at Modern Digital Consumers

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. With the Internet, not only is information abundant and always available, but the opinions of other consumers are also widely available -- e.g. product reviews, yelps, etc. Contrast today's scenario of thousands of reviews from users who actually purchased and used a digital camera to yesterday's scenario of a consumer relying on the small amount of information in a 30-second TV ad or the word of a salesperson about which camera to buy -- talk about conflict of interest!

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 abundance of such information drowns out the interruptive ads that advertisers push out and modern users have come to expect more information than could be delivered in TV spots, print ads or radio spots. The objectivity of this information (i.e. not crafted by advertisers) makes it seem more trustworthy in the eyes of customers. 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. By way of example, a search on the word "hyperthreading" returns 1+ million results. And the majority of the results pertain to the "hyperthreading" in Intel's Pentium family of chips from years ago rather than the "hyperthreading" in the newest Core 2 microprocessors -- so the consumer has to pick the right "needle" from the enormous ocean of search results, which is time-consuming and difficult.