I’ve said repeatedly, over the last 15 years, that marketers are using digital all wrong when they approach it with a “reach and frequency” mentality. They think that showing more ads to more people more often will increase sales. This worked well in the early days of TV advertising. But it doesn’t even work that well any more for TV ads because the market has changed and consumers have changed, due to the Internet. When consumers get ideas from seeing an ad, they tend to do more research online before they buy something. This is particularly true of bigger ticket items or more complex items. They research online to inform their own purchase decisions.

Digital is no different. If a prospective consumer gets inspired by seeing a banner ad or video ad, they don’t just go out and buy the product right away. (I realize that there are some impulse purchases). Consumers may not click the ad, but they tend to do a bit more research before actually buying — e.g. look up reviews, check for better prices, etc. Make a mental note of this — they see an ad, and they go online to do a bit more research before buying. Consumers are thus empowered. They don’t just take the advertisers’ word for it; they can actually do their own research. When they are able to find information that answers their own questions, they move closer to the purchase.


Marketers Are Doing Digital Wrong and Wasting 94% of Their Budgets

In recent articles, like The Cost-Performance Paradox Of Modern Digital Marketing and Behavioral Targeting is Not Worth the Premium, I’ve noted that advertisers are wasting up to 94% of every dollar pursuing large quantities of ad impressions, low prices, and behavioral targeting through programmatic digital advertising. Behavioral targeting is not nearly as effective as they think it is, because the data used for targeting is not accurate. For example, data accuracy for a single targeting parameter -- gender -- is 42%; and data accuracy for two parameters -- age + gender — drops down to 24%. Marketers are paying more for ad targeting, but are getting worse outcomes.

So what’s a marketer to do if all this targeting in digital does not work? Indeed, marketers are trying hard to get the right ad to the right person at the right time. Before we can answer this, we have to take a step back and see how consumers have changed, and therefore how advertising needs to change. CFOs should


From Push to Pull

Recommended For You

The concept of “targeting” ads to consumers is rooted in decades of “push” advertising in one-way channels like TV, print, and radio. These ads were broadcast outward (pushed) to consumers in hopes that they would see the ad and be inspired to purchase whatever was being advertised. “Targeting” ads to certain groups of people by selecting which TV shows or magazines to place the ads in, resulted in better business outcomes compared to no targeting at all. Targeting in these channels relied on basic demographics and interests (a handful of parameters).

In digital, however, targeting has come to mean microtargeting, hypertargeting or behavioral targeting which rely on hundreds if not thousands of parameters. The effectiveness of this kind of crazy targeting in digital is suspect because the quality of the data is suspect. We’ve all experienced this as creepy, crappy ads following us around the Internet even though we’ve already purchased the item or have no intention of ever buying it after researching it.

So the concepts of hypertargeting and push advertising in digital are sub-optimal or not applicable at all. This is because consumers are wary of ads. They also hate the overwhelming quantity of ads. And they are empowered by the “always-availableness” of information on the Internet, so they can do their own research, instead of just trusting what advertisers told them in ads. They pull the information they need, when they need it. In this new world, the marketers’ job is less about figuring out how to convince or trick the customer into buying their product (through ads), and more about figuring out what customers need in order to get to the purchase efficiently. In other words, the mentality should change from “push” advertising, to “pull,” where the customer is in charge.

Hat tip to Professor Bruce Clark of Northeastern University for pointing out: “Academic textbooks use “push” and “pull” differently — Push is usually defined as pushing intermediaries such as retailers to carry your product, often through a sales force. Pull is about getting consumers excited, regardless of whether that is through one-way or two-way communication.”


Customer Journey Spaghetti

Over the last ten years, I’ve witnessed marketers and advertisers attempting to do just that - by trying to figure out customer journeys. Business schools and marketing classes have been teaching marketers about customer journeys; and it even appears to make sense on the surface. If we could just figure out customers’ journeys and the touchpoints where we need to show them more ads, we could improve the outcomes of our advertising. But note how this is still about pushing ads at the consumer. Further note that figuring out customers’ journeys is really really hard, if not impossible. It’s kind of like figuring out spaghetti - there’s practically infinite ways spaghetti can twist and turn in a single bowl.

Customer journeys are no different. Every customer has a unique journey. Some need more touchpoints to get to the purchase; while others need very few. Usually bigger ticket items (from buying a home to buying a new computer) come with longer customer journeys, because modern consumers tend to do more research before making a large purchase. And smaller ticket items come with shorter journeys. But even these generalizations have exceptions. For example, a customer may decide to buy a $42,000 BMW with no further research, simply because their parents had always been BMW owners. Or another customer would do excruciating online research on a $1.99 jar of baby food, because they wanted to know if the ingredients were organic.

Further, the problem with figuring out complete journeys is practically impossible for most marketers because each marketer has very limited visibility and data — i.e. they can only see “slices” of journeys. For example, a marketer can observe the customer’s actions when they visit the marketer’s website; but they don’t have visibility when the customer is shopping in a store, or visiting other sites like google.com, amazon.com, or walmart.com. If the marketer only has piecemeal data, they can’t piece together a complete customer journey. So are we stuck again?


What Are Customers’ Missing Links?

What if I told you marketers can indeed target the right “ad” to the right person at the right time and help them along their individual customer journey efficiently? Wait, didn’t I just say above that this couldn’t be done? I did. But let’s change the frame of reference. Instead of trying to figure out customers’ journeys so you can figure out when and what ad to show, let’s focus on what customers tell you they need — their “missing links.”

Missing links are the bits of information users need as they make their way through their OWN purchase journeys. These are the questions they have in their mind, that need to get answered before they affirmatively decide to buy. These questions could be simple things like “what size battery fits in this digital camera?” or more complex things like “what do I do if my Tesla runs out of battery and I can’t find a charging station?”

Every customer has different questions; and some have a lot more questions than others. Trying to figure out all the “spaghetti” for each customer is an impossible task. But observing their missing links is eminently possible — by studying what they search for and what they ask about.


Missing Link Marketing

Let’s bring this all together now. Remember what I wrote above: “When customers are able to find information that answers their own questions, they move themselves closer to the purchase?” Customers are solving their own “missing links.” Every missing link they solve gets them closer to the purchase. Any link they cannot solve (broken link) means their journey towards the purchase is halted.

Some consumers have more missing links (questions) than others. But their habits are the same. When they get inspired by an ad, they go online to look up more information. When they have satisfied all of their own questions, they get to the purchase - completing all the links in their own “chain” gets them all the way to the purchase.

These missing links are observable by the marketers. Marketers don’t need to know every customer’s entire journey; they just need to be able to help them at each missing link. This implies having the right content, online and indexed by search engines so potential customers can find it when they are looking. Remember above where I put the word “ad” in quotes? An ad is a tiny tidbit of information — often not enough info, and often perceived as trickery, or at least biased, because it came from the advertiser trying to sell them something. But useful content on a marketer’s website, or helpful reviews on Amazon, are perceived to be more objective and useful, when users are searching online.

If marketers can observe what customers are searching for or asking about (e.g. “customer questions” on Amazon), they can do something about it — i.e. take action. The actions I am talking about are NOT making more ads or doing more targeting (”push” mentality). The actions are creating more pieces of content to address customers’ missing links (”pull” mentality). Future customers are likely to have the same missing links, so every piece of content that addresses a missing link will continue to yield benefits to the advertiser long after it was created. Compare investing dollars on content versus on ad impressions, whose value disappears the moment after the ad is run. Every dollar invested in content delivers value continuously - because it helps any future customer that has the same missing link solve it quickly and move to the next step on their purchase journey.

Note, finally that marketers doing missing link marketing are no longer just pushing ads at customers trying to convince them to buy something. Instead, marketers understand that consumers are in charge; and the marketer’s role is to provide valuable information when the customer “pulls” (looks for) the information. Whichever marketer is more efficient at helping customers connect missing links, will help them get to the purchase faster and thus win the sale. This is how marketers get the right “info” (not necessarily an “ad”) to the right person at the right time. This is how marketers can use digital correctly and optimally (as opposed to the “reach and frequency” mentality of pushing more ads at them). This is what “digital” is ideally set up for and how the original promise of digital can be fulfilled.


I first wrote about Missing Link Marketing (tm) in 2007 - http://mktsci.com/missing-link-marketing-executive-brief.htm; updated in 2008 -http://www.mktsci.com/missing-link-marketing.htm and updated it in a slide deck in 2015 https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/missing-link-marketing-2015-update-augustine-fou