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09/20/2007: "Clients Shifting Ad Dollars to Online Marketing But Not Getting What They Want"

Lots of marketers are shifting more of their ad dollars online. The shift is away from traditional marketing. That's a good thing. But, there's a flip side to it that's disturbing. Those marketers want something they're not getting. If they could get it, they'd spend more money on their online advertising.

This was the news that came out of the release last week of a McKinsey & Co. report called How Companies Are Marketing Online" that shows that a lack of meaningful metrics and adequate capabilities are the key issues troubling many marketers today. What advertisers want, and don't get online, is accountability.

In the offline, old media, traditional advertising world, Claude Hopkins fathered accountability in advertising. He tested every ad. People who had Hopkins write an ad knew that they would make money with the ad because it was done scientifically. In fact, as you probably know, Hopkins penned the tremendous book called Scientific Advertising, which is still a bestseller to copywriters and ad people and a staple in our offices.

Hopkins wrote his book in the thirties. So why are we looking for accountability today? Advertisers always want accountability. They're entitled to it. If they don't get it, they will withhold ad dollars from those who write and sell online advertising.

We in advertising and marketing must come up with ways to provide that accountability in online advertising. We need to test landing pages. We need to test headlines. We need to test words. Rather than give a client finished copy and say, "Best of luck", we need to say, "Now, you try this copy for thirty days. Let's see how it does. Then we'll begin to tweak."

Of course, if we're to do that, we will have to charge more than we do now to write the Web site copy one time and hope it does well for the client. A good, experienced copywriter, will write the initial copy so that the chances of it working are exceptionally good, of course. But a scientific copywriter will tweak the copy one element at a time until it produces at the speed of sound.

Yes, scientific advertising is as old as dirt and twice as old as god. But the need for it is back. In fact, it never left. What are you going to do about it?