New Wave Marketing 101: Keeping It Above the Fold and Other Stupid Ideas

Just read an article by some crack designer (http://iampaddy.com/lifebelow600/) telling me that it’s no longer  “de rigeur” to worry about keeping web content ‘above the fold.’ People will scroll without a problem; so longer web pages are fine… fine, I tell you.

I’m about to blow a gasket.

For years… years… every tin pot designer and web expert has been SCREAMING about keeping copy above the flippin’ fold. That line was Gospel. I think Jesus said as much at The Sermon on the Mount.

I ask any of you who write copy, how many times have you heard that admonition? How often have you been asked to cut a story or change a paragraph or ruin a good subhead or make the font smaller all so you could keep it above the fold?

Hundreds. Thousands.

And here’s the worst part: we were stupid enough and weak enough to do it… to let a CODER tell us what sells… to change our story to fit a nonsensical idea.

People read books and magazines… and they have no problem turning pages. Case closed. The Internet didn’t change that. Write a good story, something compelling, and people will scroll and turn pages and click mice to follow along.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT… BUT STILL WE PUT UP WITH A DECADE OF ‘ABOVE THE FOLD’ IDIOCY. (Ooo, it’s so elegant, so intelligent.)

I guess what’s making me sore (aside from thinking of all the unnecessary things I had to do to make things fit) is that the executives (VPs of marketing, supposedly) we worked for were so damned quick to believe… and so eager to trust a CODER. (Excuse me… they had numbers! Unfortunately, marketing and selling can’t be fully quantified with spreadsheets and algorithms.)

Copywriters, how low our stock has sunk. This idea of short, above the fold copy is a big reason why people now think anyone can write. Why pay for long copy and a good story when you don’t need to? No one’s reading more than one screen. Anyone can throw together a couple of sentences!”

Ah, I can hear it now… the sound of CODERS tap dancing around this new information… “Sure, it was good advice at the time but people have changed, blah, blah, blah.”

No, they haven’t. That’s why a good story is still called a ‘page turner.’

(What next? Are you going to tell me that keywording isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?)

Another Company Bites the Dust – But Internet ‘Gurus’ Get Their Money

This is a very unhappy ‘I told you so’ on my part.

But it’s like clockwork… sad, fatalistic, inevitable... a warning from Cassandra that goes unheeded.

A very promising company has just gone under. Sure, there are a lot of reasons, but primary was the decision to spend big bucks on Internet/SEO/Adword gurus. These Net guys got a relatively large sum to build an online presence that would virtually ‘guarantee’ sales and top-of-the-page organic SEO.

Remember, these were the guys who proudly boasted that they had built 159 landing pages to make sure the word got out to every corner of the digital world. (See The Big Lie: Software Is Eating Marketing).

Problem was, these guys weren’t marketers. Problem was the owner believed that metrics could boost sales rather than solid marketing. Problem was the owner paid good money for his web presence but did very little and spent very little to develop a coherent message/story for his product.

But the web guys were so confident their strategy would work – the same strategy they use for every company regardless of product.

As predicted, the 159 landing pages and blogs and tweets and Facebook pages all went for naught. No story, no sales. Period.

So the company goes bust, good friends are out of work… while the Internet guys move gleefully to yet another company, making the same promises and taking the same large chunk out of the budget.

In a letter to the company president sent six months ago, here was my warning…

There is so much chatter about new algorithms, the decline of keywords, the rise of unique content, the decline of multiple sites, etc., I focus on the long-term narrative and customer expectations. If that messaging is right, Internet professionals will know how to break the copy above the fold and those types of things. 

But… If people don’t understand or believe your message, or don’t see the need for your product, all the CTRs and CPCs and closing rates and page hits won’t really translate into the type of sales you’re looking for.

Again, simple advice that went unheeded.

Digital Catch-22 Has Stolen Marketing… Right from Under Our Noses

Let’s be honest -- marketing as most of us know it no longer exists.

There are several reasons for this and many of them lie at the feet of marketers themselves: poorly conceived campaigns, slow delivery of the creative, the attitude that we are ‘ar-teests,’ the derivative nature of most of our work these past two decades and agency billing procedures that are a micrometer short of highway robbery.

Marketers have been replaced by IT and software guys who have redefined our art/craft so that they can claim to be marketing experts. They define the job so they are the job. And that job is numbers, numbers, numbers.

Better still, here’s the new marketing task in a nutshell:

Trick consumers into seeing ads for products they don’t want and don’t believe in.

Sure, larger, more sophisticated companies still understand the need for marketing in the sense of defining a market, positioning a product and telling an emotional narrative that drives sales. Please look at the Samsung Galaxy III spot… the story it tells, the images it uses and how it’s positioned Samsung as superior to the iPhone. That’s marketing.

But most medium to smaller companies have been convinced by the plethora of Internet/SEO/automated sales people that they have no need for this type of marketing and storytelling. Instead they willingly spend on software and analytics and email lists and multiple landing pages. Numbers, numbers, metric, metrics.

Here’s the cool part: the metrics are meaningless. They were created by digital guys to match the capabilities of the software. It’s a shell game: we measure those measurements that we can measure. Catch-22 if there ever was one.

Do these metrics equate to sales or profits? Rarely, if ever. But by God they can show their clients digitally-generated numbers, so they must be true.

They toss a bone to ‘content,’ but don’t care, really. Had Google not mentioned that new algorithms would be driven by content, these Net people wouldn’t give marketing narratives the time of day.

You know that old line about ‘sell the sizzle not the steak’? These guys sell neither.

Again, they have one goal: To trick consumers into seeing ads for products that consumers don’t want and don’t believe in.

That’s Marketing 101 in 2013. Live with it.

Amazingly, these guys preach the need for a personalized message but then send unwanted and totally impersonal junk to any name they can get their hands on. Personalized? They can’t spell it.

Now here’s the real Catch-22. Because these automated mavens have the numbers and count the numbers, they never fail.(Remember what Stalin said about elections? He didn’t care who voted as long as he got to count the votes.) If a product doesn’t sell it’s because of a weak story -- fire the $20 an hour copywriter. But, if the product does sell, it’s all in the software and programming.

And gullible CEOs are lining up for the privilege.

Did I just read that 83% of company execs think that marketing has ZERO effect on sales and/or profits? Ask these same men and women about the value of automated, integrated, digital, analytic programs and they’ll virtually wet their pants with glee.

At a time when smart marketing is desperately needed, it’s been co-opted, vilified, scorned and ignored in favor of software, metrics and meaningless numbers.