Today’s
Quick Tip answers the question “What is
advertising?”
“Advertising is salesmanship. The only purpose
of advertising is to make sales. It is
profitable or unprofitable according to its
actual sales.”
- Claude Hopkins, one of the early masters of
advertising and author of My Life in
Advertising and Scientific Advertising.
This #1 issue of Copywriting Classics Quick
Tips focuses on the late, great Claude Hopkins
and how you can apply his decades old marketing
wisdom to your online efforts today.
Jay Abraham, renowned as 'America’s Number One
Marketing
Wizard' said this about Hopkins. “Claude
Hopkins is the master
of them all. His influence has easily added
over $6 million to my personal Income…and still
counting.”
So, what else did Claude have to say about
advertising in addition to the quote above?
Hopkins said “Advertising is not for general
effect. It is not to keep your name before the
people. It is not primarily to aid your other
salesmen. Treat it as a salesman. Force it to
justify itself.
Compare it with other salesmen. Figure its cost
and result. Accept no excuses which good
salesmen do not make. Then you will not go far
wrong.”
So how many of us do a good job of this in the
online world?
Obviously the only way you can know if your
advertising is profitable is to be able to
accurately track its results.
How many of us have thrown money at the
concept of branding - of keeping our name
before the people? Just hoping we'd get some
results. I know I’ve been guilty of it in the
past.
So when you’re getting ready to place that
banner ad, or pay for some online or offline
directory listing, or bid on that keyword at
Overture.com, how are you going to track the
cost and result?
And don’t delude yourself into thinking that
any advertising is
“free.” The most valuable resource any of us
have in our marketing arsenal is probably our
own time.
What do you value yours at? $25 - $50 - $100 -
$1000 per hour? Or more? So be sure and include
the cost of your time or whoever you’re paying
to perform that advertising task into
calculating the true cost of your
advertising.
This is truer then ever in the Internet world.
So, know your costs
and measure your results. There are online
tools available to help you do this, so don’t
get careless or lazy. The effectiveness of your
online advertising can only be measured by its
actual sales.
Your task: Analyze all your advertising to
determine its true
effectiveness. If you're not tracking your
results you have to figure out a way to do it
now. Why? Because Claude told you so.
Next week – you’ll get some more thoughts from
Claude Hopkins. This time about how long you
should make your ad copy in order to make the
sales. Until then, my best wishes for success
in all your marketing endeavors.
© 2002 TWI Press, Inc.
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The Copywriting Classics Quick Tip is written
by Bret Ridgway. To subscribe
send a blank email to subscribe@twipress.com .
Portions of this issue are excerpted from the
Claude Hopkins’ book My Life in
Advertising/Scientific Advertising.
You can locate the complete text of Scientific
Advertising in various locations online. Or, it
is available as part of the package set with My
Life in Advertising at the following page:
http://www.twipress.com/productpages/MyLifeAd.htm
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bret Ridgway is President of TWI Press, Inc.,
supplier of hard-to-find classic marketing
books via the http://www.twipress.com website.
He provides a copywriting and advertising
resource center at internet marketing
conferences for well known internet marketers
like Carl Galletti, Jonathan Mizel, Michael
Penland, Ron LeGrand and Fred
Gleeck.
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