by Dennis Gartland II
You can almost guarantee results from your advertising; it is as much a science as an art.
The first return on investment from your advertising efforts will be an inquiry about your product. It may be to a salesperson in a store, a phone call or an email.
In any case this is just an inquiry for the goods or service. This is real evidence your advertising is working and generating a return on investment.
It may less conviction in Copy to make a Consumer write an email, and send it, as it would have taken to influence the same Consumer inquire verbally for the goods advertised, when visiting a store.
Now it may take twice or three times as much Conviction in Copy to make a Consumer write an Inquiry for goods, and post it, as it would have taken to make that same Consumer inquire verbally for the goods advertised, when passing a store that should sell them.
But, when he does inquire verbally from a Retailer, there are twice or three times as many chances of substitution, of Don’t-keep-it Or Here’s-something-better. As there would have been if that same Consumer had written direct for it by Mail.
If the ad fails to convince the consumers with a “Reason why” and conviction it could direct him to a retail store where they are switched to a competing brand, the retailer is overstocked in, or that the salesman prefers. In which case we would be helping our competitor’s bottom line. Half the money spent to keep the brand on people’s minds results in the substitution of non-advertised goods for the advertised through General advertising. The ad must therefore give them a better Reason to buy your goods than he is likely to get from the Salesperson for the competitions goods that Salesman will want to substitute. It must give him this reason in such lucid thought-form that he can comprehend without effort, so impressively that he will believe our reasoning Claims. It must accomplish this in spite of his natural distrust of all Advertisement statements.
This is why not more than a fourth of those who, out of mere curiosity, buy the first package, through “General Publicity,” ever buy the second or third consecutive package of the same article. Because they do not buy on Conviction In the Meantime, it usually takes about all the profit in the first purchase of any “Generally Advertised” article to pay the cost of introducing it to the Consumer’s notice, through Advertising.
In contrast to branding “Reason-Why Advertising” or Salesmanship-on-Paper, results are insured and far more predictable. Consumers need only be convinced one time, through “Reason why advertising” or “Salesmanship- on-paper,” the product or service is best for them and their use.
But, with “Reason-Why” Salesmanship-on-Paper, results are insured and far more cumulative. Because, a Consumer need only be convinced once, through “Reason-why” or “Salesmanship- on-paper,” that the article is what he should, for his own sake, buy and use.
Conviction qualities in copy are shown, by test, to be just as necessary in Advertising design to sell goods profitably today, through Retailers to Consumers, as they are to sell goods direct by mail to Consumers. That is why every Advertisement for goods to be sold through Retailers (against substitution, and “Don’t keep-it” influences), should have as much positive selling force, “Reason-why” and conviction in it, as would be necessary to sell the goods by mail direct to Consumers.
Advertisers who uses mere “General Publicity” or branding when they might have all that and, in addition, a positive Selling force combined with it is losing 50 percent to 80 per cent of the results they might have had from the same identical media space. Selling tests made on various kinds of Copy and Mediums have proved this for Reason Why, which are the Heart and Soul and Essence of all good Advertising.
The difference in Results from Space in which this direct selling force of “Reason-Why” has been used, and in results from similar space filled with “General Publicity,” is often more than 60 per cent. Conclusive tests on Copy have clearly proved this, and preceding article cites a vivid example of it from actual experience