Samples serve numerous valuable purposes. They enable one to use the word "Free" in ads. That often multiplies readers. Most people want to learn about any offered gift. Tests often show that samples pay for themselves - perhaps several times over - in multiplying the readers of your ads without additional cost of space. (p.30)
Before a prospect is converted, it is approximately as hard to get half price for your article as to get the full price for it. (p.31)
Give samples to interested people only. Give them only to people who exhibit that interest by some effort. Give them only to people whom you have told your story. First create an atmosphere of respect, a desire, an expectation. When people are in that mood, your sample will usually confirm the qualities you claim. (p.32)
No advertiser could afford to educate people on vitamins or germicides. Such things are done by authorities, through countless columns of unpaid-for space. But great successes have been made by going to people already educated and satisfying their created wants. (p.24)
An article, for instance, may have many uses, one of which is to prevent disease. Prevention is not a popular subject, however much it should be. People will do much to cure trouble, but people in general will do little to prevent it. This has been proved my many disappointments. (p.25)
Ads are not written to interest, please or amuse. You are not writing to please the hoi-polloi. You are writing on a serious subject - the subject of money spending. And you address a restricted minority. (p.22)
In every ad consider only new customers. People using your product are not going to read your ads. They have already read and decided. (p.20)
The purpose of a headline is to pickout people you can interest. You wish to talk to someone in a crowd. So the first thing you say is, "Hey there, Bill Jones" to get the right persons attention. So it is in an advertisement. What you have will interest certain people only, and for certain reasons. You care only for those people. Then create a headline which will hail those people only. (p.13)
The motto there is, "The more you tell the more you sell." And it has never failed to prove out so in any test we know. (p.11)
Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests or profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact isa common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising. Ads say ineffect, "Buy my brand. Give me the trade you give to others. Let me have the money." That is not a popular appeal. (p.9)
The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales. (p.7)
That is so in personal salesmanship as in salesmanship-in-print. Fine talkers are rarely good salesmen. They inspire buyers with the fear of over-influence. They create the suspicion that an effort is made to sell them on other lines than merit. (p.7)
Successful salesmen are rarely good speech makers. They have few oratorical graces. They are plain and sincere men who know their customers and know their lines. So it is in ad writing. Many of the ablest men in advertising are graduate salesmen. The best we know have been house-to-house canvassers. They may know little of grammar, nothing of rhetoric, but they know how to use words that convince. (p.7)
No one reads ads for amusements, long or short. Consider them as prospects standing before you, seeking for information. Give them enough to get action. (p.8)
Others look for something queer and unusual. They want ads distinctive instyle or illustration. Would you want that in a salesman? Do not men who act and dress in normal ways make a far better impression? Some insist on dressy ads. Thatis all right to a certain degree, but is quite important. Some poorly-dressed men, prove to be excellent salesmen. Over dress in either is a fault. (p.8)
