Business Marketing Advertising

Claude Hopkins, one of the foremost writers of advertising in the country, advises the people about to prepare an advertisement to always keep in mind that it may cost $10 a word to insert the advertisement.

“Platitudes and generalities,” he says, “roll off the human understanding like water from a duck. They leave no impression whatever. ‘Lowest prices in existence’ is set down by the buyer as loose exaggeration ? causing the reader to discount every other statement you make.

“A mail-order advertiser used that expression for years. His rivals all copied it. Then he guaranteed to undersell any other dealer. His rivals copied that. Soon loose claims became common to every advertiser in his line, and they lost their meaning.

“Then he changed his statement to ‘Our net profit is three per cent.’ That was a definite statement and it proved very impressive. No one could be expected to do business for less than three per cent. The next year this advertiser’s business made a sensational increase. A change in phrasing did it.”

As a salesman, every word you say to a buyer costs your company a certain amount of money. It may not be $10, which Hopkins figures is the average cost per word in a magazine advertising campaign, but it is enough. Are you sure that you are choosing words that will ring the bell, or just roll off the buyer’s back?