The Foundation of Ads that Sell

Welcome to BrandAPeel - Brand storytelling in the digital age Podcast. I'm your host, Shannon Peel. Today, I'm starting a new series where I will dive into the history of advertising and marketing to see if we lost something along the way. Technology has changed the way we communicate with each other and how we connect with the brands that we love. However, in the race to find the answer to new ways of advertising, do we throw the baby out with the bath water? Did we miss a truth?

There is a belief that each new generation entering adulthood has little in common with the generations who came before them. Are they different, or do they have the same needs, desires, and wants as their parents and grandparents did during the same moments in their lifecycle? Is the process of selling a product to a 20-year-old the same, regardless if they are a 20-year-old member of the greatest generation, the baby boomers, X-Gen, Millennials, Gen Z, or Gen A? Do we need to change the processes of how we motivate people and how people decide where they're going to buy product A or product B and how much they'll pay for it?

30 Years in Advertising, Marketing, and Sales

Over the last 30 years, I've read lots of books on advertising, marketing, and sales. As new technology developed platforms and new marketing channels appeared, experts kept trying to explain how contemporary consumers were different from past consumers, and brands needed a new approach to messaging. We needed a new way of doing things, but did we?

When I was working in directory advertising, business websites were new and Google was figuring out how they would make money. We were selling print advertising at the time, though we knew it was dying. We can see we can see the end. We knew we needed to get our customers to buy online directory advertising. The thing was, our customers didn't understand the value of online advertising yet. They didn't want it, so we bundled it into the print package to build the online directory ad space.

Today, as you know, print directory advertising is no longer available. There are no phone books around. It's a dead thing. Customers now compete for small pieces of ad real estate on screens, whether it's AdWords, where you've only got a link and a meta description or a creative ad with a photo or video. The competition for these tiny ad spots is high, and the price tags are higher than those in print ads.

Advertising costs more time and money, which is why business owners are looking for the answers to get in front of audiences. You know the frustration of low results to high-priced campaigns. I love this industry. I'm passionate about advertising, marketing, and corporate messaging, but I can be frustrated and burned out. I'm not alone. You're not alone. We're all struggling with this. It feels like a money pit. Remember the movie Money Pit? You're definitely younger than me if you don't remember the movie. But anyway, in the movie, they bought this old house and went to renovate it. It was catastrophe after catastrophe after catastrophe, bill after bill after bill. They threw money into the old house, which led to new expensive problems. If that's how you feel about your advertising and marketing, I'm there, right there with you.

There has to be a better way, a better answer. To find the answer, I'm going back to the beginning to determine if we lost some wisdom in our race to that new, shiny solution that the Internet has provided. I'm going back to the turn of the 20th Century. This is like the 1890s to 1920s. At the time, a man named Claude C Hopkins was building the foundations of contemporary big brand names. He is considered the father of Scientific Advertising, a process of testing and measuring the results of ad campaigns to craft a strategy that results in sales. We still use many of the techniques he developed over 100 years ago.

Claude Hopkins the Father of Scientific Advertising

In 1923, Claude Hopkins wrote a book called Scientific Advertising to share the process he used to craft successful ad campaigns. Inside the pages of this book, I learned that successful advertising processes are timeless, and people are rewrapping them as "new" ideas.

In restarting the BrandAPeel podcast, I've decided to dive into the lessons shared by advertising, marketing, and sales experts over the last Century to find those babies thrown out with the bathwater.

In his book Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins defines the purpose of advertising and why ad people need to understand salesmanship when crafting ads.

Here's what he says about salesmanship in advertising:

"Advertising is salesmanship, and its only purpose is to make sales. It's not meant to keep your name in front of people for brand recognition, nor is it meant to aid your salespeople."

As much as marketing, advertising, and sales are connected, each discipline has its own purpose in the customer's journey and engagement with a brand's story. Top-of-mind and name-brand recognition are vital to long-term success. However, relying on advertising to meet these objectives is expensive and can sink a company into bankruptcy.

Ads have a specific role in brand storytelling, and Claude Hopkins outlines the importance of focusing on sales skills to successfully craft efforts. He writes:

"Advertising is a salesperson and must justify itself, compete with your sales force, and have an ROI... Some people spend $10 per word on an average advertisement. Therefore, every ad should be a sale... A mediocre salesman may affect a small part of your trade. Mediocre advertising affects all of your trade."

In 1923, some people spent $10 per word on an average advertisement. This is back in the day when they wrote many words in their ads. How does that comparison today? Today, that $10 is $184. Consider the last ad you created. How much would your ad cost if you spent $184 per word? How much did you spend? Was it more or less?

Are you spending too much on advertising?

When planning your ad spend, consider this formula to help you determine the profitability of the ad:

How many calls to action need to happen for you to make one sale? If your ad asks people to click to go to your website, how many clicks does it take to make a sale? If your ad asks people to book an appointment, how many appointments do you take to make a sale? Write down the answer to this question.

How many impressions does it take for a person to take action? If your ad asks for clicks, how many impressions did it take for 1 click to occur? The mathematical formula is Total Impressions divided by clicks. Write down the answer to this question.

How much profit do you make on one sale? The mathematical formula is Total sale minus your costs = Net profit.

How many sales do you need for a decent ROI on your ad spend? Determine how much it will cost to make one sale and compare it to how much money you made to determine if it was worth spending on the ad.

Suppose you spend $100 and get 10 clicks, which results in 1 sale. Doing the math, take the 100 dollars and divide it by the number of sales to find the cost of the sale - 100 divided by 1 equals 100. If the sale results in a profit of $1000, you can easily see that the ad has a good ROI. But if the profit is $50, you can tell that the ad costs you more than you can make.

As a directory advertising salesperson, I used this mathematical reasoning to show prospects the value of advertising in the phonebook. If you give me money, I'll send you customers and you'll make more money next year. I was selling into the phonebook at the beginning of the end of print and the beginning of online advertising. Due to my interest in the internet, I was the person my coworkers came to when trying to figure out how to sell the new online directory advertising product. Terms like SEO, Web search, and the importance of keywords were difficult for some of my coworkers to understand, so in the end, we gave the online away and priced it into the price of print. It was easy for me to convince customers because I'd read lots of online info and read books by people like Seth Godin.

Seth Godin and the NEW Way to Market and Advertise

In his book Meatball Sundea, I found an explination of the change in advertising at the time. He defined what advertising was before Claude Hopkins as, "Before Advertising, there were hundreds of thousands of companies. And all of them looked the same. They were small and local and they built things by hand. Most of these companies failed to make the transition to the next era. They underinvested in marketing and weren't willing to shift gears from bespoke to mass. (From selling to the individual to the masses)"

He defined the time between the turn of the 20th Century to the turn of the 21st Century as, "During advertising, companies looked the way most of them look today. They made average products for average people, advertised heavily, and created in bulk... All organizations were designed to work well with the masses."

The new economy of the 21st Century is going to very different. "The landscape of tomorrow is fundamentally changed from the environment that drove commerce and organizations for the last hundred years... The new marketing leverages scarce attention and creates interactions among communities with similar interests. New marketing treats every interaction, product, service, and side effect as a form of media. Marketers do this by telling stories, creating remarkable products, and gaining permission to deliver messages directly to interested people.

Seth Godin wrote this back in 2007. What do you think of his prediction of how marketing / advertising was going to work in the 21st Century? How has this type of marketing worked for you? Do you find yourself constantly trying to keep up in an overly saturated market or have you created a community that sustains you? Share your story in the comments.

Think about advertising of the 20th Century, I'd agree with Seth that advertising was mainly concerned with crafting messages for the masses and not the individual, but was that what the father of advertising wanted back at the turn of the 20th Century?

In Claude's opinion, "The ablest men in advertising are graduate salesmen. The best we know have been house-to-house counselors. They may know little grammar and nothing of rhetoric, but they know how to use words that convince." He writes, "Ask yourself, would this help a salesman sell the goods? Would it help me sell them if I met the buyer in person? A fair answer to those questions avoids different mistakes."

When it comes to constructing the ad he wrote, "Some say to be very brief. People will read, but little. Now, would you say that to a salesman? Would you say to be very brief to a salesman with a prospect standing before him? Would you confine him to any certain number of words?"

Less is More in Advertising or is It?

It is interesting that back in 1923 some ad people recommended ads be brief to get people's attention because people won't read lots of copy. This argument is true today, especially online where there is unlimited click bait headline content keeping people distracted.

Claude doesn't agree with the less is more idea. He wrote it, "Would you say that to a salesman? With a prospect standing before him, would you confine him to any certain number of words? That would be an unthinkable handicap. So, in advertising the only readers we get are people whom our subject interests. No one reads ads for amusement, long or short. Consider them as prospects standing before you, seeking for information. Give them enough to get action."

People always ask me, okay, so what? What length should these be? Should a blog be? Should a podcast be? Should a social media post be? My response is - An ad needs to be as long as it needs to be. No longer. You need to cut out the adjectives, the adverbs, the flowery descriptors that are unnecessary. Keep it simple. Share what they need to know to make their decision and then give them the chance to decide.

Successful ad processes aren't always short... Think about the length of TV shopping channel, the amount of copy a Click Funnels campaign demands, and the length of "As Seen on TV" ads - all of which successfully sell products. When I interviewed Joseph Wilkins, the creator of the True Earth Laundry Strip Commercials, he told me that their commercials are longer, a lot longer, like 2 minutes longer than most commercials. And they sell millions of dollars worth of True Earth products. You can hear our BrandAPeel interview in the October 2022 episode, How a Commercial Got Over a Million Views and Made Millions.

Make note of the ads that lead you to buy a product or service, are they short or long? Ask yourself: Is there a structure? Are they selling or entertaining to gain likes? Which approach do you think is more effective?

Break the message apart to figure out what is speaking to you as a consumer. How is the content really working? What content is not working for you?

Claude reminds his readers what they must do when crafting an ad. He wrote, "Keep before you a typical buyer. Your subject, your headline, has gained their attention. Be guided by what you would do if you met that buyer. Face to face." He then tells readers what they should not do, "Don't try to be amusing. Money spending is a serious matter. Don't boast, for all people resent it. Don't try to show off. Do just what you think a good salesman should do with a half-sold person in front of them. "Don't try to be using money spending as a serious matter. Don't boast or all people resent it. Don't try to show off. Do just what you think a good salesman should do with a half-sold person before them."

What do you think about his advice? Considering influencers, Politicians, and celebrities, does it ring true today?

In your experience, what sells products and services, entertainment, or a focused sales message?

Entertain or Sell in Your Advertising

Influencers create content to entertain people, get attention, and gain followers. When selling a product, the most successful influencers create content with the purpose of selling yet still entertaining their audiences.

Since Claude Hopkins wrote his book in 1923 and today, the entertainment industry has grown to the point that it has changed our ability to focus on content. If we aren't entertained, we get bored and look to be entertained elsewhere on our devices.

Which ads have entertained you AND led you to buy a product or service? I'd love to hear from you about which ads have sold you. Share them with me in the comments or send me an email at shannon@shannonpeel.com.

Claude Hopkins wraps up his chapter on salesmanship by encouraging, "Advertising men go out in person and sell to people before they plan or write an ad. One of the ablest of them has spent weeks on one article selling from house to house. In this way, they learn the reactions from different forms of arguments and their approach. They learn what possible buyers want and the factors that don't appeal. It is quite customary to interview hundreds of possible customers."

It is just as important today to listen to your ideal customers to know what is important to them. I will be exploring how to be a better listener in future episodes... so make sure you follow BrandAPeel, if you want to learn how to be a better listener to become a better storyteller.

Thank you for joining me today on BrandAPeel and until next time, Peel Out....