“I have seen one advertisement actually sell 19 ½ times as much goods as another.” So wrote John Caples in his classic book, Tested Advertising Methods.(
But what do you have to do to get results like these? What kind of headline, pictures and copy should you use? Finding out these things is difficult, says Caples. “It is easy to get opinions on these questions. It is hard to get facts.”
To get the facts on advertising, Caples recommends three things:
1. Question all opinions about advertising—including those of your employees, your wife, and yourself.
2. Get the basic appeal right, no matter what else you do. Make sure it’s crystal clear and absolutely appealing.
3. Test, test, test. And then test some more.
Question All Opinions
Here’s an example of how opinions can cost money. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard clients say, “That copy is too long, I would never read all that.” That’s just an opinion. Here are the facts: test after test after test has demonstrated that long copy usually sells more than short copy.
It’s not hard to understand why. If you’re not in the market for a new stereo, you’re probably not going to read any stereo ads. But if you are shopping for a new stereo, you’ll read everything you see—and the more information the better! So long copy can actually help to flag down your qualified prospects.
A real estate company was running an ad full of pictures with very little copy to sell condos. They were getting 3-4 phone calls per ad insertion. I rewrote the ad as a full page of copy with no pictures, and we got over 300 phone calls. That’s 100 times the response!
Which is why, as Caples says, “In planning an advertising campaign, the first step should be to clear the decks of all opinions, all theories, all conjectures, all prejudices.” Never assume.
Get the Appeal Right
What’s the basic appeal of your advertising? Can you state this basic appeal in a sentence or two—and are you sure that it’s really clear and really appealing? If you had one minute with a customer and told them your appeal, would their eyes light up?
Caples says that getting the appeal right is difficult; there may be many wrong appeals and only one right appeal. But it’s so important, Caples says, that if he hired an ad agency, he would be perfectly satisfied if they spent eleven months in search of the right appeal and only one month creating the actual advertising.
So whatever it takes, whatever you have to do, make sure the basic appeal of the ad is clear and is appealing. Get the appeal right.
Test, Test, Test
Caples says that advertisers can be divided into two classes:
Class 1: Those who are continually testing their ads to find out how much actual business each ad brings in.
Class 2: Those who, for one reason or another, do little or no testing or measuring of advertising results.
It’s not easy to test. But testing, comparing, trying different things and seeing what actually sells—that’s how you begin to move beyond opinions and get your advertising based on facts, says Caples.
And that’s a fact!
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