Continued from Magic Words That Increase Your Bottom Line
One of the most famous ad men from the 1920’s was Claude Hopkins, perhaps you’ve heard of him. Hopkins is really the Father of modern advertising. He invented test marketing, coupon sampling and copy research. Many of the companies he helped start are still going strong, like, Palmolive, Pepsodent, Quaker Oats, etc.
He wrote two excellent books called “Scientific Advertising” and “My Life in Advertising”. You can get these published together at www.amazon.com. It’s well worth your reading.
In fact, the late advertising great David Ogilvy says “Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read Scientific Advertising seven times.”
Pretty powerful statement and I agree.
Anyway, let me share with you one of Hopkins greatest secrets for attracting more business. It’s called the strategy of performing preemptive strikes. That means telling a story and educating the prospect about how things are done in your industry.
Usually it’s the same thing any one of your competitors could tell. But by telling it first you gain a tremendous advantage.
Hopkins rightly states in his book that a majority of advertising done in his times (and I’d have to say today as well) is based on the plea
- “Buy my brand”,
- “Come to my store”, “
- Give me the money which you give to others”.
Usually this falls in the category of boasting and bragging advertising. Consumers don’t care one lick about you, they care about the benefits they’ll get from dealing with you.
So here’s how Hopkins used this psychology to grow Van Camp’s pork and bean business.
After doing some research Hopkins found that 94% of housewives were baking their own beans at home and only 6% were buying canned beans. But everybody advertising canned baked beans was shouting “Buy my brand”. There was no benefit.
That’s why Hopkins would run advertising explaining how it took 16 hours to bake beans at home and you could never make home baked beans digestible.
He went on to talk about the crispy beans on top and the mushy beans on the bottom. Then he explained the process Van Camp’s used to select their beans, of the soft water they used, how they made the skins less tough by removing the lime. And of the steam ovens where the beans were baked at 245 degrees in sealed containers so no flavor was lost.
Then finally he offered a free sample for comparison.
This campaign was an enormous success, yet every other canned bean manufacturer could tell the exact same story.
However, if they tried people would have thought of them only as copycats.
Okay, how about another example from Claude Hopkins.
This is how he used preemptive strikes to rocket a so-so beer brand from 5th place into a tie for 1st place in market share.
Listen up.
Schlitz Beer hired Hopkins to increase their falling market share. Every beer manufacturer at this time was screaming “PURE” in their ads. In fact, companies were spending a fortune just advertising this 4 letter word as big and as bold as they could.
They even took out double pages ads to put that word in even bigger letters. All this shouting and no explaining was making zero impressions on people. Nobody ever explained what ‘pure’ was until Hopkins came in.
The first thing Hopkins did was take a factory tour. On this tour he was shown plate-glass rooms where beer was dripping over pipes. Inquiring the reason for this, Hopkins was told that those rooms were filled with filtered air, so the beer could be cooled in without any impurities.
Next, he was shown huge expensive filters filled with white-wood pulp that provided a superior filtering process. The manufacturer then went on to explain how they cleaned every pump and pipe, twice daily to assure purity. And also how each bottle was sterilized not once or twice, but four times before being filled with beer.
Then, Hopkins was shown the 4,000 foot deep artesian wells dug to provide the cleanest and purest water available, even though the factory was right on the shore of Lake Michigan.
At the time Lake Michigan was not polluted and could provide clean water.
Finally, Hopkins was lead into a laboratory and was shown the mother yeast cell, that was a product of 1,200 experiments to bring out the robust flavor. And he was told all the yeast used in making Schlitz beer was developed from that original yeast cell.
After his tour Hopkins was amazed, “Why don’t you tell people these things?”
The manufacturer’s reply was because every beer manufacturer does it the same way.
And to that Hopkins replied, “But, others have never told this story…” And he went off to create an advertising campaign explaining to people what makes Schlitz beer pure.
He told the same story any brewer could have. He gave a meaning to purity. And because of this Schlitz moved from 5th to a tie for 1st place in just a few months.
Really, this whole process is just educating. Educating prospective patients about how a cosmetic procedure is done, educating them about the causes of (wrinkles, fatty deposits, sagging eyelids, etc.), educating them about the solutions, educating them about the good and bad aspects of it, etc.
You simply cannot over educate people. Now, by tying this in to our automatic marketing systems (recorded messages, free reports, etc.) you can put this whole system of educating on autopilot
Maybe you’re thinking anything from the 1920’s can’t possibly work today –
WRONG!
Murray Raphel (a retail direct marketing consultant) tells the story of how he was visiting one of his clients, Ethan Allen Furniture, and he noticed carpenters in the back room repairing furniture.
He asked, “Do you make furniture here?” The reply from the manager of this store was, “No, those are carpenters doing
work on Ethan Allen wood furniture.”
He went on to explain how every customer is given a lifetime guarantee on all their wood pieces. And of course he said, “But all Ethan Allen stores do this.”
But of course no other store advertises this fact.
Soon Raphel ran an ad stating “ Every piece of Ethan Allen wooden furniture is guaranteed for your lifetime!”
And wouldn’t you know it, a competitor soon ran the same guarantee in their ad.
But guess who got the credit for the guarantee? That’s right — the original store.
So take the time now to write down what you do in your practice (even if it’s the exact same as any other cosmetic surgeon). Soon, you’ll come up with a list of preemptive strikes you can use.
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