The lifeblood of your busi­ness is your list of cus­tomers and prospects. Wouldn’t it be great to grow it faster?

Accord­ing to the Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Center’s 2006 sur­vey, online adver­tis­ers are cap­tur­ing con­tact infor­ma­tion from an aver­age of between 5% and 10% of the peo­ple who visit their web­sites, and of those, only 1% to 2% become pay­ing customers.

That SUCKS!

How would you like to uncover a lit­tle known way to do 4 to 7 times bet­ter… with­out hav­ing to attract a sin­gle addi­tional vis­i­tor to your website?

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The next ques­tion is, what does Web 2.0 have to do with saleslet­ters, if any­thing? And how does it affect them? For mar­keters, Web 2.0 presents a num­ber of new oppor­tu­ni­ties and avenues that allow more interaction.

More specif­i­cally, tools cre­ated by Web 2.0 can help to not only human­ize but also mag­ne­tize a web­site, which, in turn, gives mar­keters the abil­ity to cre­ate bet­ter rela­tion­ships with prospects, and sup­plies them with bet­ter tools to offer more proof, com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively and develop that trust they so seek.

In terms of mar­ket­ing, it can lever­age a viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign by cre­at­ing a cer­tain buzz about the busi­ness, which can enhance a website’s traf­fic, expo­sure, stick­i­ness and, to some degree, believability.

But in terms of saleslet­ters specif­i­cally, which is what I really want to focus on, it can serve up a sales mes­sage in the way the user wants, not how the busi­ness behind it wants or thinks their users want.

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This another phase of adver­tis­ing which all of us have to con­sider. It enters, or should enter, into all cam­paigns. Every busi­ness man receives a large num­ber of cir­cu­lar let­ters. Most of them go direct to the waste bas­ket. But he acts on oth­ers, and oth­ers are filed for reference.

Ana­lyze those let­ters. The ones you act on or the ones you keep have a head­line which attracted your inter­est. At a glance they offer some­thing that you want, some­thing you may wish to know.

Remem­ber that point in all advertising.

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Almost any ques­tion can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test cam­paign. And that’s the way to answer them — not by argu­ments around a table. Go to the court of last resort — the buy­ers of your product.

On every new project there comes up the ques­tion of sell­ing that arti­cle prof­itably. You and your friends may like it, but the major­ity may not. Some rival prod­uct may be bet­ter liked or cheaper. It may be strongly entrenched. The users won away from it may cost too much to get.

Peo­ple may buy and not repeat. The arti­cle may last too long. It may appeal to a small per­cent­age, so most of your adver­tis­ing goes to waste.

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Adver­tis­ing is much like war, minus the venom. Or much, if you pre­fer, like a game of chess. We are usu­ally out to cap­ture oth­ers’ citadels or gar­ner oth­ers’ trade. We must have skill and knowl­edge. We must have train­ing and expe­ri­ence, also right equipment.

We must have proper ammu­ni­tion, and enough. We dare not under­es­ti­mate oppo­nents. Our intel­li­gence depart­ment is a vital fac­tor, as told in the pre­vi­ous chap­ter. We need alliances with deal­ers, as another chap­ter tells. We also need strat­egy of the ablest sort, to mul­ti­ply the value of our forces.

Some­times in new cam­paigns comes the ques­tion of a name. That may be most impor­tant. Often the right name is an adver­tise­ment in itself. It may tell a fairly com­plete story, like Shred­ded Wheat, Cream of Wheat, Puffed Rice, Spearmint Gum, Pal­mo­live Soap, etc.

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The sever­est test of an adver­tis­ing man is in sell­ing goods by mail. But that is a school from which he must grad­u­ate before he can hope for suc­cess. There cost and result are imme­di­ately appar­ent. False the­o­ries melt away like snowflakes in the sun. The adver­tis­ing is prof­itable or it is not, clearly on the face of returns. Fig­ures which do not lie tell one at once the mer­its of an ad.

This puts men on their met­tle. All guess­work is elim­i­nated. Every mis­take is con­spic­u­ous. One quickly loses his con­ceit by learn­ing how often his judg­ment errs — often nine times in ten.

There one learns that adver­tis­ing must be done on a sci­en­tific basis to have any fair chance of suc­cess. And he learns that every wasted dol­lar adds to the cost of results. Here is a tough effi­ciency and econ­omy under a mas­ter who can’t be fooled. Then, and only then, is he apt to apply the same prin­ci­ples and keys to all advertising.

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The time has come when adver­tis­ing has in some hands reached the sta­tus of a sci­ence. It is based on fixed prin­ci­ples and is rea­son­ably exact. The causes and effects have been ana­lyzed until they are well under­stood. The cor­rect method of pro­ce­dure have been proved and estab­lished. We know what is most effec­tive, and we act on basic laws.

Adver­tis­ing, once a gam­ble, has thus become, under able direc­tion, one of the safest busi­ness ven­tures. Cer­tainly no other enter­prise with com­pa­ra­ble pos­si­bil­i­ties need involve so lit­tle risk.

There­fore, this book deals, not with the­o­ries and opin­ions, but with well-​​proved prin­ci­ples and facts. It is writ­ten as a text­book for stu­dents and a safe guide for adver­tis­ers. Every state­ment has been weighed. The book is con­fined to estab­lish fun­da­men­tals. If we enter any realms of uncer­tainty we shall care­fully denote them.

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