If your car needed repair work, would you go to a garage that offers free esti­mates? You likely would. Today, most garages offer them.

Not only has it become a cus­tom­ary prac­tice, but also every­one expects a free esti­mate from mechanics.

How­ever, here’s an inter­est­ing sce­nario. Let’s say your car broke down at the worst pos­si­ble time, and you are in a ter­ri­ble hurry. (If you’re like most peo­ple these days, you are.) Plus, you specif­i­cally wanted a free estimate.

If you had to choose a garage quickly, which garage would you choose? Would you go to the one you only think that offers free esti­mates? Or would you go to the one you know for sure that does? Espe­cially if you don’t have much time?

As sim­ple as it may sound, by com­mu­ni­cat­ing some­thing that’s usu­ally taken for granted by your tar­get mar­ket, you will be cho­sen more often. Rather than claim­ing supe­ri­or­ity, like “we’re #1,” you’re imply­ing it by demon­strat­ing what makes you superior.

A men­tor once told me, “Impli­ca­tion is more pow­er­ful than spec­i­fi­ca­tion.” In mar­ket­ing, it means that you should imply your supe­ri­or­ity rather than claim it outright.

If you claim supe­ri­or­ity, your claim appears self-​​serving and what­ever you do say is sus­pect at best. But if you imply supe­ri­or­ity, your claim, although not directly stated, is accepted as more cred­i­ble, gen­uine, and, para­dox­i­cally, concrete.

Peo­ple will uncon­sciously assume that you are supe­rior. You are com­mu­ni­cat­ing your supe­ri­or­ity, not in some mar­ket­ing piece you wrote or paid for, but in that most elu­sive yet vital of places in all of marketing…

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A few years ago, some­thing hap­pened that pro­vided incon­tro­vert­ible proof of the impor­tance of an infal­li­ble rule in copy­writ­ing. I knew it all along but never saw it proven to me in such a per­sonal and direct way.

What am I talk­ing about?

No, it’s not the head­line. It’s not being emo­tional. It’s not ben­e­fits. And it’s not split-​​testing, either. In fact, my open­ing para­graph gave you a clue.

Sure, the head­line, the ben­e­fits, and all those things are impor­tant. Very impor­tant. But the one ele­ment I’m refer­ring to, the one ele­ment that can trans­form flimsy, “yeah-​​right” copy into a sales-​​inducing pow­er­house, is…

… Proof.

Other than poor tar­get­ing and shoddy copy, the lack of proof in your copy is what prob­a­bly (and most likely) causes it to fail. But when I talk about “proof,” I’m not just talk­ing about one or two types, but seven. Yes, seven dif­fer­ent types of proof!

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Today, a client has requested, out of the blue, a refund for copy­writ­ing work per­formed last year. Yes, last year!

Can you believe it?

Over seven months have passed and this one client is ask­ing for his money back. His excuse? “I need the money.” Of course, I refused. But he sounded des­per­ate, so I pre­sume he won’t be happy with my decision.

Likely, he will pull tooth and nail to make his case, likely by high­light­ing all the neg­a­tives, warts, and things he doesn’t like as to jus­tify his case.

The thing is, while the client did not hide the fact that he’s strapped for cash, we had an agree­ment. I can sym­pa­thize, but why should that be my responsibility?

As Larry Winget often says, “A deal is a deal.”

I ask for 100% of the fee upfront. No excep­tions. I work hard enough as it is to mar­ket my ser­vices, find clients, and then write copy for my clients. Why would I want to work twice or three times as much just to get and/​or keep my money?

Even though there’s an agree­ment in place, which states that I give no refunds but do offer a 30-​​day revi­sion period for rewrites, it still irks me on a num­ber of levels.

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The “Google Slap.” You’ve heard of it. You were prob­a­bly affected by it. Essen­tially, Google, the world’s largest search engine, recently penal­ized a whole bunch of sites because they, too, judged them to be of poor quality.

Either they dimin­ished their pager­anks into obliv­ion, or they increased their AdWords costs by jack­ing up the prices if the cam­paigns led to poor con­tent. (And as you prob­a­bly know, this has dri­ven a lot of mar­keters out of business.)

But keep in mind, Google didn’t make this change by pulling it out of thin air or to dic­ta­to­ri­ally decide what’s good for the Inter­net. They’re sim­ply fol­low­ing what peo­ple want and giv­ing it to them.

(In fact, when Google makes such major changes, let it be a good indi­ca­tor of what’s going on in the marketplace.)

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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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An ad-​​writer, to have a chance at suc­cess, must gain full infor­ma­tion on his sub­ject. The library of an ad agency should have books on every line that calls for research. A painstak­ing adver­tis­ing man will often read for weeks on some prob­lem which comes up. Per­haps in many vol­umes he will find few facts to use. But some one fact may be the key­stone of success.

This writer has just com­pleted an enor­mous amount of read­ing, med­ical and oth­er­wise, on cof­fee. This is to adver­tise a cof­fee with­out caf­feine. One sci­en­tific arti­cle out of a thou­sand perused gave the keynote for that cam­paign. It was the fact that caf­feine stim­u­la­tion comes two hours after drinking.

So the imme­di­ate brac­ing effects which peo­ple seek from cof­fee do not come from the caf­feine. Remov­ing caf­feine does not remove the kick. It does not mod­ify cof­fees delights, for caf­feine is taste­less and odorless.

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Plat­i­tudes and gen­er­al­i­ties roll off the human under­stand­ing like water from a duck. They leave no impres­sion what­ever. To say, “Best in the world,” “Low­est price in exis­tence,” etc. are at best sim­ply claim­ing the expected. But superla­tives of that sort are usu­ally dam­ag­ing. They sug­gest loose­ness of expres­sion, a ten­dency to exag­ger­ate, a care­less truth. They lead read­ers to dis­count all the state­ments that you make.

Peo­ple rec­og­nize a cer­tain license in sell­ing talk as they do poetry. A man may say, “Supreme in qual­ity” with­out seem­ing a liar, though one may know that the other brands are equally as good. One expects a sales­man to put his best foot for­ward and excuses some exag­ger­a­tion born of enthu­si­asm. But just for that rea­son gen­eral state­ments count for lit­tle. And a man inclined to superla­tives must expect that his every state­ment will be taken with some caution.

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