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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I often get requests from peo­ple ask­ing me what plu­g­ins do I use on this blog. Or, what are my favorite plu­g­ins. Some­times, I post about them. But these lists usu­ally become stale fast, because I test new plu­g­ins and change them all the time.

So I wanted to post an update and list some of my favorite plu­g­ins. How­ever, it was cum­ber­some to pick and choose which ones I wanted to post about because there are so many. So I’ve decided to do some­thing dif­fer­ent this year.

Using a plu­gin that lists all the plu­g­ins in use on a par­tic­u­lar blog (I’ll share that one with you in a moment), I man­aged to print a list of all my plu­g­ins in a sin­gle post.

How­ever, the descrip­tions you will read are those of the plu­gin authors. Some of them are poor and insuf­fi­cient. Oth­ers don’t explain how I use them specif­i­cally on this blog.

So I’ve also added a mini-​​description with addi­tional com­ments to each plu­gin to explain why, how, or where I’ve used it on this blog. I sin­cerely hope this list is use­ful to you. If it is, con­sider it a Christ­mas gift from me.

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Sci­en­tific Adver­tis­ing by Claude C. Hop­kins is a time­less clas­sic writ­ten many years ago but a book whose pow­er­ful prin­ci­ples still ring true to this day.

It con­tains 21 chap­ters of time­less strate­gies you don’t want to ignore in your adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing efforts.

In fact, David Ogilvy once said: “Nobody, at any level, should be allowed to have any­thing to do with adver­tis­ing until he has read this book seven times.”

I highly rec­om­mend that your read this book, which is brought to you free, before you spend any money on other copy­writ­ing books.

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I recently merged my library with my blog. I had mul­ti­ple resources, books and tele­sem­i­nar record­ings on var­i­ous sites, but decided to con­sol­i­date them all and add them to my blog.

Rea­son? The fact that these resources are no longer as scat­tered makes them eas­ier to find and fol­low. If you want to book­mark these pages or even tell oth­ers about them, please do!

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A rapid stream ran by the writer’s boy­hood home. The stream turned a wooden wheel and the wheel ran a mill. Under that prim­i­tive method, all but a frac­tion of the streams poten­tial­ity went to waste.

Then some­one applied sci­en­tific meth­ods to that stream — put in a tur­bine and dynamos. Now, with no more water, no more power, it runs a large man­u­fac­tur­ing plant.

We think of that stream when we see wasted adver­tis­ing power. And we see it every­where — hun­dreds of exam­ples. Enor­mous poten­tial­i­ties — mil­lions of cir­cu­la­tion — used to turn a mill wheel. While oth­ers use that same power with man­i­fold effect.

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There is great advan­tage in a name that tells a story. The name is usu­ally promi­nently dis­played. To jus­tify the space it occu­pies, it should aid the adver­tis­ing. Some such names are almost com­plete adver­tise­ments in them­selves. May Breath is such a name. Cream of Wheat is another. That name alone has been worth a for­tune. Other exam­ples are Dutch Cleanser, Cuti­cura, Dynashine, Minute Tapi­oca, 3-​​in-​​One Oil, Holeproof, Alcorub, etc.

Such names may be pro­tected, yet the name itself describes the prod­uct, so it makes a valu­able display.

Other coined names are mean­ing­less. Some exam­ples are Kodak, Karo, Sapo­lio, Vase­line, Kotex, Lux, Pos­tum, etc. They can be pro­tected, and long-​​continued adver­tis­ing may give them a mean­ing. When this is accom­plished they become very valuable.

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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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