“Tests are important and help us understand our customers.  Good selling is based on good testing.”

…..Claude C. Hopkins, Scientific Advertising

• National Advertising ”…most national advertising is done without justification. It is merely presumed to pay. A little test might show a way to multiply returns.”

• Advertising Campaigns: “Almost any advertising campaign 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.”

• Things Too Costly: “Many things are possible in advertising which are too costly to attempt. That is another reason why every project and method should be weighed and determined by a known scale of cost and result.”

• Offer Service: “Remember the people you address are selfish, as we all are. They care nothing about your interests or your profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake in advertising.”

• Salesmanship: “Advertising is salesmanship. Treat it like a salesman. Force it to justify itself… A mediocre salesman may affect a small part of your trade. Mediocre advertising affects all of your trade.”

What you’ve just read is from an advertising guide first published in 1927.
Called Scientific Advertising it shows how to cut waste and risk from your advertising.
The secret is to track results using small controlled tests.
The author — Claude Hopkins — was a terrific ad writer who proved that following the crowd can be costly in advertising.
I’m a huge fan of this approach and recommend you give it a try.

• Develop your ads like a scientist works an experiment
• Run trial projects
• Track & measure response rates
• Drop the losers and project the winners

In this way loses from your losing ads are kept at a safe level while gains from your profitable ads are multiplied.
Think this approach is outdated?  Think again. Scientific Advertising has been recommended by more advertising gurus than any other guide.

“Nobody at any level should have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times.”             …David Ogilvy on Scientific Advertising