Good Advertising creates more production, thus greater consumption, faster turnover and lower sales price per unit. To a great extent it determines the success or failure of the mail order operator!When working up an advertising program remember that what is genuinely desirable to you may or may not appeal to the majority of your prospects!Different types of merchandise or services demand completely different advertising media. Your ad must be built around the ADVANTAGES of the product and designed to APPEAL to the specific customers who will BENEFIT from your offer!Since you MUST spend advertising dollars in order to make money in the mailorder business be sure you spend WISELY and with CONFIDENCE.RETAIN all advertising information, brochures, sales letter, catalog, etc., you receive. USE THE IDEAS from this information as a guide in formulating your various advertising programs!There are thousands of top mail order products to choose from, more than you can every use so choose the right ones for your programs!If the product or service can’t stand the Truth do not advertise it…Don’t handle it! Truth in advertising is a must! Your FIRM NAME, preferable, should be SHORT, DESCRIPTIVE AND EASY TO REMEMBER!When you find the item that is a mail order “HIT”, repeat your ads on the product in a number of magazines and other productive advertising media in order to PYRAMID YOUR PROFITS TO THE MAXIMUM!Advertising cost divided by inquiries = Ad cost per inquiry! Advertising cost divided by orders = Ad cost per order! Orders received divided by readership = percent of response! Number of pieces mailed + by orders received = Percent of return!Continuously use the simple formulas (above) so you will know who your advertising dollars are paying off!Ad to find new Products: “Calling all manufacturers, importers and suppliers … We will feature and sell your new products in our catalog … Send your information, sample products and programs to…..!”Test the position of your ads in the various Media!Test one ad against another on the same offer!Make your sales letters friendly, clear, simple and to the point!Your potential customers are more interested in themselves than in your product, consequently your ads and sales letter must be directed toward their point of view and their self-interests! Make them want your product because it will benefit them or will do the job better for them!Powerful attention getting words include: Free, Amazing, Weird, Odd, Strong, Rare, Big, Secret, Latest, Easy, Fortune, Now, New, How-to!You must put yourself in the place of your prospects and know how they feel, think and react to your ads! If “you” were the customer would your ads persuade “you” to buy?Your Ad must have a strong headline! It must tell the prospect what to do, such as: Order Now! Rush $5.00! Use order form and reply envelope! Act Now! Action words that urge the prospect to order. Explain with simple words JUST WHAT THEY WILL RECEIVE FOR THEIR MONEY! What the product will do for them. Use believable testimonials. Appeal to their reason and get their confidence, then use a powerful close. You can get the order!Repetition is one of the secrets of making a lasting impression on the memory.Use coupons in some of your ads!Since Suspense is a strong force in advertising, consider entering the name of your product toward the end of your ad!Most everyone wants prestige, confidence, money, security, advancement, leisure time, good health, popularity, less worry, happiness, success, more time, recognition, improvement, business ownership, independence, more knowledge, satisfaction, savings … Appeal to your prospects… use such appeals in your ads!Quality, usefulness, reasonable price, up-to-date, and appealing to the sight are points to stress!Make no misleading claims about your products.Review the many ads presented in leading mail order sales magazines advertisers. Make note of the many attention getting words and phrases that catch your eye and cause you to read the rest of the ad! Use these same words in your own headlines!With certain type products, consider turning the picture in your display ad upside down in order to attract attention from the ordinary … If handled properly, curiosity will sell!Study the operation of other firms to get New Ideas for sales letters, methods of handling promotion, nature of offers and any other details which may be helpful!Some programs require a good deal of literature in order to present all the facts necessary to sell a product! With this type of product you should first advertise for inquiries then send the full ammunition by direct mail. Write up a list of important reasons why a person should inquire about your offer. Use the strongest of these reasons in your ad!If you usually pay cash for your ads, why not set up your own advertising agency as a secondary part of your business? Your registered business name as an advertising agency may qualify your business for the 15% discount when advertising in many publications!Direct Mail, mailing lists, not ads, are used to obtain business. You determine what type of person would best buy your product; then compile, rent or buy name lists and proceed from there.Lists compiled from business listings in the Yellow Pages are good for many kinds of mailorder products; however the names and addresses contained in the white pages seldom get any reasonable response. Ads in the daily paper are also generally poor for mail order products. Stay with the successful operators and advertise in the various media they use … stick with quality name lists in the right category for your products!Unless your ad is read you will come out in the red! Make it clean, clear, concise, simple, professional and focused to the “right market” for the type of product being offered!Always test! test! test! before spending large sums to promote or advertise your product … Be sure it is a hit then go all out!Your ad must name the product, describe it, tell what it will do for the reader, how he can obtain it, and where to get it!The best part of your advertisement is the words that can be read “between the lines”!The direct mail packet consists of the sales letter, catalog, or brochure, order blank and the business reply envelope.The ad must attract attention and create interest and desire before the customer will act!Know your product well so that you can be specific, sincere and positive in writing your ads! Enthusiastic ads properly laid out will generally get enthusiastic results!It is simple to record test results for your ads and programs in the various media. DO IT!If your product has distinctive features or trademarks, use them over and over again in all your ads … Take advantage of the repeat psychology of keeping the name of your product constantly out in front of the Public Eye! If your product is familiar to the user, prove that it has better quality or price over competing items. Educate the consumer when presenting brand new items.Prospects are usually more impressed by what others have to say about the product than by what the dealer tells them. Write to your customers, asking for their opinion on what your program or product has done for them and request permission to use their endorsement in some of your ads. Retain their letters as your authority for using their testimony.Classified ads must have a great deal of thought and preparation! Use as few words as you can, but don’t leave out image building words that tell stories, paint pictures and compel action!One way to increase the readership of your ad is by inviting persons to send in money saving ideas. Print the best idea each week, or month, and award the winner $$$… They will read the ad in each issue in order to find out if they won and if not to see if the winners ideas are better than the ones they submitted!Many products can be readily adapted to radio & TV selling. This can be arranged whereby you pay the station a percentage of only what is sold. There are publications available which explain how to present such offers to the stations and lists of stations that supposedly operate on this basis. You can locate such firms by a search at your local library or through salesmen and opportunity magazines….However; this method for selling mail order products is not readily available on a flexible basis, unless you have something really special.You must be in a position to change your advertising approach with changing times and conditions. The First Paragraph of a sales letter must create attention and interest or the entire message will go to file 13!The Second part, or body, of the letter must arouse desire by pointing out the advantages and describing the product, preferably in use, or in action and should state the price…or the entire message will wind up in file 13!The Final Portion of your letter should strongly urge the prospect to act and tell him how to order or the entire message will go to file “13″!You don’t have near the space for your message with classified and small display ads, as you do with the sales letter so unless they are well presented they may make a faster trip down the tube to file 13!Always use TOP QUALITY letterheads, mailing materials and supplies…This is your BUSINESS IMAGE in mailorder!It could be good policy to place your ads through a legitimate advertising agency…It costs no more than if you place your own. Before doing business, get full information about the agency, its services and rates.Since you must get your message across in top form, in order to pull inquiries and get orders, the ideal ad made just for the particular item being for sale is another great secret for mail order profits….Many times just one little word will change a dead ad to one that pulls thousands of orders!Since you do not have a “window display” to use for mailorder advertising you must either draw pictures or use picture words to describe your product. Prepare advertising copy so that your prospects can “visualize the product” in their mind and “see” themselves using it to good advantage.The headline of your ad must be powerful enough to catch immediate attention.Use words that emphasize your product or service at the beginning or end of sentences!Another gimmick for obtaining name lists for nothing…An ad such as…”?BIG MAIL? Send 200 of your address labels and 50 cents. We will send to mailorder dealers, wholesalers, distributors, etc….!”"Before and After” type ads get great response on certain products.Test and compare with different worded ads on the same type of merchandise in the same media.When advertising make your most important points first!When you find a new product that has possibilities for mailorder, test it! Prepare an ad for a quick test in a magazine or in a paper with a fast closing date (time from date ad is received to date it is published). As your test prove out “HIT” that particular item hard and heavy in other publications!Test various price levels for the same product.Qualify your prospects with proper classified ads.Get the prospects confidence by offering free samples, by allowing a full money-back guarantee, by building your business image without exaggeration, and by showing proof of satisfied users.Use the P.S. in sales letters to gain added attention!When using an illustration or picture of your product in an ad, have one that shows the product in use! Picture the merchandise in use giving the owner profit or pleasure thus generating a positive, confident “YES” attitude. Remember that a picture will often sell better than 10,000 words.Command attention to your ads or mailing pieces by marginal sketches, cartoons, different size and type styles of various words and/or paragraphs…Take the monotony out of the ad!Consider greater pulling power of colored ads on many kinds of products. Test for added response and sales, as balanced against the much higher printing costs for color! The use of borders, lines, etc., can enhance your ads but be certain they are not placed in such a way that they detract from your message.Type is expressed by “points”. For example, one point equals 1/72 of an inch. A pica is 1/6 of an inch. Learn the various type styles and sizes. Use the right print in your ads to emphasize the best features of your product.Don’t bore the reader; Keep the sakes letter to one page whenever possible.Offer something extra or something free in order to get immediate action!Test only one factor at a time in order to determine which “change” made the difference in the number of responses received from your ad!By the end of the first month after receipt of the first response from your ad you should receive 60% of the return you are going to get from monthly magazines, 75% from weekly newspapers, 75% from direct mail, 80% from Sunday newspapers, 90% from daily papers and 100% from Radio or TV! Within 2 weeks…From magazines 20%; Weekly magazines 40%; Direct mail and Sunday papers 60%; Daily papers 75% and Radio and TV 90%. DON’T DEPEND ON SUCH STATISTICS!!!!! Response can vary drastically depending on many factors, including products offered, media used, season, price, economy, etc.!!!! Your ad should be repeated again and again, as long as it is bringing back a profit….After the saturation point is reached, pull the ad. Test it again in a few months. The classified ad is the best to use for testing. For fast results, newspapers can be tested periodically. Magazines with the greatest number of responses for the least cost per inquiry should have priority for your ads. Only tests can prove which are the best ads and media for your various offers!Have a “Built-in” follow-up program when preparing your initial advertising and promotion materials!Your ad must end with words that compel action…Ask for the order! Now! Don’t let the prospect put the offer aside or it will usually end up in file 13. Notice the many ads in the mailorder publications that close with action getting words and sentences. Use such ads to develop ideas for your own ads!Use the personal touch in your sales letters! You must have a good mailing list for direct mail advertising. Your sales letter should be written as though you were talking in person to the reader. Read it out loud…Does it sound like talk or is it canned?Offer mailing labels with personalized pictures, photos, or cartoon caricatures, at cost, in order to build name lists of mailorder buyers!Choose the publications with the greatest pull for your particular ad…Determine the greatest circulation for every dollar spent…Is it better to advertise in a magazine with 10,000 readers at 20 cents per word, or pay $2.50 per word for one with 3,000,000 circulation? Even this must be tested. Perhaps the 10,000 readers are buyers of the type of offer you are promoting and will order more than the 3 million!Determine the kind of person who reads the various publications and buy your space accordingly…Advertise ladies apparel in a media read by women, not in a science publication!Publications which carry a large classified section generally produce good results. Be sure to advertise under the right classification for your order.Don’t be afraid to ask for the order.Take advantage of free advertising and publicity whenever & wherever available!If practical for a given program, include a picture of yourself, your business building, or a photo of your product…This, of course pertains basically to direct mail programs or for display ads.Your ad will fail if: The program you choose has already been worked to death: A number of dealers had an ad approximately the same as yours in the same publication; You are advertising an out of season product; Your price is not competitive; The offer wan not attractive; Your copy was poorly written, or it you advertised in the wring classification for the item being offered!You generally get nothing but curiosity seekers with ill placed display ads.”KEY” you ads in order to know what is the best way to spend your advertising dollars. Final sales volume, is the measurement of success or failure of your advertising programs!Combine the best features of your product in preparing your ad. Not so much as to the physical characteristics but by the feeling and interest it generates in others!Generally, you should $ ASK $ for the money in classified ads only when a small amount is required for the product! Do not expect to get good response from a high cost item asking for money with a small classified ad. Offer free details to get the inquiry first, then send your direct mail packet…Sell your low priced items direct from the classified or display ad!Build and maintain your list!!!!Remember….For us in the mail order industry, advertising is a must! We cannot reach success without it! We can’t operate successfully with it, unless we do it right! Advertising is second in importance, only to a high demand product at a reasonable price, but neither can win without the other…The day we stop advertising is the day we give up the mailorder business and go back to punching the old worn out time clock!!!!!!!Copyright by DeAnnaThis article may be freely distributed on the Internet as long as the resource box is included.
Violent Television/Internet Commercials: Behavioral Effects on the Minds/Emotions of American Youth
I was recently pondering the effect that television and Internet commercials have on the day-to-day behavior of human beings, especially of those millions of impressionable adolescent and preadolescent American boys and girls, primarily between 5 and 19 years of age. Much like computer video games, which are designed to get the person, or persons, playing the games (80 percent of Americans who regularly play video games are between the ages of five and nineteen) cognitively and emotionally detached from their real environmental surroundings and immersed into the games’ virtual (fantasy) environments, commercials are usually three-to-five minutes in length and carefully designed by television, computer, advertising, and social psychology experts to get the television viewers immersed, for those few important minutes, in persuasive product scenarios. These scenarios are meticulously designed to persuasively lead the human beings watching them to remember why it is, both, needful and important to purchase the advertised products. The combination of computer graphics and animation with television electronics has made the creation of commercials for industrial domestic products and government propaganda almost like the production of very short movies. Unlike video games, however, television and Internet commercials are not a matter of personal choice. You have to be very deliberately plugged-in to play computer video games according to personal decision, but commercials are interspaced between segments of television programs, documentaries, or television movies with intentional purpose. Unless people want to avoid commercials by turning-off their televisions or PC, or switching momentarily to other channels or websites not, at that particular time, in commercial mode, they are forced to watch, and listen to, the commercials. Believe it or not, approximately 99 percent of all Americans who subscribe to, and watch, cable television and Internet programs watch the commercials along with the scheduled shows that they are viewing. This is especially true for children, especially those youngsters 5-to-13 years of age.In connection with my foregoing surmise of broadcasted network television commercials, I happened to watch, a while back, a particular snack food commercial on cable television that, to me, carried with it some grave social implications; and it was, as I saw it, but an example of many such commercials currently conveying the same negative implications. It was an approximately one-minute “Cheetos” commercial that involved computer animation, computer graphics, and precise acting choreography. It had suspenseful action music and an action scenario that showed a young boy, six-or-seven years of age dressed-up like a sniper, his older sister, and a male adult, sneaking up behind the boy’s mother, who was busily exercising, with a blow-gun through with which he hit her on her backside with a “Cheeto,” causing her alarm. In all of my formative years, from 1952 until 1969, growing-up in East Texas, I don’t ever recall seeing any type of television food commercial showing a child sneaking upon a mother, or any adult, and shooting her with a blow-gun. That’s simply because such television commercials were socially unacceptable at that time in history. That was when the main television station in my part of the country was KLTV, broadcasting from Tyler, Texas, which was plugged into the NBC Network. It was the time of the Chet Huntley and David Brinkley news reporting, “Bonanza,” and the original “Fugitive,” with David Janssen, and a totally different collective national mindset about morals and electronic advertising. My dad had proudly erected a 60 foot television antenna that drew in channels from Dallas, Shreveport, Fort Worth, and other television stations within a 100 mile radius. Television programming, and commercial production, at that time during the 20th Century, were geared to idealism and morality, which declared that there were definite and clearly delineated rights and wrongs to all social issues, not the pragmatism that flippantly proclaimed that the end results of endeavors, or investments, justified the means used to achieve them.When I first saw this socially suggestive commercial, I recalled the spit-wads, and other types of projectiles, strategically discharged from straws by prankish public school students, against other students, in classrooms behind the backs of teachers. I personally saw this happen several times while busily engaged in my school work during elementary and junior high school, but never did I do it. I was taught better by may parents, and, if caught by teachers in such an act, harsh penalties were regularly imposed by, both, the classroom teacher and the school principal, and I was sure to receive stern additional punishment from my parents if punishment was imposed on me at school. As an aside, at that time in history, unlike today, parents totally supported the discipline administered by classroom teachers, who were empowered to do so. On one occasion, a student, a boy with a severe attitude problem, went from spit-wads to straight-pins as projectiles, and a customized blowing straw, that allowed the pin to be propelled for quite a distance across a room. The youngster had thought that, since a spit-wad hadn’t hurt the class geek, the quiet guy who never spoke in class and had the best grades, and upgrade in weaponry wouldn’t matter. So during a test, the perpetrator thought he would send a pin into the ear of the smart kid, but his aim was off and the metal missile went into the child’s eye, permanently blinding him. The child’s parents were devastated, but no city, county, state, or federal representatives became involved with the issue, and no laws were passed to ban straws and spit-wads from schools. Instead, it remained a school matter, and the boy offender was punished severely for his action and made to feel like a worm for what he had done. The parents of the blinded boy didn’t sue the parents of the offending child, but, instead, were allowed to privately talk to the boy. When they did, he, like the normal human being he was, realized the seriousness of what he had done and sincerely apologized to the parents and their son. whom he had hurt. The boy’s father, not a court of law, imposed a sentence of restitution on his son to work for the blinded boy’s father for two hours every day after school, and for six hours on Saturdays. This sentence of work lasted for two years. Now, by today’s standards, you might think that the offending boy was, himself, offended by the work he was forced to do in penance. Nonetheless, the blinded boy’s father owned his own automotive repair service and was a good person, not a vindictive taskmaster; and during the two years he became like a second father to the offending boy and taught him how to work on cars and trucks. Eventually the boy began working for the man after he graduated from high school, and, while the father’s injured son eventually became a college professor, the repentant offender eventually owned and operated his own repair garage. What’s that you say? Not all such scenarios turn out like poetic fiction? When you radically change the environment and the standards of morality such scenarios aren’t allowed to turn out positively.When you consider the awful changes, and the sad results of those changes, which have occurred in the American family, and in American society as a whole, since around 1970, the disappearance of moral idealism and the propounding of pragmatic immorality, with its sore lack of definition as to what is right and wrong, is no doubt the reason for such a blatant distinction between those segments of the 20th Century. What’s really amazing about the American boys and girls who grew to adulthood prior to 1970 was the effect of the twelve-year Vietnam War on those boys and girls who later served as GIs in Vietnam. These were the American children exposed to the television and media morality of the 1950s and 60s. The lack of violence shown by returning Vietnam veterans, between 1964 and 1987, was vastly different from the displays of mass violence demonstrated by military veterans, and American citizens in general, who were born after 1980. The general social behavior of children produced by American parents, between 20 and 30 years of age, after 1985 was greatly marred with dysfunction in the public schools. This is a matter of public record, and the educational success curve began to plunge from its extraordinarily high marks from 1950 through 1969, and with it came behavioral degradation in the public school classroom. As revealed by reliable and replicable university studies, preadolescents in the typical American homes were given very few moral ideals by parents to which they could developmentally aspire. These young men and women suddenly became adolescents (teenagers) with a sore lack of gender and psycho-sexual balance, and moral direction, as to what was right and wrong. The type of public school children that have, since 1994, been produced by this same type of diffident and un-nurturing parents have produced an even lower, and more dismal, educational curve with 70 percent more incidents of social deviance. With all of this behavioral deviance being perpetrated by preadolescents and adolescents, and systematically recorded, in the public school classrooms (and on the streets of the typical cities with populations exceeding 100,000) why would American television networks allow the type of aggressively violent commercials, as I have previously explicated, and the equally violent entertainment programming, to be aired before the eyes of these morally ungrounded boys and girls, just to increase the number of Americans watching those programs? Perhaps there is a school of pragmatic social psychology that persists in proclaiming that this aberrance is merely a natural swing of the social pendulum. I, nonetheless, heartily disagree that a deliberate effort to effect social disorder and deviance, or the application of gross social negligence, is hardly a natural swing of the pendulum.What disturbs me most about the “Cheetos” television commercial is the voice of the animated tiger, seen by the television views emanating from the tiger, but apparently invisible to the eyes of the actors in the commercial (the tiger is sitting with the adult, the sister, and the boy sniper hidden from the mother behind a couch). The voice of the tiger is directing the actions of the young boy, just as many young people, under the influence of SSRIs (prescribed psychotropic drugs for psycho-physiological behavior modification) claim to hear voices telling them to do socially inappropriate things. Relationships between mothers and children have become quite different since 1970 due to the great amount of time mothers spend away from the home in professional work endeavors. In most cases, where mothers and fathers work 40-or-more hours per week and the preadolescent children in the home spend more time during the week in day-care, or at public school, than with their parents, the children develop quite a resentment against their natural, but delinquent, caregivers. As such, the idea placed in a child’s mind, while repeatedly watching the Cheetos commercial during a television show, might trigger an emotional desire in the prepubescent child to use a blowgun with, perhaps, something much sharper and injurious than a “Cheeto” to make mom pay for her delinquency. The voice of the tiger is heard to say, “You’ve been preparing and waiting for this moment,” just before the preadolescent boy hits his mother on her backside with the “Cheeto.”For what it’s worth, I believe that all such commercials should be eliminated from network television, not by imposed state and federal laws and legislations, but by the willingness of the CEOs and boards of directors, of the corporations and businesses seeking to sell their products via electronic advertising, to change their ways and return to the age of idealism and the conscious reality that there is a clearly delineated right and wrong associated with every social issue. Morality cannot be legislated and forced upon a people. It must be accepted as natural law in the hearts and minds of that people, just like an acceptance of Christianity and the holy laws and commandments set down through the advent of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for the sins of the world. A return to natural law and its wonderful moral consequences in America would, indeed, be a grand thing to behold.
A Payday Loan Lender Will Not Require Co-Signers
Upon getting information about an upcoming school science fair and the need to consider a topic of interest, many students will typically have no idea where to get started. While the science fair is typically a common occurrence in any school at any grade level, there are different types of topics that should be taken a look at depending on the age of the student. After first taking a look at the many different categories of science projects, you will be able to locate a suitable choice of topic to take to the next level.There is a wide variety of categories that fall under the types of science projects that can be chosen for a school science fair. These include biology, chemistry, physics, microbiology, biochemistry, medicine, environmental, mathematics, engineering, and earth science. While you may not have yet learned very much in any of these categories, don’t be afraid to see what each one entails. Taking a good look at your interests will allow you to focus on the right direction to take.Many resources are also available for those who are unsure as to the topic they are wanting to use to create their science projects. If you take a look at the topics that fall under the biology category, you will likely notice that there are topics that deal with plants, animals, and humans. For those who are in 2nd grade or 3rd grade, an interesting topic may be to determine if ants are picky over what type of food they eat. While this topic might not be of interest to an 8th grader, it is certainly something in the biology category that an elementary school student would enjoy.Along with the biology category, a high school student may want to take a look at diffusion and osmosis in animal cells as this would be a more appropriate topic for the grade level. A student in 6th grade would be more advanced than an elementary school student, but not as advanced as a high school student. At this middle school grade level, a topic of how pH levels effect the lifespan of a tadpole may be of interest.Whichever resource is used to locate a topic for science projects, it is always a good idea to consider the grade level of the student prior to making a selection. It is always assumed to be best to have a project at an appropriate level in order to keep the attention of the student and provide a fun and enjoyable learning experience.