Todays Quick Tip answers the question What is selling ?

Advertising is salesmanship. The only purpose of selling is to contruct sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its
actual sales.

- Claude Hopkins, one of the early masters of marketing and author of My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising.

This #1 issue of Copywriting Classics Quick Tips focuses on the late, successful Claude Hopkins and how you might apply his decades old advertising wisdom to your online efforts today.

Jay Abraham, renowned as Americas Number One Marketing
Wizard said this about Hopkins. Claude Hopkins is the master
of them all. His influence has easily added over $6 million to my personal Incomeand still counting.

So, what else did Claude have to say about advertising in addition to the quote above? Hopkins said Advertising is not for general effect. It is not to keep your title before the people. It is not primarily to aid your other salesmen. Treat it as a salesman. Force it to justify itself.

Compare it with other salesmen. Figure its cost and result. Accept no excuses which grand salesmen do not build. Then you will not go far wrong.

So how many of us do a dazzling job of this in the online world?

Obviously the only way you can know if your selling is profitable is to be able to accurately track its results.

How many of us have thrown funds at the concept of promoting - of keeping our name before the people? Just hoping wed get some results. I know Ive been guilty of it in the past.

So when youre grasping ready to place that banner advertisement , or pay for some online or offline directory listing, or bid on that keyword at Overture.com, how are you going to track the cost and result?

And dont delude yourself into thinking that any selling is
costless. The most valuable resource any of us have in our branding arsenal is most likely our own time.

What do you assessment of worth yours at? $25 - $50 - $100 - $1000 per hour? Or more? So be sure and include the cost of your time or whoever youre paying to perform that branding task into calculating the true cost of your advertising.

This is truer then ever in the Internet world. So, understand your costs
and measure your results. There are online tools available to help you do this, so do not get careless or lazy. The effectiveness of your online advertising might only be measured by its actual sales.

Your task: Analyze all your branding to determine its true
effectiveness. If youre not tracking your results you have to figure out a distinctive way to do it now. Why? Because Claude told you so.

Next week you will get some more thoughts from Claude Hopkins. This time about how long you should contruct your ad copy in order to build the sales. Until then, my best wishes for success in all your advertising endeavors.

2002 TWI Press, Inc.