Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins

Scientific Advertising is one of the best books on advertising and marketing ever written, and I found an audio version (plus PDF) available freely on the Internet…

Claude Hopkins was one of the greatest advertising pioneers who ever lived. He believed that “Advertising is salesmanship” and as such, it should be measurable and justify the results that it produces. Claude was a strong believer in “Reason why copy”, and the principles that he discovered and documented are as true today as then. It does not matter what type of advertising medium you use, from print advertising to the Internet, the fundamentals taught by Claude are universal and timeless. He believed that a good product was often its own best salesperson, and as such, he was a great believer in sampling. To help trace his results, he would often use coupons. Coupons gave him the ability to not only measure results, but feedback on how to improve results. He could now test one headline against another, or one proposition against another. This one simple strategy may not sound like rocket science stuff, but when you consider that one headline has the potential to out-pull another headline by 5, 10 or perhaps 15 times, one quickly understands the huge effect that this could have on one’s bottom line profit today.