ADVERTISING LETTERS

LETTER CONSTRUCTION

INTRODUCTION

1. What an Advertising Letter Is.-Any letter, personally dictated, sent singly or in hundred lots, a printed form filled in and intended to look like a personal letter, or obviously mailed as a circular, is an advertising letter, so long as it is designed either directly or indirectly to influence sales. The individual, personally dictated letter should be composed with the same thought and have the same business-getting appeal as the circular letter intended to go to a hundred or a thousand people at one time. Every letter sent out by a business organization should be an advertisement for that organization. It is the silent salesman. If it be badly planned, hastily written, poorly phrased, it represents the firm that mails it as being poorly managed, inefficient.

The simple letter acknowledging an order must be written with the same care as the circular letter mailed to all of the prospective buyers. Good letter writing does not stop with well-written form letters. Every letter must be good, for each has a duty to perform, to help make the company better known, better liked.

2. What a Letter Will Do.-The business-getting possibilities of a letter are unlimited. Any business man may use

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letters and use them profitably. For a postage stamp the customer located in the farthermost corner of the United States may be visited by mail. The letter pays no hotel bills, needs no railroad ticket, waits outside of no man's office begging for admittance. For twenty dollars it may call on a thousand possible customers. The calls may all be made in one day or be scattered over a period of weeks. Knowing the man to be reached, a letter makes the most direct and economical route. And because of the remarkable possibilities of the well-written letter, increasing numbers of business men are realizing its importance.

3. Increasing Demand for Good Letter Writers.—A field of unlimited opportunity lies before the student of the science of business correspondence. Advertisers are constantly demanding experienced correspondents, men and women who can take the inquiries created by advertisements and turn them into sales. The following pages describe the different kinds of letters and explain how to write them. There was a time when business men would depend on chance in the composition of a good advertising letter. Now this is all changed. Tests carried on by expert letter writers have brought to light certain fundamental principles that govern the writing of all advertising letters. These principles must be studied, remembered, become so much a part of the student's understanding that he instinctively knows a good letter from a poor one. Just as the architect carefully plans the structure from foundation to roof, so must the letter writer plan a good advertising letter. The letter must be carefully phrased and yet, first of all, it must be natural. That is one of the real secrets in writing good letters. If the seller writes naturally-and this means writing much as he would talk to the prospective customer-the letter will have a sincere tone that is bound to impress the reader favorably. Let the writer not try to copy another's style, but write naturally, and he will develop a style that is all his

own.

PRINCIPLES OF WRITING ADVERTISING LETTERS

PRINCIPLE 1-KNOW THE PRODUCT. KNOW THE PEOPLE

4. Investigation Necessary.-Strange as it might first appear, the successful letter writer doesn't begin with pen and paper to write a business-getting advertising letter. He does not attempt even to dictate a personal letter to the customer or prospective customer until he has carefully obeyed the first rule in making letters win-and this rule is to know his product and know his people. Therefore, the first essential in writing a good letter is knowing thoroughly the article to be sold. Every detail of its manufacture from raw material to finished product should be known. The writer must know his product so well, believe in it so surely, that his enthusiasm in its goodness is bound to impress the customer.

It is not sufficient to know the product merely; the people to whom it is to be sold must be known as well. If possible, the prospective or regular customers should be studied first hand. This does not mean to call on all of them but to go out and get acquainted, in a general way, with the characteristic types of possible customers.

If a letter or series of letters to machinists is called for, a visit to a machine shop with the view of getting acquainted with the men and learning their views of the product to be sold will help greatly. It is necessary to find out what their objections are, if any, their problems, habits, and way of thinking. Then, back in the office, though it be a thousand miles away, the letter writer can plan a letter to machinists that they will read and understand. And the same rule would hold true in writing letters to any other class.

In selling to women, many large firms go so far as to send men out to make a house-to-house canvass and to get the views of women in all stations of life, learn their problems and their hopes. Farmers are seen on their farms, and their methods of thinking investigated. To do this successfully, the prospect must be known through personal contact and each class must

be appealed to in a different way. The small-town merchant has problems that his big-city brother knows nothing about. The letter that would appeal to one would go over the head of another. Where a writer lacks imaginative power, he should go even further than the personal visits with possible and regular customers. A scrap book containing clippings from various publications, giving items and showing scenes representative of the surroundings and characteristics of possible customers, will assist. If selling to farmers, there should be illustrations and items descriptive of the farm, the farm home, and farmers' gatherings; or if selling to small-town merchants, views and articles about their stores and the kind of people who do business with these stores. This enables the letter writer to put himself in the place of the men to whom he is writing, to understand and sympathize with their problems and ambitions.

Many writers believe that home surroundings have, possibly, the strongest influence of all. An appeal to the home life often touches a responsive heart chord that makes a world of difference in the pulling power of the letter.

5. Personal Ambition.-Personal ambition is a powerful line of appeal both to men and women for many propositions. Some prospects are interested in anything that will elevate their social standing. Some are ambitious for the future of their children; some to have pretty homes. All men and women are, at heart, ambitious. The business man eagerly looks for anything that will increase his business. The merchant is eager for anything that will lead people to think well of his store. The husband is ambitious to please the wife; the wife interested in anything that will make the home more pleasant for the husband. There are hundreds of different appeals possible, depending on what the letter is trying to sell. The seller must learn for himself what is likely to appeal most strongly to his possible customer, in brief, whether he must appeal to the heart or the brain or both.

6. The Customer's Problems.-The problems of the manufacturer must be studied from a different angle than those of the consumer; the problems of the merchant are different