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5^ Profitable Lumber Advertising 





FIRST PAPER 



Editor's Note 



This is tile first of a series of six articles on "Profitable Lumber Advertising," which is written by a lumber- 

 man who has fully demonstrated his ability to secure substantial profits from lumber trade newspaper advertising, 

 backed by an unusual ability in the preparation of forceful and convincing "copy." The next article will be on 

 the subject of "Writing Copy," and will appear in next issue. 



"Business failures continue large. Business men ap- 

 parently find it In^possrble to raise their selling prices 

 to make up for increased costs." — Wall Street Journal. 



It sounds probable, very much so. Wages are higher, but travel- 

 ing expenses are a great deal larger than ever before. Where is it 

 all going to end? Either you must meet quotations or you must 

 quit. It seems quite probable that business men are not down to 

 the lowest basis of selling costs and to that reason and also to the 

 fact that many men do not know how to figure these sales costs, 

 many failures are directly attributed. It is safe to say that lum- 

 bermen in general are not using modern methods — in fact, it is 

 said that the lumber business is the most backward of any pro- 

 fession — for the lumber business is a profession. It ought to be a 

 science. 



Just take the sawmill end of the game — the very basis of the 

 business. Look at the enormous percentage of waste. Under the 

 boiler it goes. When you suggest utilization of waste to the 

 lumbermen, they throw up their hands and say they find no time 

 to bother with it. And so the government has to put up experi- 

 ment stations and employ experts to find out these things for 

 them. One progressive manufacturer, for illustration, who was 

 not satisfied to see the edgings and cut-offs from his mahogany 

 go under the boiler, spent considerable time and research to 

 see what he could make out of this so-called waste. Today he is 

 making a wood mosaic flooring out of little pieces l"xl"x%" end- 

 grained, glueing them on a special mat and making a beautiful 

 and everlasting floor. He gets fifty-five cents per square foot for 

 this product. Just think of it — the profits from what used to be 

 waste. It takes only a little thought to uncover some of the pos- 

 sibilities of waste utilization. The trouble with us all is that we 

 are too content with things as they are. Anything out of the 

 ordinary that comes up, we pass by and let someone else worry 

 about. W,e all know that the waste is a big item of loss. Let 

 us face the problem; get after it hot and think of new ways for 

 turning the waste item into the profit column. 



Tou can all laugh when the writer makes the statement that 

 advertising is the newest method of selling goods at the lowest 

 sales cost; but if you will just stop and think for a minute, j'ou 

 will realize that the steel people saw the opportunity and the con- 

 crete people saw the opportunity, and if you will look at the 

 annual reports of the government issue, 3'ou will see a steady de- 

 crease in the annual consumption of lumber, and a steady increase 

 in the use of both concrete and steel. Wh}', one cement manu- 

 facturer alone spends more in a year for advertising than the 

 combined money spent by every lumberman in the business — every 

 one in the United States — for their annual advertising. That is 

 a very startling statement, but it nevertheless is a fact and can 

 be verified. 



One of our best known authorities on the subject of advertising, 

 makes the following statement: "There are only two ways you 

 can increase your business: You must either get new customers 

 or get more business from the old customers. There are only two 

 ways to get new customers. Either sell them what you already 

 have to sell, or provide something else for them to buy. There 

 are only two ways of getting more business from old customers — 

 sell them more of what you are now selling them, or sell them 

 something you are not now selling them. 



' ' Advertising brings new business for what you already have to 

 sell. It even causes you to improve your product or the varieties 

 of your goods and so extend your business. It causes your old 

 customers to buy again, to speak of your wares to others and to 



—20— 



buy other things from you. It forces you to consider how your 

 proposition compares with that of your competitors and so lets in 

 new ideas and policies, all aiming for a larger and more suc- 

 cessful business. It makes you build up the efiiciency of your 

 selling force to take care of the new business and in turn, helps 

 to develop the old business. 



"At every point, then, advertising helps business. It seldom 

 gets credit for all the influence it has in a business, but it is the 

 real cause of a great deal of fundamental improvement in all 

 branches of a business." 



That little talk is a good thing to cut out and keep before you. 

 It is one of the truest sayings that has ever been spoken. You 

 have heard of advertising from the reports in the lumber papers 

 and possibly from solicitors and in general they have all dealt 

 with you in the matter of space only. The writer does not blame 

 some of them for the attitude they take — for in past years, they 

 probably have tried to get you to look upon advertising as a 

 strictly business proposition. Advertising from the writer's expe- 

 rience, is even more — advertising is salesmanship in print. It 's 

 not a magic art of printer's ink and type, which, after the insert- 

 ing of it in a small space, brings back success and profits to your 

 door. Advertising is exactly the same as sending a salesman out 

 to sell your goods, or tell the public about them. Look on it in 

 this way. Suppose you make quartered oak. What is your logical 

 trade — trim manufacturers, furniture manufacturers, retail yards 

 and perhaps wholesalers. Pick out the paper or papers that reach 

 these classes of trade. The paper represents your salesman; your 

 advertisement represents the words of his talk. Now that you 

 have that part of it straight, just for a minute think of the present 

 day lumber advertisement. All salesmen in the latter ease then 

 (the advertisement) say, "My name is Smith; I sell hardwood 

 lumber; office, Big Ditch, Ind." Mr. Lumberman, how long would 

 you keep a salesman on a pay roll who approached your cus- 

 tomers in this way? And yet it is just the effect that most pres- 

 ent-day lumber advertisements have on a man reading the paper, 

 and that is why you claim that advertising does not pay. It is 

 true, and it never will pay. For the same reason that is why a 

 great many men whom you put out on the road as salesmen fail 

 to make good — they talk in the same way — they just go in a 

 man's ofl&ce and say, "My name is Smith, hardwood lumber, In- 

 diana," and then expect to get business. Eight here seems the 

 proper place to say that it is absolutely impossible in these modern 

 times to put a man out on the road who has not studied the sell- 

 ing game. As one very prominent sales manager says, "sales- 

 manship is nine-tenths talk and one part the goods. ' ' And while 

 that statement may seem rather radical to most lumbermen who 

 have not studied modern methods, it is very true. There is such 

 a thing as psychology, and it is applied in every day business by 

 the scientific salesman as well as the advertising man — in fact, it 

 is a necessity. 



The writer does not mean to say that salesmanship is all talk, 

 because knowledge of the goods is one of the prin;e factors; but it 

 is an absolute impossibility to put out a man who has simply 

 worked in your office or in your mill, and expect him to produce 

 the results or to represent you in the way that he should. It 

 simply cannot be done. The man probably knows nothing of tact 

 or the way in which customers should be handled — it takes a man 

 who has been trained in these features to cover the requirements 

 of a scientific salesman. Advertising and salesmanship go hand 

 in hand. Advertising puts your story before the people at the 



