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Ogilvy on Advertising — Chapter-11: The secrets of success in business-to-business advertising
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11 THE SECRETS OF SUCCESS IN BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS ADVERTISING It used to be called trade advertising, or industrial advertising, but its practitioners have taken to calling it ‘business-to-business’, which sounds classier. It means products that people buy for their companies, not for themselves. I will tell you what I have learned about it, drawing heavily and gratefully on research conducted by McGraw-Hill. PRINT McGraw-Hill tells us that the average salesman’s call costs $178, a letter $6.63 and a phone call $6.35, while you can reach a prospect through advertising for only 17 cents. Admittedly an advertisement, however efficient, can seldom close a sale itself. Its function is to pave the way for salesmen, by pre-selling your product and attracting leads. In industrial companies there are an average of four ‘buying influences’. Your sales force is unlikely to know all four. Sixty per cent of ‘specifiers’ – people who set down the specifications that must be met – read advertisements to learn what’s on the market. By and large, the advertising techniques that work in this kind of advertising are the same as the techniques that work in consumer advertising – like promising
the reader a benefit, news, testimonials and helpful information. Make sure that what you promise is important to your customer. A supplier of computer software was proud of the size of his company and wanted to make it the feature of his advertising, but research found that his customers were not interested in size. They were looking for responsiveness, support, service – and a good product. Make your promise specific. Instead of generalities, use percentages, time elapsed, dollars saved. You are talking to engineers. Testimonials work well, as long as they come from experts in reputable companies. A testimonial from Bud Dacus impresses tugboat engineers because Bud has worked the Mississippi for 25 years – longer than Mark Twain. Demonstrations are most effective when they compare your product’s performance with your competitors’. Try to devise a simple demonstration that your reader can perform himself, like inviting him to scrape the liner of your air duct with a coin to see how tough it is. News works well. It appears that readers scan the advertisements in technical journals looking for new products. To my surprise, a McGraw-Hill study found that advertising is twice as effective as an article in the same journal. Be sure to proclaim your news, loud and clear. Information that is useful to the reader in his job can also be effective, provided the information involves your product. For example, you can show the reader how to calculate the amount of money he could save by using your product. Some copywriters, assuming that the reader will find the product as boring as they do, try to inveigle him into their ads with pictures of babies, beagles and bosoms. This is a mistake. A buyer of flexible pipe for offshore oil rigs is more interested in pipe than anything else in the world. So play it straight. Layouts should be simple, avoiding the arty devices dear to second-rate art directors – like type which is too big to be readable, eccentric designs and headlines at the bottom of the page. If you make your ads look like editorial pages, you will get more readers. Far more. Headlines get five times the readership of the body copy. If your headline doesn’t sell, you have wasted your money. Your headline should promise a benefit, or deliver news, or offer a service, or tell a significant story, or recognize a problem, or quote a satisfied customer. Body copy is seldom read by more than 10 per cent of the readers of a publication. But that 10 per cent consists of prospects – people interested enough in what you are selling to take the trouble to read about it. What you say to them determines the success of your advertisement.
When you advertise bubblegum or underwear, there isn’t much to say, but a computer or a generator calls for long copy. Don’t be afraid to write it. Long copy – more than 350 words – actually attracts more readers than short copy. In business publications four-color ads cost only a third more than black and white, but they attract twice as many readers. Four-color is a good buy. Captions should appear under all your photographs. Twice as many people read them as read body copy. And use your captions to sell. The best captions are mini-advertisements in themselves. TELEVISION Business-to-business advertisers are turning increasingly to television. The audiences for many sports and news programs include a high percentage of business people and are therefore efficient buys. The principles that apply to consumer advertising on television are equally valid for business-to-business commercials. News and demonstrations work particularly well. Even humor has its place, as in the hilarious Ally and Gargano commercials for Federal Express. But it is worth noting that the humor in these commercials always supports the powerful end promise: ‘Federal Express – when it absolutely has to be there overnight.’ Some products used by business cannot be sold in 30 seconds. In such cases, I advise you to sacrifice frequency to delivering a thorough sales message. For IBM computers we used three minutes. Many small business-to-business advertisers shy away from television because commercials cost so much to produce, but inexpensive commercials can be highly effective – if they come directly to the point and offer something of genuine interest. I have seen a television commercial for an industrial product produce so many inquiries that it had to be taken off the air; the salesmen couldn’t handle any more. One commercial for another industrial product produced more inquiries in two months than print advertising had produced in a year. (However, the print advertising produced a higher rate of conversion to sales.) DIFFERENTIATING COMMODITY PRODUCTS Many industrial products are thought to be little more than commodities, with no apparent differences between them. How do you differentiate your bolts, washers
or machine tools from those of your competitors? But, says Professor Levitt, ‘There is no such thing as a commodity. All goods and services are differentiable.’ In a Harvard Business Review article, Professor William K. Hall reported on a study of eight industries, from steel to beer. The most successful companies were those that best differentiated their product or service. According to Professor Hall, the most successful commodity products differentiated themselves in one of two ways: either by low cost or by having the best reputation for quality or service. Advertising can help you spread the news about any price advantage you may have, and it can work wonders in creating a reputation for quality or service. Before 1972, Owens-Corning sold its insulation to builders for use in new homes. In those days insulation was all the same – a commodity. And so the Owens-Corning advertising looked pretty much like its competitors. Later, when fuel prices went up and construction of new homes went down, Owens-Corning differentiated its insulation as the brand of choice for owners of old homes who want to reduce their fuel costs. This was done by latching onto an apparently unimportant feature: the unique color of the Owens-Corning product. Today Owens-Corning Fiberglas has escaped from the ‘commodity tra’. It has by far the best reputation for quality among all insulation material, being preferred three to one over the second brand. HOW TO STIMULATE INQUIRIES McGraw-Hill reports that nearly all inquiries come from people who have a specific need or application in mind; and a substantial percentage of them buy within six months of their inquiry. Always put a toll-free number in your advertisements, to make the inquiry as fast and as easy as possible. In the United States, seven out of ten readers of trade journals now use such numbers. Include a business reply card and a coupon requesting more information. This combination guarantee you the greatest number of productive inquiries. In addition, close your body copy with your offer, your address and phone number. The average business publication is read by three readers besides the subscriber. If the first reader cuts out the coupon, the others cannot respond to the offer without the second address. ANALYSE YOUR INQUIRIES
Analyse your inquiries and the action they produce. This will enable you to answer your boss’s inevitable question: ‘What tangible results am I getting from my advertising?’ Here are three ways to analyse inquires:
- Survey a sample of inquirers. Do they intend to buy your product? To bide their time until a salesman calls? Or simply to keep your product in mind for the future?
- Question the sales people who follow up the inquiries. Did the inquiry lead to a sale? Was this account a new prospect? How did the salesman rate this prospect – a one-time sale, a growth account, a dead end? The discovery of a single major sale resulting from an inquiry can do more than anything else to demonstrate the value of your advertising.
- Relate inquiries to the media that produced them. This can help you fine-tune your media selection. By doing this, one manufacturer was able to reduce his advertising budget by 25 per cent. ADVERTISING TO TOP MANAGEMENT Many business purchases require approval from top management as well as the purchasing agent. Top managers may not respond to, or even understand, the details that are important to the specifiers. They are only interested in the broad benefits – particularly cost savings. It sometimes pays to run separate campaigns – one addressed to top management, the other to the specialists who read trade publications.
Testimonials work well when they come from recognized experts in well-known companies.
Some copywriters, assuming that the reader will find the product as boring as they do, try to inveigle him into their ads with pictures of babies, beagles and bosoms. A mistake.
It pays to devise a demonstration that your readers can perform for themselves, like this one.
An effective strategy in business advertising is to show the reader how he can calculate the money your product would save him. This advertisement got the highest readership everywhere it ran, and brought hundreds of requests for reprints.