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EVENING LEDGER PHILADELPHIA, FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1015,
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I ' Advertising Saw Mills It
A saw mill isn't a fad, or a spectacular novelty,
or a household necessity, or any of those things that
your old line conservative loves to think of as "just
the kind of thing to advertise."
It's a downright prosaic piece of machinery. It
costs a lot of money. Not one man in ten thousand
needs one around the place.
And even those that do need one have to be
shown just how it will pay for itself.
But with all that, saw mills have been very
successfully advertised. And in the recent experi
ence of the American Saw Mill Machinery Com
pany, of Hackettstown, N. J., is an interesting lesson
on the practical aspects of an advertising problem.
This company had been advertising for a num
ber of years, using, in addition to the trade press and
export journals, a large number of farm papers.
It had a considerable line of wood-working
machinery, with a portable saw mill at $250 and
upward as the "leader."
Previous to 1910 its method of advertising was
to take small space in a large number of farm
papers. The idea was that many farmers had wood
lots which they wanted to turn into money by
sawing up lumber during the slack months of the
winter season. These farmers, who already realized
that they ought to have a portable saw mill, would
look through the advertisements in their farm jour
nals, send for catalogues and finally buy.
This was just what happened. The business
grew steadily and the volume of requests for cata
logues increased until about 1910.
Then the company began to feel' a let-down. It
became evident that most of the farmers who already
knew that they needed saw mills had been reached
by the advertising. It was now time to begin to
educate other farmers who had never given any
thought whatever to the possibilities of cutting their
own lumber for their own buildings or of going into
the lumber business by cutting up their own or their
neighbors' timber. There were also many owners
of large country estates who could well install saw
mills, both for pride and profit.
It was determined to use larger space for the
purpose of catching the attention of these two
classes, and to write the advertisements and the
booklets not as formerly from the technical point of
view, but the way a salesman would talk, showing
just how a saw mill could be made to pay for itself.
During the season of 1910-1911, therefore, quarter-page
advertisements were used instead of the
smaller ones. Results were immediate. So many
more inquiries were received that the average cost
per inquiry dropped from $2.60 to $2.46.
The third season, half -09268 were used and the
average cost per inquiry went down to $2.39.
The next step was to use full pages. In Decem
ber, 1913, the first full-page advertisement appeared.
This was in The Country Gentleman. It was later
repeated in the same publication and in three others.
Printers' Ink, in reporting the results, says:
"It brought in a flood of inquiries. It is also
notable from the fact that it was the first to bring a
customer into the office and sell him a saw mill out
right. The customer, who is an officer of a large
corporation, thought it would be a good idea to put
the caretakers of his summer home in the country
at work during the winter cleaning up some of the
timber on the place and turning it into salable
lumber.
"The same advertisement also produced several
other direct orders."
By the end of last season the average cost of
inquiry was down to $1.52, which is very low when
it is considered that the article is sold at $250 or
more. And furthermore, the class of customers rep
resented by the inquiries was much higher.
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It is significant that the American Saw Mill
Machinery Company during the present season is
using in The Country Gentleman four pages as
against the two pages of last season.
. The war would have been the best possible
excuse for reducing the advertising, because the
export trade was shot to pieces and the domestic
business, previous to January first, was greatly re
duced. But instead of cutting down the advertising.
the company went ahead and augmented it.
Its faith has been justified by a heavy increase
in orders and inquiries since 1915 opened.
On a single day 189 inquiries were received all
but 22 directly traceable to six publications.
That it continued to advertise with larger space
in spite of depression is probably responsible for the
fact that this company, which a few years ago
seemed to be facing a declining market, believes that
it is on the eve of the biggest year in its history.
The lessons of this story are perhaps these:
Almost any product can be advertised if you
approach it rightly.
After you have saturated your, first market'
there is often a way of finding a secondary and even
greater market.
Picking the right place to put your effort, then
going at it intensively, with increasing emphasis,
and without interruption, rolls up a greater and
greater wave of influence which even serious busi
ness disturbances cannot resist.
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY, INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA
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The Ladies' Home Journal
The Saturday Evening Post
The Country Gentleman