(Please enjoy this guest blog post from ANDREW T DRAUGHON)

How pure is your beer? ????

Probably not a question you fret too much about, right?

Chances are, when you’re at your favorite watering hole ordering a pint, you’re thinking about if you’re in the mood for something ‘malty’ or ‘hoppy,’ without a care in the world about how it was brewed.

Yet, in the early 1900s, ALL beers advertised their purity.

It was any fine ale’s #1 selling point.

In fact, ads commonly featured the claim “PURE” in big, bold letters.

Apparently, folks back in the day often suffered from a condition known as “biliousness“—or excessive bile—the symptoms of which include bad digestion, stomach pains, constipation, and painful flatulence.

The true cause is anyone’s guess (as you’ll soon see), but…

Impurities were believed to be the culprit

Thus, to reassure consumers, the brewers of the day ran ads claiming their beer’s utmost purity.

And to make sure the point got across, sometimes they’d even take out double-page ads to write out the word P-U-R-E bigger than the competition.

It was during this time that a young ad man named Claude Hopkins was hired by the Schlitz Brewery to create a new advertising campaign.

And as par usual…

The Schlitz execs simply wanted to shout their unmatched purity from the proverbial rooftops.

Hopkins had a different idea, though.

And he crafted one of the most famous advertising campaigns in history as a result.

In a moment, you’ll learn Hopkins’ #1 secret to writing a KILLER headline, but back to our story first…

When he was hired, Schlitz was America’s 5th largest brewer, in terms of sales.

So Hopkins got to work by taking a tour…

killer-headline

To find inspiration, he took a brewing class and went on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Schlitz brewery in Milwaukee.

On the tour, he noticed…

Hermetically-sealed glass rooms, circulated by filtered air, where beer dripped over cooling pipes
Massive wood pulp filters to remove impurities
Artesian wells, drilled 4,000 feet deep, for ultra-pure water (even though the Schlitz brewery was right on Lake Michigan)
Beautifully-polished steel vats where the beer aged for six months
Every bottle was cleaned four times with hot steam and every pump and pipe was flushed twice daily to kill any potential contaminates

And that’s not all…

Hopkins even toured the laboratory and was saw the original mother yeast cell and learned how it was carefully cultivated by no less than 1,200 experiments to maximize Schlitz’s flavor.

A bit more sophisticated than you imagined for a century ago, right?

Hopkins thought so too.

Astonished by their operation, he went back to the head office and bluntly asked the executives…

“Why don’t you tell people these things?”

Continuing…

“Why do you merely try to cry louder than others that your beer is pure? Why don’t you tell the reasons?”

The Schlitz head honchos answered that no one can make good beer without these manufacturing practices and all their competitors did exactly the same.

Hopkins quickly retorted that the other brewers have never told the REAL story.

He said, quote…

“It amazes everyone who goes through your brewery. It will startle everyone in print.”

So Hopkins designed a series of ads that actually revealed the behind-the-scenes details of how Schlitz beer was made.

The ads are descriptive and full of facts

Here’s how one reads…

In Filtered Air.

The picture shows a room in which Schlitz Beer is cooled—a plate glass room to which air can only come through filters.

The beer is cooled by dripping over frigid pipes in air as pure as human means can make it.

And that’s but one extreme.

Before the beer comes to this room it is brewed in air tight cauldrons. After it leaves here it is filtered, then sterilized. Absolute cleanliness all through.

Not another article of your food or drink is the subject of such caution. But beer is saccharine. Any impurity would multiply in it and make the beer unhealthful.

It is by such extremes as we show you that we maintain the reputation of Schlitz Beer for absolute purity.

“Green” beer—half-aged beer— is the beer that causes biliousness. Your physician will tell you that Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous, will not make you bilious.

And another…

Schlitz Beer is Good for You

The malt is a food; the hops a tonic. The alcohol—only 3½ per cent—is an aid to digestion; a healthful stimulant.

Schlitz Beer is brewed with the extreme of cleanliness—cooled in filtered air—and every bottle is sterilized.

It is one of the best things in the world for you.

It does not ferment on the stomach, because it is aged—aged for months in refrigerating rooms before it is marketed.

It gives you beer without biliousness. Ask your doctor what he thinks about drinking Schlitz beer.

You might even do a Google search to check these ads out, if you’re curious to see the pictures and layout.

How did Hopkins’ ads perform?

Well, it was only a few months before Schlitz went from 5th place to neck-and-neck with first place.

Hopkins wasn’t surprised.

In his words:

“I told a story common to all good brewers, but a story which had never been told. I gave purity a meaning.”

And that right there is the “secret.”

In order for an idea or claim to stick, it needs…

Concrete details,
Context,
Quantification, and
Specificity.

These are “tangibles,” which create real meaning and comprehension.

Here’s a quote from Hopkins in his book, Scientific Advertising:

“Platitudes and generalities roll off the human understanding like water from a duck.”

Essentially, abstract claims don’t mean anything.

If an idea is too nebulous, it fails to make any impression.

For instance, Hopkins cautions against making such claims as…

“Best in the world,” or
“Lowest price in existence.”

Now, granted, these aren’t claims you’re likely to make.

But the idea of using concrete, specific, and quantified language is extremely important for any and all types of offers.

So how do you do this?

How do you make your claims more concrete?

Luckily, it’s super easy!

The easiest way to make a quantified claim is simply by using REAL numbers and actual figures.

Okay, how about a few examples?

Here are some of our headlines here at Elite Marketing pro…

“The 10 Minute Traffic Machine”…

Discover The New Way To Tap Into The Most Ultra-Targeted Traffic… Get The Highest Quality Leads… And Make A Ton Of Sales… Starting With Only $10 And Just 10 Minutes A Day

“No Excuses Summit VI”…

New Documentary Reveals a Little-Known Secret Used By A Struggling Aerospace Engineer from East L.A. To BUST OUT Of Total Financial Devastation And Humiliation… And Rake In Over A Million Bucks In Just 23 Months

“The Facebook Power Code”…

Give Me 90 Minutes And I’ll Show You How I Turned $77.41 Into $2,341.00 Of Pure Profit In Just 5 Days… And How YOU CAN TOO! Do this every week and you’re making a cool $117,706 a year… working literally just 9 minutes a day!

“Attraction Marketing Formula”…

Attention Struggling Network Marketers: “How to Personally Sponsor 107 Reps into YOUR Business in 60 Days or Less with One Simple Website!” Enter Your Email Below and I’ll Show You How in a FREE 10-Day Online Prospecting Bootcamp

Notice how SPECIFIC those examples are?

Here’s the psychology behind how this works…

Hopkins explains:

“A man who makes a specific claim is either telling the truth or a lie.”

Makes sense, right?

There’s no fudging an exact claim.

It’s either accurate, or its not.

Plain and simple.

So if you’re perceived to have ANY credibility with your audience (and want to keep it), then you’re not just going to make up flashy “pie-in-the-sky” numbers.

That would be ridiculous.

Instead, you’ll share your actual data based off your real world results.

That’s the stuff people really want to hear about, anyway.

Here’s another quote from Hopkins…

“The weight of an argument may often be multiplied by making it specific.”

Continuing…

Say that a tungsten lamp gives more light than a carbon and you leave some doubt.

Say it gives three and one-third times the light, and people realize that you have made tests and comparisons.

And this works in any industry, of course.

In fact, here are a couple of real examples I just collected from my secondary inbox in about 3 minutes flat…

Lose 12 pounds in the next 14 days
Cut 3 to 10 Strokes Off Your Golf Score In 45 Minutes
Fall asleep in 6 minutes flat with “no-pill” trick
The only way to earn consistent 25%-plus annual returns

So, here’s your challenge, should you choose to accept it…

Go overboard using numbers, figures, and data!

I promised you the #1 secret of writing a killer headline…and there it is.

Simple, yet oh-so-profound.

And specificity goes for just about everything too…

Landing pages
Ads
Blog posts
Emails
Status updates

Every single element of every single thing you write should be as specific and concrete as you can accurately quantify.

Use any and all forms of quantification when making a claim.

Think about this blog post for a moment…

There are no vague examples or claims, right?

There’s a specific advertiser (Claude Hopkins),
a specific campaign (Schlitz Beer), and
Specific copy (“In Filtered Air” and “Schlitz Beer is Good for You”)

Then there are specific examples of Elite Marketing Pro’s own headlines and a few from the hidden corners of my inbox.

That’s about as specific as it gets!

Now it’s your turn…

Whatever you’re working on…

Make sure you do your research to quantify your claims and substantiate what you’re saying with data, figures, or just plain-and-simple numbers.

It is the fastest, and unfortunately the most commonly-overlooked way, to increase your credibility an persuasiveness.

This is especially important for your headlines

And your email subject lines and blog post titles too.

As these are where you first catch your prospect’s eye.

Which is exactly how come the art and science of writing killer, attention-catching headlines is, bar none, the most important skill you can acquire online or off.

Speaking of which…

We’ve put together a free report on our favorite headline formulas, which includes 17 unique, fill-in-the-blank templates, and 25 power words to use in your copy.

That means actual word-for-word swipes for every single headline formula.

Make sure you grab ’em right here, right now!

It’ll save you an enormous amount of time and help you quickly create compelling ads, email subject lines, video and blog titles, and so much more.

All you need to do is use your data with our templates and you’re all set!

Ask your doctor; our templates will cure any copy-related biliousness!* ????

*This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These templates are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. 😉

‘Til next time

Moni Arora’s Blog