This is the third article in a series of the history of advertising and marketing. We pick up the story from when John E. Kennedy exited Lord and Thomas leaving Albert Lasker with the monumental task of replacing him.

1908 Kennedy must have been a hard act to follow.

But Lasker did replace him with a man who made an even greater overall contribution to the advertising world than Kennedy did.

Kennedys replacement was called Claude C. Hopkins.

And what a true pioneer he proved to be.

Hes the man who inaugurated free sampling, risk-free trials, money-back guarantees, market testing, and much more.

Hopkins agreed with Kennedy on the Salesmanship on Paper philosophy, but where Kennedy was a one idea man, Hopkins had many ideas.

Hopkins reckoned that just placing ads and seeing what happened was futile. Pure guesswork. He wanted to measure everything that he did.

And we should all be glad that he did.

Hopkins wrote only two books but both were classics. His first: Scientific Advertising written in 1923 contained manyof his secrets that he found with his testing techniques. These secrets are still as valid today.

His second book, written in 1927, was an autobiography called: My Life in Advertising. Many regard this as the best advertising book ever written.

All top marketers regard Hopkins first book as their copywriting how-to bible.

And the late advertising great, David Ogilvy, had this to say about Scientific Advertising: Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read Scientific Advertising seven times it completely changed my life.

Jay Abraham, known as Americas #1 marketing wizard, had this to say: Claude Hopkins is the master of them all. His influence has easily added over $6m to my personal income..and still counting.

Hopkins created ad campaigns for many major US companies that are still going strong today. Companies such as Palmolive, Pepsodent, and Quaker Oats.

One of his secret strategies for creating more turnover for his clients was that of pre-emptive strikes.

By this strategy, he used to tell a story of how things were done in an industry and thus educate the customers. Any competitor could have told the same story but didn’t. and whoever did so first, gained the edge.

Hopkins stated in his books that a large part of advertising done at the time was based on the concept of: “Buy My Product” or “Come into My Store.” Lots of advertisers today make this same mistake. Are you one of them?

Customers are not fooled by this. They want to know: “What’s in it for me?”

Hopkins knew this and used this psychology to grow Van Camp’s pork and bean business. After his research, Hopkins found that 94% of housewives were baking their own beans at home and only 6% were buying canned beans.

But Hopkins realized that everybody advertising canned beans merely stated: “Buy My Brand.” Nobody explained what the benefit of their product was.

Advertising requires a huge investment. How much money an organization is willing to spend to promote their campaigns will also affect how they will be able to achieve their advertising objectives. Here are some of the methods or approaches to setting an advertising budget:

1. Percentage of Sales

This method or approach is based on a percentage of previous sales or a percentage of predicted sales. This works best for companies with a stable and predictable sales pattern. But this approach tends to assume that the sales are directly related to advertising which is not the case. There are a lot of other elements and factors that will also affect the sales. And this will also mean that your advertising budget may not be appropriate to the amount of sales promotion your business needs.

2. Based on Tasks

This approach relates the expenses to the specific Marketing and Advertising activities that make up Advertising Campaigns. It involves listing down who it is that the ad needs to reach, how often should the business advertise, what medium is more effective in reaching the target audience, and how much will it cost. The method is about creating a budget that will allow the business to meet their particular objectives.

3. What is Affordable

Most small companies use this approach wherein they only spend what they can to avail of an Effective Advertising. Its understandable that such small companies may not have a lot of profits to sacrifice in order to advertise. But since there is no attempt to match goals with advertising, a large amount of money could be wasted. It is when market is especially bad or sales are low, that is the time to invest greatly on promoting your products and services.

4. Best Guess

A lot of companies who are new to Advertising and Marketing may lack the knowledge on how much is needed to invest in advertising in order to achieve their goals and objectives. What happens most of the time is that marketers would tend to rely on their best guess or judgment on what their advertising budget should be. There are also instances wherein marketers would follow a competitors budget. Doing so will only prevent the business to have that competitive advantage in increasing their sales.

Some methods and approaches may be easier for some companies but that does not mean it will be effective. Also, budgets that work for others does not mean that it will work for you. It is important to strategize and analyze which approach matches your goals and objectives. Out of Home Media Owners like SMRT Media have different rates that will be able to suit any budget for Advertising Campaigns make possible.