Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1911 — ADVERTISING IN THE SMALL TOWNS [ARTICLE]

ADVERTISING IN THE SMALL TOWNS

By BERT ST. CLAIR.

The average country merchant advertises in his home weekly newspaper because he feels that he should give the editor some encouragement. Hence, because he takes little or no interest in what his advertisement says, he seldom changes it, and still more seldom does he have anything in the announcement that grips the reader, and thereby brings him trade. The average-, advertisement in a weekly newspaper reads like a label. The majority of them state that the advertiser is “still at the same old stand,” or handles the best gbods in town. Few of them deal in anything but generalities. Such advertisements probably are not worth anywhere near what they cost. About all they do is to keep the name of the merchant before the teade/. But in a small community, practically eVteryone, knows a merchant who has been in business any length of time, so simply having one’s name before the public can be of but little benefit under such conditions.

Many country merchants leave the writing of their advertisements to the editor. They order their space, sometimes amounting to a page, and tell him to write them a “good announcement.” They do not furnish him with a single price or a selling argument of any kind. All he gets is orders to fill the space. At one time, while Lwas struggling ip a small town to get a start as an advertisement writer, I asked the largest advertiser there to permit me to do some work for him, free. "All right,” he replied, "write me a two page advertisement and bring It around in a couple of hours.” Then he hurried into his store, seated himself on a counter and lighted a cigar. He never thought it necessary that I have something upon which to base my selling argument. ' It used to be the custom In a country town I often visited to hold a county fair every fall. Just prior to the holding of the last one, several years ago, a liveryman placed in his home paper this advertisement: “When you come to the country fair feed your horses at Blank’s stable.” The fair was a financial failure and no attempt has since been made to hold another in that town. Yet two years after the first Insertion of the liveryman’s advertisement It was still running exactly as it was originally set up.

Curious to know what benefit, If any he thought he <ftrived from it, I asked him one day why he did not change his advertisement. “O,” he replied, "advertising doesn’t pay, anyhow, and I might as well have that announcement as any other in the paper.” In that particularly case advertising certainly did not pay. An Insurance agent in that same town changes his advertisement every week. Recently I congratulated him upon his enterprise. “Yes,” he responded, “I do change it every week; but I have to watch it pretty closely. If I don’t change it the editor won’t.”

When the country merchant learns to write snappy advertising, filled with go*bd selling argument and prices, then will he have less cause to sit by the stove in the rear of his store and assail the mail order houses and the men who are behind the parcels post bill.