I sometimes realize that the more things change the more they stay the same. Today, technology -- including marketing automation software, social media and the internet -- make things I learned almost 20 years ago even more valuable.

Everything I needed to learn in marketing I learned in 1992. That year, the publisher of New Equipment Digest Magazine (NED) took my boss and me to dinner and changed all our lives. By the end of that year, NED was again the dominant magazine in the industrial market and we had seen the future of marketing communications. It looked like a book. By the end of the summer of 1992, we had learned the power of information to turn a marketer from a supplier into a trusted resource.

I digress. When NED Publisher Jim Atherton made his yearly pilgrimage to the agency where I used to work, he brought along a traditional media presentation stating: "We’re number 1 ... We generate a lot of sales leads ... Lots of them become sales … really."

Yawn.

Jim was an old friend of my boss and during a late … late dinner, he gave us a peek behind the curtain. For the first time in over 25 years his magazine really wasn’t the market leader. An aggressive campaign by his leading competitor had convinced advertisers that they generated “better quality” leads than NED. It was a statement that was most likely false, but powerfully told.

As the night wore on … and on … Jim told us about Penton Publishing’s 35 years worth of lead follow-up studies that proved time-after-time that 20.1% of NED sales leads turned into a sale of the advertised product within six months, and another 17.6% became a sale of a competitor’s product. In other words, studies of over 3 million sales leads proved that almost 40% resulted in a sale in less than 6 months time.

We were stunned.

For years, people had been arguing about the value of their advertising investment, and here was the proof spread out on the table in front of us. Years later we learned that fully 65% of NED sales leads would eventually become a sale, but that’s a story for another time.

Although prodigious amounts of Scottish spirits may have clouded our judgment in some things, it also served to lower our inhibitions and I distinctly remember telling Jim that his presentation didn’t match the power of his story. (I may have said this in a somewhat more forceful manner … in fact, I’m sure I did). Telling people that one in five buy the advertised product,  using pictures of apples, wasn’t making an impact, especially when the competition was essentially telling them the same thing about their magazine. Potential customers weren’t internalizing the message. It was just another marketing claim. Ho-hum.

Our solution was to have NED write a book … the definitive study of industrial advertising sales leads that would show advertisers how to generate more of them and convert more to actual sales. Jim loved the idea, but didn’t have the people to do it. Within two months my boss and I were on the job interviewing marketers and salespeople across America and sorting through the exhaustive research compiled by Penton Publishing’s industry-leading research department.

By summer’s end the 200-page book “Profiting From Industrial Advertising Sales Leads” was published in hard-cover form with a cover price of $15.95. However, the real purpose was to give NED sales people a crack sales tool. From then on, whenever an advertiser commented that a competitive magazine generated better quality sales leads, the NED rep reached into their case, offered the customer a free copy of the book and simply said, “when it comes to advertising sales leads … we wrote the book.” Because they provided helpful information, all their claims became much more believable.

We supported the introduction of the book with an aggressive print advertising and direct mail campaign built around the information in the book. Everything was built around a “How To” format that was as helpful as it was informative.

The results were stunning. I still remember the day Jim Atherton called to say that in one year NED had the biggest competitive change in its 75-year history and was now 1,468 units ahead of the competition … and the only explanation was the marketing campaign we put in place. It was the start of a beautiful and long-lasting relationship.