Master marketers have known about this technique for a long time. They used it to change the world and get rich.
Skyscrapers. Chicago. Crop abundance that alleviates global hunger unlike any time in history ever before.
These are the legacies of just some of the numerous American inventors who leveraged the power of demonstration to sell their products. In the process, they got rich and paved the way for unprecedented global and historical change.
TWO MAJOR EXAMPLES
Take, for example, John Deere, inventor of the steel plow. Nicknamed “the plow that broke the plains,” at Wikipedia we read this:
In 1837, Deere developed and manufactured the first commercially successful cast-steel plow. The wrought-iron framed plow had a polished steel share. This made it ideal for the tough soil of the Midwest and worked better than other plows. By early 1838, Deere completed his first steel plow and sold it to a local farmer, Lewis Crandall, who quickly spread word of his success with Deere’s plow. Subsequently two neighbors soon placed orders with Deere. By 1841, Deere was manufacturing 75–100 plows per year.
Deere’s plow unlocked the rich, fertile soils of the midwest. He gave his customers a risk-free guarantee: use the plow first, then pay me for it if you like it. By allowing prospective buyers to use the plow for free (“on approval“) to demonstrate its benefits to them, Deere turned prospects into customers.
Elisha Otis, inventor of the modern elevator, is another entrepreneur who understood the power of demonstration.
At the time, elevators were considered unreliable. People didn’t like to use them. This restricted building height. Since the only way to the top floor was by taking the stairs, rich people lived on the bottom floors, and the poor lived up top.
But Otis invented a safety mechanism for the elevator. If the elevator cable snapped, the people inside wouldn’t die because the safety mechanism would catch the car immediately and prevent it from falling.
But no one believed him. Sales were slow at first. So, he took his elevator to the World’s Fair to harness the power of demonstration. Wikipedia explains:
No orders came to him over the next several months, but soon after, the 1853 New York World’s Fair offered a great chance at publicity. At the New York Crystal Palace, Otis amazed a crowd when he ordered the only rope holding the platform on which he was standing cut. The rope was severed by an axeman, and the platform fell only a few inches before coming to a halt. The safety locking mechanism had worked, and people gained greater willingness to ride in traction elevators; these elevators quickly became the type in most common usage and helped make present-day skyscrapers possible.
After the World’s Fair, Otis received continuous orders, doubling each year. He developed different types of engines, like a three-way steam valve engine, which could transition the elevator between up to down and stop it rapidly.
Now, the rich live on the top floors because they offer the best views and the greatest privacy.
CONCLUSION
As a result of these inventions, and others like them, Chicago became a major Midwestern city. It was the hub that connected the large-and-growing grain shipments coming in from the farms of the Midwest to the Eastern seaboard.
Chicago was also the city where skyscrapers originated. William Le Baron Jenney built the world’s first skyscraper there: the Home Insurance Building in 1885. That set off a revolution in building design that led to taller and taller buildings in major cities across the world.
But without the success of Otis’s safety elevator, there would be no skyscraper. And without his demonstrations at the World’s Fair, he would have failed.
Without John Deere’s steel plow, the rich nutrients embedded in the plains of the Midwest would remain locked up. But without the ability of farmers to see the plow’s success for themselves before they put their money down, Deere would have failed, too.
Always remember the power of demonstration in your advertising. Possibly no other method more rapidly kills skepticism than that.