January 2017

The Law Of Attraction

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, , , , ,

The law of attraction can be applied to almost anything in life if you really think about it. So why not make your leaflets, flyers or magazine cover an instant attraction feature.

As a part of the direct marketing mix, magazine and leaflet distribution is one of the most successful methods of building a new business or expanding and consolidating an existing one, as we all know you only get one chance to make a good first impression. It’s that law of attraction thing again!

Research has shown that over 95% of people receive and see a magazine or leaflet that lands on their doormat.

Research has also revealed that over 55% of adults will keep a door drop leaflet for more than a week and over 80% keep the magazine for even longer; in fact, door drop leaflets are kept for an average of 38 days, longer than any other piece of information that comes through the letterbox, except for utility bills.

These distributed leaflets & magazines are kept in various places in a household.

There is the holding area where they are held in abeyance, waiting to be dealt with by various members of the household. A random holding area such as a convenient space on a cabinet or mantle-piece or a drawer, where they are kept after being read and wait to be read again.

Finally, there is the display area. The display area is the area where leaflets are on permanent display.

These days a domestic appliance has become the most prominent display area in most households; this is the family sized fridge freezer. It is on this display area leaflets should aspire to be placed, and, if possible, aspire to take pride of place in this display area.

The family fridge is a display place for all sorts of material, shopping list, reminders of school runs, and many other pieces of information required to keep a busy household functioning. The competition for space on this display board is fierce enough and it is made more competitive because most people will use a fridge magnet to display information they think worth keeping.

There are companies in the market who manufacture illustrated fridge magnets, but I feel they do not lend themselves to leaflets for distribution either for cost or for weight. However, you can do something to have your leaflet displayed on the fridge door, and it will not add any cost to the production of your leaflet.

If your offer is an attractive offer and your message conveys this, why not add a line at the foot of the copy and suggest they put it on their fridge door to remind them to contact you when the time is right. Make the law of attraction work for you.

Most people have fridge magnets and may be happy to put a well-designed and printed leaflet on this very important area in the home.

Just ask, besides what have you got to lose?

Share Button

One Leaflet One Business One Promotion

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, , , ,

We at Hallway Distribution believe that each leaflet promotion should have just the one business advertised on it, one leaflet, one business, one promotion works the best.

A few questions I was asked just the other day by a potential new client was, “is double sided leaflet distribution a good idea”?

Should you ever put one product one side and another product or business on the reverse side?

Should my friend advertise their business on the back of mine? They are completly different businesses.

I would like to put all my contact information on the reverse side of my leaflet? This is ok as it keeps it one leaflet, one business.

My usual response is no, as after years of testing things like this, what works best is simply having one leaflet for one business.

Of course this does depend on what you do, but in many cases it lessens response. We work on the principle that the recipient will initially read your leaflet for 3 seconds only. It is often hard to think of a header which will capture their attention in that time. Printing on the reverse means that you either have to think of two great headlines or you risk loosing their interest. Putting one product on one side and another on the reverse, e.g kitchens/bathrooms, hair/beauty might mean that they never read one side get to it because they didn’t turn it over. The same applies for two businesses on either side. You will definitely lessen response.

Another question I get asked is shall I repeat the same design on both sides. For me this is a definite no, no. You work really hard to engage the viewer, excite them to react and then if they turn over they are confused because you have repeated the same message they might even find it annoying. There is nothing to gain by doing this.

National businesses, where the brand is well known use double sided because people know what they do and most of their leaflets are offer based. A double sided leaflet can also work well if you are a company with a lot of interesting headlines and Unique Selling Points or if you are producing a menu. But as a rule of thumb, one leaflet, one business.

Getting leaflet distribution right can be an art and consultancy is always free with our service, even if we do not actually print your leaflet.

Here are 4 facts you should know about.

1. More than 8 out of 10 people in the UK are happy to receive a door drop leaflet if it is on a topic of interest to them.
2. Over half of UK adults say door drop leaflets are useful for finding out about local information and businesses.
3. With the footprints of local free newspapers in decline, door drop leaflets are sometimes the only way for people to hear about this kind of information.
4. 89% of UK adults report remembering receiving a door drop leaflet communication in the last two weeks.

Share Button

Leafleting The Advertising Gem

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, , , , ,

Door to door leafleting is still, and will continue to be, an advertising gem. It is here to stay and continues to grow against the odds.

It is no secret that the internet is swiftly becoming a vital advertising tool for small and large businesses alike, but that doesn’t mean that it is dominating the market. In fact, it is simply opening up even more opportunities for marketing in the real world for those with a little know-how.

images

Nowadays advertising is a matter of utilising all those opportunities, combining the reach of the internet with the familiar touch of leaflet distribution to contact your ideal target audience in a more meaningful way. Cast aside any old ideas of blind leaflet dropping because this is the future of marketing for small businesses, allowing you to contact the future customers that you want, creating a strong customer-brand bond from the word go.

With any advertising campaign you have to consider the method from the customer’s point of view. Anyone who has ever lived in a city will know the familiar clatter of the letterbox as leaflet after leaflet is shoved through, eager to sell you pizza, fried chicken or cheap supermarket deals. This is exactly what gives leaflet distribution a bad name and for those on the receiving end it can be an absolute nightmare. However, every now and then you come across a true gem, invariably from a small company, offering you a worthwhile service or product that you simply can’t resist. This is the true art of leaflet distribution. Blindly dropping leaflets through doors, regardless of the audience is a waste of money. You need to know who you are marketing to and adapt your leaflets with them in mind. If done correctly leaflet distribution will reach out to your customers, enticing them with your beautifully designed advert, maintaining that small business trustworthy feel that we are all looking for.

From the business point of view advertising is all about finding an avenue that targets the right audience in the right manner for a reasonable price. By combining the internet with leaflet distribution you can locate areas with a suitable customer base and deliver leaflets that appeal to their needs and interests. The allure of the small business is the impression of identity. The customer is a person, with real needs and not just a number in a vast database of figures. To maintain this, the flyer needs to present key information in an attractive format, offering the familiarity of your favourite corner shop or bakery. Somehow, by offering a high quality leaflet in ‘the real world’ rather than on the internet, this method reassures the customer of the reliability and familiar nature of the company. Moreover, as the target audience is sourced via the internet you can combine this familiar marketing method with a wide reaching campaign, targeting as many customers as you need to.

While technology is evolving all the time, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the old methods are becoming obsolete. Having something literally in your hands to read is becoming a novelty and with the right design it can catch the eye in ways that the internet simply cannot. Clearly the time is right for all businesses to use leaflet distribution to find new customers locally.

Share Button

Direct Mail Doesn’t Work?

Direct Mail, Leaflet Distribution, , , , ,

When people say that direct mail, flyers and leaflets dont work it makes me laugh out loud, and also they make pronouncements about particular marketing strategies, for example;

Direct Mail doesn’t work!
Google AdWords is expensive!
Yellow Pages are history!
No one reads Emails!
Junk mail is dead!

imgres

Whenever I hear statements like those above, a cheeky little voice inside me says “yeah who says?”. That is quickly replaced with a more professional thought and response (the result of years of training and hard won experience) “is that an opinion or based on market tests?”. Asking that question often leads to marketing breakthroughs, as all too often it turns out that the person making the statement is reflecting their own PERSONAL like or dislike of that type of marketing.

The simple fact is, your views and mine are just opinions. They do not reflect market sentiment. They are not a guide to marketing success or failure. It is fine to have personal views, I have them too, but it is deadly to bring them into the office and impose them on your marketing strategy.

To find out what your market thinks about how they prefer to source suppliers of your products and services, you had better be open to testing, otherwise you will limit your marketing, and your business.

Here’s a good case in point.
Plenty of people think that flyers and leaflets are dead. But that didn’t stop Lana and Stewart Brown of Vibralife from being prepared to run a small test when it was recommended by her Business Builder Program advisor. Vibralife are a new type of fitness clinic offering vibration training technology with luxurious and high-class members facilities.

The key to their success is generating good quality, low cost leads and getting prospects through the door (they are really good at converting).
As part of the overall development of a marketing system for their business they worked closely with us to create and test a flyer to be distributed to 5,000 local households.
The total cost of the A5 flyer including design, print and delivery was £307.

The Result?
Within the first month, the first 5,000 flyers generated 18 new enquiries. So far, they have converted 10 new clients, worth £3,631. That’s a 10x return on investment, and they are still getting enquiries and conversions.

images

By extrapolating these numbers, they have worked out that if the flyers were sent every month for 6 months to the original 5,000 households, plus an additional 10,000 households in the area, this flyer strategy could earn Vibralife a return of over £65,000 for an outlay or around £5,000! But the best bit is what this successful test could now mean for the future success and growth of Vibralife.

As you can imagine, they are now busy rolling this out. Needless to say direct mail is not the only strategy that Lana is implementing. They are busy creating a marketing machine for their business of which leaflets and flyers will be an important part.

Share Button

Is email Marketing Slowly Dying

email marketing, , , , ,

If the question “is email marketing slowly dying”? makes you want to punch the air in delight, I am afraid your joy may be slightly premature. However, there are moves afoot to kerb the number of e-mails the general public and employees receive every working day.

images

Many companies and organisations across the globe have become concerned about the time their workers waste by opening and replying to e-mails, and to combat this they have taken steps to prohibit the use of e-mails. In some cases, it was discovered that workers wasted forty percent of their time opening and reading e-mails that added no value to their jobs. Forty percent equates to two wasted days each week.

So what is to be the nemesis of the ubiquitous e-mail?

Various tools have been developed to bridge the “social business gap.” These tools have made it possible for employees to share and access ideas and information across the organisation that employs them. Early results have indicated these programmes have immediately reduced the flow of e-mails by almost twenty percent in some companies.

However, as I said at the top of this article, now is not the time to start celebrating the elimination of the e-mail.

The “social business” apps only benefit enterprises with several hundred or thousands of employees. The self-employed or very small enterprises will still use e-mail. (My theory is that those who work for themselves or a very small organisation have more discipline when it comes to reading e-mails.)

I believe e-mail is a victim of its own success. In the early days, it was a boon to business people, but familiarity has bred contempt.

This is especially true of people who use (or try to use) email marketing for their businesses. Because it is free, they put no value on the messages they send. They believe any slapdash message will do, and send out thousands of e-mails that will be deleted before they are read. This method of marketing adds to the “fog” of e-mail spam that is turning many people off the medium.

Incorporating email with leaflet drops

People who are more experienced in marketing know the value of e-mail. Those who use door drop campaigns will often incorporate their e-mail address in their call to action and will request the e-mail addresses of those prospects who respond.

They also have another advantage over the spammers; they know how to produce a compelling and persuasive sales message.

Because leaflet distribution is not free, they know there is no room for complacency or slapdash writing. Leaflet distributors know the value of a concise and well-written sales message, with an eye-catching headline.

To achieve this they use the skills of good copywriting and graphic design. Everything is gone over with a fine-tooth comb to make sure the leaflet is error free and designed to do the job it was created for, to gather valuable leads.

As soon as the enquiries come through, they may start using e-mail as part of their selling technique, which is by no means a bad idea. But, they will make sure any messages they send to their prospects and customers will be well written.

So an email marketing campaign can be used as a valuable and important asset to a well-written leaflet distribution campaign, and another demonstration of how the channel of letterbox marketing can be used even more effectively by incorporating a derivative of the information superhighway.

Share Button