Many businesses depend on marketing via leaflet drops as their primary strategy for bringing in new clients. We at Hallway Leaflet Distribution not only help entrepreneurs and businesses to get their leaflets through doors but we help them use the proven “direct-response marketing techniques” that have helped many other businesses to succeed.
Marketing via leaflet drops is a very powerful strategy when used correctly. It should give you the facility to bring in new business at a rate that is chosen by you! The control that you will have over your leaflet distribution campaign should give you the flexibility to scale up (or scale down) the influx of new clients as you require it. Very few marketing techniques or strategies have this flexibility.
To make a profit from your distribution campaign is absolutely paramount. To put thousands of leaflets through doors in the belief that you are successfully raising your companies profile (but not actually making any money), with the hope that people will “eventually” decide to use you when the time is right, is unfortunately one of the biggest mistakes you can make with leaflets. The techniques I can show you to maximise your results from leaflet distribution will be focused on gaining an immediate targeted response from ‘ideal’ clients you want to work for (i.e. filtering out time wasters)!
The following guidelines for designing your distribution campaign outlined here are not business specific but have been proven to work for many different types of businesses.
See The Bigger Picture
Marketing Objectives
Decide exactly what you wish to gain from your leaflet campaign. Workout all your costs and how much revenue you need to make for it to be successful. For example, consider: How many leads will you need from the campaign? What is your conversion rate? What is your average job value? What is your cost of sales? You need to consider what information you will need to know to establish whether you are making money, breaking even, or losing money. Tracking the origin of client inquiries is absolutely essential for monitoring the success of your campaign.
Design Campaign
Design your leaflet campaign to meet your marketing objectives. Consider also the types of client you’re hoping to attract and the demographics of target areas. It is always worth thinking who your ideal clients are (i.e age, income, home owner, geographical area etc), have a look at your existing client database if you are unsure. If you are unsure as to which geographical areas will be suitable for your business then contact us for further information. Your leaflets will probably get an excellent response in some areas and a very poor response in others. Careful planning as to where your leaflets are dropped will always improve your response.
Tracking
Ensure that you have a robust system of tracking PROFIT from your campaign and assessing whether marketing objectives have been met. It is a fact of life that certain types of marketing strategies will not work for certain types of companies. Leaflet distribution is no different, and if you are not making money you need to know straight away. Effective tracking is the only way to do this.
Designing Your Leaflet
USP
What is your Unique Selling Proposition? This will be a reason why clients will choose you over your competitors and should be something that you convey in your literature. A USP can be anything from being ‘the cheapest’, ‘the best quality’, ‘the fastest’, ‘the most thorough’ or anything that gives your business an edge. If you tell people why you are different you will attract the sort of clients who want to use your service. For example, if you are selling a product which is of the finest quality or of high value you need to tell people that specifically because those are the types of people you trying to attract. If you don’t mention this fact, and you only attract people who are seeking the cheapest product on the marketplace, then you will have failed to pre-select your ideal customers using your leaflet.
Services/Features Versus Benefits
A typical flier design that many people use is: company name at the top, a list of the services provided in the middle, followed by a phone number at the bottom. Unfortunately, this type of design will do nothing to convey to your prospect clients why they should choose you as opposed to your competitors. You must convey the benefits of using your service. If you are not absolutely clear what benefits your clients are looking for then ask them! Try to build as much ‘value’ into your product as possible. If a client doesn’t perceive the ‘extra’ value you offer them over your competitors their decision to buy will be based entirely on price comparison. If you are selling a product on price alone, working with the thinnest possible margin, the only route to success is to sell MASSIVE volume. Selling high-volume is not as easy as some people might lead you to believe, and is certainly much harder than building value into a product or service (which is consequently sold at a higher price!).
Objections
If your clients typically have objections to using your kind of service then it is important to raise them and explain why they will not be a problem if they choose your company. If you do not tackle your client’s main concerns head-on they may decide not to use you. It is in your interests to raise these issues (assuming that you have a very convincing argument as to why your company can overcome these objections).
Using Text
Don’t be afraid of putting lots of text in your leaflet. If you were going to use a new company you had never used before (and spend hundreds of pounds with them) wouldn’t you want to spend five minutes reading about them to know that they were a good company? People will read it! The design process is NEVER about designing the most beautiful flyer; it’s ALWAYS about getting people to pick up the phone and call you. Don’t fall into the trap of asking your friends and colleagues (who may know nothing about direct response marketing techniques) what they think of your newly designed flyer only to get put off by their comments that they think you have inserted too much text and that it doesn’t ‘look attractive’.
Image Based Marketing
Many companies make the mistake of trying to get “brand recognition”. Unless you are a huge national company with massive marketing clout you will struggle to achieve this. Smaller companies need to focus on getting a direct response from their marketing. If your initial leaflet design concept revolves around your company logo and some nice looking pictures don’t be surprised if you get virtually no calls from your campaign. It might work for multinational companies with millions of pounds to spend on developing their brand awareness, but “pound for pound” will almost never be the most effective way for you to spend your money.
Specific Design Mechanisms
Heading & Subheading
Putting your company name at the top of the flyer is a wasted opportunity. You need a catchy hook to get them to look at the rest of the flyer. A good heading might include your foremost USP, a guarantee, or special offer for example.
Make Them An Offer They Can’t Refuse
Don’t just tell them what service you provide, make them a fantastic offer that they must take you up on before a specific deadline. Build the offer up with a story if you can. Make it believable, giving them a reason why this offer is a one-off offer and if they don’t take you up on it they will miss out for good!
Vouchers
Put a voucher in your leaflet is a great way to market via leaflet drops. It is a fantastic mechanism to get people to keep your leaflet and gives it real value. Make sure your voucher has a dotted line around the outside and has a very bold deadline to it. A deadline is absolutely essential for getting clients to call you straight away.
Testimonials
Proof from satisfied clients of yours will be the best advertisement you will ever have. A good testimonial will probably have a client stressing a particular benefit or overcoming a potential ‘objection’ to using your service.
Guarantee
If you guarantee an aspect of your service it will give a prospect client confidence in you. A guarantee can be anything from a moneyback guarantee, a lowest price guarantee, guaranteed timelines, 100% satisfaction guarantee, or quality guarantee for example.
Website
A leaflet gives you a limited amount of space to convey to your prospect client why they should use you. If you have an excellent web site which markets your company really well it is important to direct your clients to it from your leaflet. Don’t forget to give a reason to go to your web site, perhaps you are giving away special offers or consumer information for example, or maybe they can book or order on-line. There are specific things that you can do with your web site such that it will run alongside your leaflet campaign, and make it more effective. If you are not experienced with maximising the potential of your web site please get in touch with us as we have some of the best contacts in the industry who are able to advise you in how to fully exploit this medium.
Contact Information
The way you present your contact information on a flyer will affect your response. You should always have a contact address on a leaflet (even if you’re not local to the area you are dropping the flyers in). Rogue tradespeople don’t have addresses on their flyers and prospect clients know this! Consider also the type of phone number you’re using.
You may get more calls if you use the local area code for the area you are dropping the leaflets in, even if your office is not from that area. People like to use local companies and will be attracted to the local number as a consequence. These days obtaining a ‘local telephone number’ for an area that is then rooted through to your main office is VERY cheap to do. You should also consider having a freephone number that people can call (some people will call an 0800 number but will not want to pay the expense of paying for a local rate call!). Never put your mobile number as a main contact number.
Most people will not want to spend their money on expensive mobile charges, and besides it won’t help you to look professional. If you do not have someone to take calls in office hours it is very straightforward to have your business landline number diverted to your mobile phone or a remote messaging centre to take your calls whilst you are out (or indeed do both together!).
Professional Bodies
If your company belongs to any reputable (but relevant) trade bodies it is a very good idea to include this information in your leaflet. A logo with a brief explanation of why it is beneficial for a prospect client to choose a company who is a member of this body is all that is required.
Testing Your Leaflet
Once you have got together a design you’re happy with don’t forget to test your leaflet. It is recommended when conducting tests to use a reasonable sample size (at least 10,000 leaflets) otherwise the statistics you gain will be very difficult to analyse, or worse – probably meaningless. The best way to improve your leaflet, once you have something that works, is to conduct an “A-B” test using two different flyers to ascertain which one is the most effective. There are specific ways too conduct this type of test however if it is to be truly representative. The only way I would recommend doing this test is to systematically mix two equal numbers of Leaflets A with Leaflets B and distribute them to the same area on the same day (remembering to deliver to a reasonable sample size). As long as each distinct flyer has a separate reference number which is tracked when clients call (or some other way of easily distinguishing them) you will have enough information to know which leaflet is the most effective. Marketing via leaflet drops need to be tested this way.
Whilst all the above will help you maximise the response from your marketing campaign don’t fall into paralysis by analysis. The only way to be successful is to act (and actually put something out!). So good luck with your marketing campaign and don’t forget we are always here to help.
Graphic Design & Printing
Hallway Distribution is a specialist door-to-door distribution company. We do however have a large amount of experience working with graphic designers and printers to ensure that our client’s promotional material not only looks great but is also delivered on time and to specification! If you are at that initial stage of planning your campaign and you want to save a couple of days time trying to find a good printer or designer then call us. We have some of the best contacts in the industry, which will probably save you hundreds of pounds, plus a great deal of stress! I should also stress that we receive no commission from recommending you to other businesses, the gain for us is the more successful you become through leaflet distribution the more successful we become! Good business is about developing good relationships!
How Can I Make My Business REALLY Successful?
Learning how to run a successful business is no different to learning how to make (for example) your leaflet distribution campaign successful, in that it is all about getting the right information. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, all the good information is out there, you just need to seek the right sort of success information for your business. If you need pointing in the right direction then get in touch and let me know, with some of the many marketing and business development contacts I have developed over the years I have no doubt that I will be able to put you in touch with people who can help.
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