Leaflet Distribution

How To Have a Memorable Leafleting Campaign

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , ,

Today I am going to share with you five secrets to make your direct marketing leafleting campaign memorable.

Breaking the mould and capturing people’s attention with your direct marketing campaign is not easily done. But with the right idea, design and strategy, your mailing can have a huge impact. All businesses crave a memorable leafleting campaign.

1. Think laterally to capture the imagination of your target audience

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Successful direct marketing is about making your mailing stand out and the most effective way to do that is by capturing the imagination of your readers. People get used to seeing the same thing, it’s boring. If you give them something they are not familiar with they are more likely to want more.
However, don’t go overboard. It’s not about shocking people. But at the same time you need to think about an arresting way to engage them with the right image, the first thing they’ll notice about your mailing and strapline. And the best way to do this isn’t always by making your direct marketing directly relevant to your product or service.

Think laterally, ask your readers a question, and tell them something surprising. One of the most successful campaigns I’ve ever worked on for a carpet cleaning company asked readers: ‘What does your carpet tell you about you?’ The response, as people glanced guiltily down at their floors, was overwhelming.

2. Sell the feeling that the product or service will give

The most important thing to remember when working out your strategy is to focus on your target audience. How will they benefit from the product or service that you’re offering?
Drone on about the features of your product or service and they’ll soon lose interest. But tell them how good it will make them feel and they’ll want to know more.

An example I often refer to when explaining this concept is selling plane tickets. People don’t care about the features of the plane they’ll be travelling on. They’re sold by the lure of a holiday of a lifetime or of being reunited with friends and family.

So the best agencies will not only take the time to understand what your business does, but will think about your product or service from the point of view of your target audience. What’s the benefit for them? That’s what you should be selling if you want a memorable leafleting campaign.

3. Research your target audience thoroughly

You can blow the budget by having a beautifully glossy leaflet with a captivating image and strapline. But if you don’t know anything about the people you’re targeting you could be throwing your money away.

I once worked on a campaign for a landscape gardening company who wanted to launch their new tree felling service. Despite my reservations, they went ahead with an incredibly expensive campaign. Unsurprisingly, due to the large amount of flats and social housing in the area it failed miserably.

By contrast, I recently worked on a campaign delivering leaflets in envelopes, the aim was to prove that leaflets delivered this way would be more beneficial to the client, and it was a roaring success. It was a popular, effective and memorable campaign.

In the last four years the door drop market has changed. Advances in mapping technology (which we’ve helped develop) mean you’re able to target very specific sectors of the demographic. So the more you know about your target audience, the more you can focus on what will be memorable for them.

4. Don’t think just in terms of return on investment

Often people keep your leaflet for future reference or even if someone discards your leaflet immediately, they still have to pick it up to do so. They may not read it but you can guarantee that they will glance at it for five seconds, even if they’re not aware they’ve done it. It’s human nature.

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And then, the next time they’re on the high street or searching the internet and see your product, they’ll notice it. Even if they can’t remember where they’ve seen it before.
In this sense, a door drop leafleting campaign is a unique and powerful medium with a huge scope to reach everyone it targets.

The sales benefits of a direct marketing leafleting campaign may not be tangible. I’ve managed campaigns that didn’t get the response rate the client had hoped for. But often shortly afterwards the client has seen a huge boost elsewhere – in internet sales, for example – despite not carrying out any other marketing. This is no coincidence.

The success of a door drop campaign can’t be measured in return on investment alone. The effects are subliminal. So, in a sense, every campaign is successful, whether or not it’s memorable. That’s not to say that the memorable ones don’t have the greatest impact, of course!

5. Have a strategy and think of your leafleting campaign as a taster

The main aim of a leaflet campaign is to give your potential customer a taste of what you’re offering. It’s like an invitation or a recommendation. So if your mailing is memorable, you’ll have tantalised your customer and left them wanting to know more.

Nowadays, people like to research things for themselves, especially online. Pique their interest and they’ll look up your product or service.

A direct marketing campaign should never be just a one off. Most campaigns will be successful if they’re ongoing. It takes two or three attempts for people to start to understand that your product or service is around.

My most successful clients are those who have a budget and a strategy for the year. They make a plan and stick to it. And they’re the ones that conduct the most memorable campaigns and see the best results.

Want to know more about how our technology has revolutionised the door drop market?

email: [email protected]

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Make Your Leaflet Drop Campaign a Success

Direct Mail, Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , , ,

It doesn’t matter whether you are an estate agent, a small business owner or own a restaurant, even a franchise or agency. One thing remains the same; you want to make your leaflet drop campaign a success.

Not just succeed in the sense that it gets produced and delivered through letterboxes, but work in the sense that it grabs people’s attention, i.e. compels them to take action and contact you.

Easier said than done, right?

Not when you have been creating truly memorable leaflet drop campaigns for the last decade. Here are our best practice tips for producing leaflet drops guaranteed to secure new business.

TIP 1: Research your market

The first, and perhaps, most important thing you can do (which people tend to spend the least amount of time on) is research your market.

imagesMost of us feel that we’re a professional in our field, and quite rightly so. However, just as consumers wouldn’t buy a car without reading up about it first, it’s wise to spend as much time as you can seeing if your product or service is right for the intended market before rushing into spending money advertising it.

TIP 2: Consider your price or offer

Your price or offer is an important factor in determining how much of a response you’ll generate. One of the best things you can do is get comparisons from your competitors. This will help you decide where you want to position yourself within the market – top, middle or bottom in price.

A question we often ask our clients is, ‘Are you trying to increase your market share on selling at almost no profit, or are you prepared to sacrifice a higher response to win business that makes more of a profit?’

TIP 3: Think about your start date

Think carefully about the best time for selling your service or product. For instance, it’s not a good idea to sell Christmas trees in the summer! Supply and demand principles also apply, so it’s worth planning ahead to get this one right as it’ll maximise your response rate no end.

TIP 4: Don’t be a one-hit wonder

We’ve seen this happen lots of times. A client carries out a leaflet drop campaign and gets either a great response or a poor response and on that basis chooses not to carry out any further activity.

In our experience, the most successful clients formulate a campaign that may run weekly, monthly or quarterly, the point is it’s a leaflet drop campaign. This gets the message across that they are in their chosen area to stay and it reminds the potential customer to use them. Sometimes it’s only after we’ve seen something three times, do we then have confidence in trying it.

TIP 5: Create the right image

Ensure your leaflet portrays your service or product correctly. Your leaflet essentially becomes your shop window so, not surprisingly, it needs to be designed and printed to match the quality of service or product you want to get across.

If you’re selling something at an economy level, you may want to print in only one or two colours on a thinner paper stock, whereas if you’re selling a high ticket item, you need to portray this by using a professional designer, full colour, and a more expensive paper or board.

TIP 6: Enlist the right expertise

If you’ve followed the tips above, it would be a complete waste of your time and money, and ultimately your response from your leaflets, if you opt to work with a door drop company that doesn’t sufficiently charge to deliver all of your leaflets.

As a very simple rule of thumb, it takes, on average, 7 hours to deliver 1,000 leaflets, which is around 2-3 per minute in your average street. Therefore you would expect the price to be over £55 per thousand to include transportation, office and warehouse costs.

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Choose Wisely Grasshopper

Advertising, Business Branding, Leaflet Distribution, , , ,

downloadWhen I was younger I would watch a TV show called Kung-Fu, which was full of old Chinese proverbs, it was about a Shaolin monk who was always called Grasshopper by his teachers. I use the following quite regularly in my daily life today and that is; choose wisely.

The following post is exactly why you should choose wisely in your business especially when advertising it. There have always been frauds and scams carried out by unscrupulous people looking to relieve decent law-abiding citizens of their hard-earned cash. But with the introduction of technology, fraud has become easier as far more people can be approached by the fraudsters and scammers.

The telephone has become one of the instruments where the bad people contact their victims with promises of easy wealth.

Many people have been conned by the false promises of money to be made by investing in fine wines, and many people have lost thousands by scammers convincing them to invest their pensions in non-existent financial schemes.

All these corrupt telephone callers sound plausible and convincing, and now they have another weapon they can use to dupe people: The Internet!

The website

Now it is possible for them to design and put up a highly convincing website to draw people into their dodgy schemes.

The opening up of the internet and the comparative ease to design and put a professional looking website up on it has made it simple for people to start their own businesses.

A majority of new businesses launched online are not frauds and scammers and are in fact genuine offerings. However, some don’t have the expertise their websites’ suggest and ultimately don’t have the ability to provide the services they are offering.

The chancer

Among the genuine businesses operating online, there is a group of people who, although are not actually dishonest can cause unsuspecting people as much financial damage as the fraudsters.

These people are looking for a business that, on the surface, seems easy to set up and operate. They then create an attractive looking website selling these services and hope to develop clients and income streams without any real knowledge of the business they have decided to operate.

One of the businesses they try to operate in is leaflet distribution.

They think it is easy

It is easy to see why these chancers think leaflet distribution is an easy business to enter. To them it is just a matter of convincing some small business owners to hire them, then get some leaflets printed, hire a few students or unemployed people to distribute them and then send an invoice. It’s easy, even their grandmother could do it. Only she couldn’t.

Leaflet distribution & door drop marketing is a business that requires management skills and the availability and deployment of modern technology.images

Soon the poor business owner who hired them realises they have been seriously misled. They begin to realise this when no orders or enquiries are forthcoming from their campaign. They also realise their mistake when the so-called distribution company they hired cannot provide proof of any deliveries because they do not have GPS tracking, and have been using inexperienced and untrustworthy people to deliver the leaflets.

It is not long before they realise they have wasted their marketing budget; their money.

This is what a chancer, a person looking for a quick buck, can do to a business: it can do lasting damage. And it can do lasting damage to our industry too.

How many of the people who have fallen foul to the imposters, offering cheap prices, posing as door drop experts are left with the belief that leaflet distribution does not work?

So what should business owners beware of when they are faced with a glamorous website promising them the earth?

What to look for & choose wisely

You should ask the people behind the site what they are really offering.

Does their blog only have one or two posts from months, even years ago?
Is the content on their website well written and informative?
Do they have any reviews or case studies from previous clients?
Do they monitor the leaflet distribution using the latest GPS technology?
Do they supply a detailed report of the distribution including dates and GPS logs of the delivery?
Do they provide a complete leaflet design service and do they offer examples of work they have done?

Choose wisely with Hallway Distribution not only offer every capability listed above but we also offer expert advice to help you get the best results from your leafleting campaign. This includes the best time and the best place for launching a marketing campaign, how to present your business with the design of the leaflet, what material to print it on and much more.

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Door To Door Marketing Techniques

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , , ,

Door to door marketing can be intimidating, but it also offers a lot of benefits as a strategy for building your business. The chance to directly engage with potential customers and pitch your offerings in person brings a connection with your audience that commercial advertising can’t match. Understanding some basic marketing techniques can help beginners make the most of these interactions.

Location Is Key

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A key part of any door to door marketing campaign is picking the right neighborhoods to canvas. If you already have a database of previous customers, the neighborhoods or post codes that show up most frequently are good places to start. If you’re the local ice cream parlor, for example, walking around the neighborhoods within walking distance or a short drive away and handing out coupons for a free small cone at the beginning of summer can be a great way of either introducing yourself or reminding folks that you’re there at the start of your biggest sales period.

Hone Your Pitch

A successful transaction rarely is as simple as knocking on the door of the fortunate customer who already needs what you’re selling. You’ll have a very short amount of time to convince the resident to patronize your business, and many times the best way to do so is to sell a larger idea rather than your specific product. Someone might not think they need a pest control service, but if you ask them if they want to protect their home from termites it might resonate. Use whatever strengths you have if you’re naturally funny, start with a joke, for example. But whatever you do, make sure you’re focused on the customer and their wants and needs.

Make Materials Count

If you’re going door to door marketing to promote your local business, the fact that nobody answers when you knock doesn’t mean your marketing work is over it just means your prospective customer will have to read about what you have to offer instead of listening to you say it via a leaflet. As you are working your script to present in person, don’t neglect the brochures or other marketing material that you’ll leave behind if nobody’s there. Make sure they catch the eye, that they include a call to action or incentive to become a customer and that they’re placed somewhere hard to miss, like hanging from a doorknob or placed in the mailbox.

Set Realistic Goals

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Doing door to door marketing isn’t going to make you a millionaire over night. Be realistic about your expectations and also be realistic with any canvassers you hire to go door to door for you. It can be a frustrating job with a lot of rejection, and it’s only worse if someone goes in expecting nothing but credit card numbers and referrals. Whatever your business is, and wherever it is located, you should be able to find out an expected response rate to serve as a benchmark. Use that as an initial guide to determine whether your own efforts are effective, and adjust as necessary if you fall below that threshold.

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Print vs Digital

Advertising, Direct Mail, Leaflet Distribution, ,

We now have the scientific proof. Print is better than digital for advertising.

Despite the enormous migration to electronic media, neuroscience research shows that paper-based content and ads offer special advantages in connecting with our brains.

HImage result for print vs digital imagesow many times over the years have we have been told print is dead?

Ceefax (remember that?) was going to kill newspapers and videos were going to replace colour brochures. Now both theories were confined to history while print carried on.

But then the digital world exploded onto the scene. It did at the time, look as though print had met its nemesis.

Marketing people began turning to electronic mail and the internet to sell their products and services. Some even openly disparaging print as old-fashioned and doomed. However, some of the savvy marketers continued to use print to sell products because they believed it still worked and worked better than digital.

Now science has proved us right.

What we found the print vs digital facts

So, what is the scientific community telling us about printed messages being more effective than digital ones?

A study by a Canadian neuromarketing firm, True Impact, compared the effects of digital media in the form of display ads and email against a direct mail piece.

To carry out this test, the firm used two technologies. These two technologies were a high-resolution EEG that measured brain waves and eye-tracking techniques.

The critical metrics evaluated in this study were attention, persuasiveness and ease of understanding. In all three cases, the direct mail piece was found to be easier to process and proved to be better for brand recall mentally.

Those participants exposed to the direct mail piece had recall 70% higher than those exposed to the digital advert.

Now we cannot expect a mass exodus from digital marketing to direct mail and door drop leaflets. However it does prove that print-based advertising still has a significant part to play in the marketing plans of advertising managers across the land. And we cannot expect digital marketing to disappear either. The print vs digital argument will roll though.

The future is going to be print and digital working together.

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Any good direct mail piece or door drop leaflet must also have an online presence.

Despite the popularity of print in getting a sales message across, many people feel comfortable ordering from a website, and print can drive this valuable traffic to an online order or enquiry form.

However, a printed leaflet can only work if it has been carefully constructed. It must be well written, designed and printed by people who know their craft.

Hallway Distribution can not only advise on where to distribute your printed marketing leaflets, we also provide copywriting, and a design service all of the highest quality.

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Marketing Via Leaflet Drops

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , , , , ,

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.

Check out more advertising tips right here.

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Getting Business Customers Through Leafleting

Business Branding, Direct Mail, Leaflet Creation, Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , ,

Plenty of research shows people need to see your marketing message several times, in different ways,  before they buy.

If a customer says no, is it game over? Be honest, do you give up after your first knock back? Many business people do. But that’s a mistake. Here we will outline ways of getting business customers through leafleting.download

“If at first you don’t succeed try try and try again.” I know this saying has become a cliché, but quite often clichés have something to tell us.

The message here, of course, is you should never give up. The problem with selling a product or service is in most cases it is usually a marathon, not a sprint (another cliché)

Repetition, Repetition.

Just because a customer says no is not a reason to give up. The sad thing is though, many business people do.

Plenty of research has been carried out proving that your marketing message will have to be seen several times before a sale or response is achieved.

If you ask any salesperson, they will say they rarely make a sale after the first contact with their prospective customer. It has been said a salesperson has to make contact seven times before they make a sale. Of course, that figure is an average one. Some people will respond after the first or second call, others may take longer.

Successful users of leaflet distribution will tell you sales of their product or services increase when the customer gets used to seeing their leaflet drop through their letterbox at regular intervals. The more your prospects read your message, the more chance you have of making a sale. It’s always better to contact 5,000 prospects 5 times than 25,000 just once. Getting business customers through leafleting works best this way.

Decide What Results You Need

What do you want your leaflet to do?

You must make it clear to the prospect what your leaflet is about and what you want them to do.

Do you want them to contact you by e-mail?
Do you want them to visit your website?
Do you want them to telephone you?
Do you want them to visit your store?

Whatever your call to action is, your headline and the copy must lead the prospect to do what you ask.

Select The Right Areas

If you were promoting home extensions or loft conversions there would be little demand for these on social housing estates, wouldn’t there? If you’re promoting a gardening business, there would be less point in targeting flats.

Selecting the right areas is a hugely important factor when preparing a leaflet campaign. There is no point in trying to sell a product where there is obviously no demand for it. You will save time and money by having your leaflets delivered to the prospects most likely to want your product or service.

Now, you won’t get this perfect the first time round and you shouldn’t expect to. This can be tested and refined each time you carry out a campaign learning from the previous results, which areas performed best, where you got the most enquiries and sales from and so on.

These are just some of the many ways you can make sure your leaflets are distributed to the people most likely to buy your product or service.

Stand Out From The Crowd

Remember you may be competing with other leaflets and letters arriving through your prospects letterbox. You want them to be attracted to your leaflet above all the others.

To help yourself stand out why not use a professional photographer if you are putting pictures of your product on your leaflet? If your budget stretches to it, use a larger leaflet. The print cost will be higher but distribution will normally be the same for an A4 or A5 single sheet leaflet and you are more likely to stand out on the doormat.

Why stop there? You can have your leaflet cut to a special shape. This will definitely catch your prospective customer’s eye.

The aim is to get your message read before their attention moves elsewhere.

Use Fonts, Styles And Text Correctly

Typefaces can tell your reader a lot about you and your business, so you must choose them carefully. The fonts you choose will also influence your prospects as to whether you are a safe and trustworthy company to do business with.

Don’t use more than two and use them in different sizes and weights. Make sure the typeface you select makes your text easy to read. Remember this text is carrying your message to your prospective customer.

Picking the correct font is so important that it would be advisable to get some expert advice. Ask us to help you with this aspect of getting business customers through leafleting.

Choosing Your Size And Paper Stock

The size of your leaflet really depends on the length of your message and what you want to put on your leaflet. We suggest keeping it short in most cases and simply increasing the size of your content to increase the impact when your leaflet lands on the doormat.

You do not want to squeeze too much text on a leaflet that is too small. This will make your look amateurish and put people off reading it.

downloadIf you are selling big ticket items like home improvements an A4 leaflet should normally be the minimum allowing you to include large images of the products you’re offering. If your offer is simple and your text short and sweet, then an A5 leaflet will be fine. But if you can afford it, the bigger the leaflet the louder the message.

The paper you choose for your door drop leaflet will also reflect the image you are putting out to your target audience. Using a cheap paper to save on price is usually a false economy.

When a prospective customer picks up a leaflet or folder printed on a good heavy stock that feels expensive, they are more likely to read it and keep it, as they will perceive it to be something of value. A cheap lightweight paper will send out the message that your offer and your company lack gravitas.

Don’t Stop

As I said at the beginning of this article, selling is a sprint, not a marathon and often, along the way to success, there will be some disappointments.

You should not abandon your leaflet distribution just because the response has not been up to your expectations because there could be a number of reasons why the response did not live up to your expectations.

However, if you follow the advice given in this article you will be sure to achieve success.

To make sure all of these important elements are in place when planning a leaflet distribution campaign, it would be wise to put all of the elements in the hands of the experts. Getting business customers through leafleting is not as hard as you might think.

Hallway Distribution has been managing leaflet door drops for many years, and we have a huge amount of knowledge and experience in what will work and make a successful leaflet campaign.

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What Is Your Leaflet Delivery Cost

Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , , , ,

In this business the question I get asked the most is, “what is your leaflet delivery cost?”

Allow me to explain how I get to a certain figure.

downloadWhen I first started, I had a slight advantage in that I was already established as a door to door distributor, so I knew many of the pitfalls and problems people could face when undertaking this kind of work. This must be conveyed to the client when discussing the all-important matter of money and what they expect in return for it. Your prices must be competitive, but not too low as cheap will have an undermining impact on results. When setting a price you must be able to explain why you have set it so.

One vital thing to consider is that some business owners will want their leaflet delivered on its own and not with any other advertising material, this method is called a solus drop or solus delivery, this will in turn increase the amount you should be charging for the job.
Many distribution companies try to under-cut the competition, but ask yourself this question for a moment. If you are paying a person to deliver let’s say 1000 leaflets for you and you are paying just £30 you will be wasting your money, here is the simple maths. It takes on average 7.5 hours to deliver to one thousand households, that equates to only £4 an hour way less than the minimum wage. Ask yourself, would you work for that?

If you operate your door to door distribution business as a one man band then perhaps you can charge another small business £45 per thousand households, £6 per hour. But that has to be the lowest you can charge the customer if you intend to make real money and earn a proper living from this.The price you charge your clients is governed by several things, for example is the area going to be delivered to a rural one or full of easy to deliver terrace houses. Are there large housing estates where the dwellings flow or is it an exclusive residential part of town full of large houses with long driveways. Take into consideration also what the landscape is like for example, is it hilly or flat, are there lots of shops and businesses to deliver too? These are questions you need to ask yourself as time is of the essence with this type of work, the quicker it is completed the better. Of course we all walk at different speeds, I for one walk faster than the average person so some distributors you employ could be discouraged by being paid inadequately for the time it takes to complete the delivery process.

imagesThis should answer the question of, you charge how much to deliver and justify your leaflet delivery cost.
Now these above figures are mainly for the purpose of a solo drop, where the leaflets are not being delivered with anything else. If the customer is happy that their leaflet can be delivered with another then and only then can you give a lower quote per thousand. Obviously you never deliver two competing leaflets at the same time, for example two estate agents or two pizza companies, this does not make good business sense.

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Discover Leafleting Benefits

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , , , , ,

What are the exact benefits of a local leaflet distribution campaign, is it right for your business?

leaflet-advertising-imgWhilst the 21st Century digital world offers a wealth of modern marketing techniques that can deliver healthy returns on investment and a great cost per conversion, for local businesses particularly, “old school” leaflet and flyer distribution is still popular and can yield impressive results.  In fact, done well, there are few techniques, online or offline, that are as effective.

This form of direct marketing, also known as leafleting or door to door marketing is simple, affordable and effective at bringing in new customers and boosting sales.  It involves delivering unaddressed flyers to homes in the local area. If you offer a service locally, such as takeaway food, window cleaning or a taxi service, leaflet distribution is an ideal way to spread the word about your business. When it comes to launching a new venture, such as a shop or restaurant, this type of advertising is particularly effective.  If, on the other hand, your business is already established in the area, leafleting can be used to advertise a future event or promotion, or to deliver money off coupons to incentivise your target audience to buy now rather than later in a drive to boost sales.

In addition, you can select delivery areas to ensure you are reaching your target market, such as families or affluent consumers, and unlike TV or radio advertising, you can also have confidence that your advertisement will be seen.  By choosing leaflet advertising you are leaving nothing to chance. You’re not reliant on your prospective customers buying a newspaper, listening to the radio, checking the Yellow Pages, or doing an online search. You’ve put your business message on the doormat of the people that you most want to see it; they will need to pick it up and so inevitably, it will be seen.

Advertising campaigns based on leaflet distribution aren’t for everyone, but if you are a business owner managing a local business of any size there is compelling evidence to suggest that there are big rewards to be had here.

So, what makes an effective leafleting campaign?

  1. Eye catching design
  2. Clear message
  3. Professionally printed
  4. A call to action
  5. Targeted distribution
  6. Measurement of the response

Creating and Printing your door drop

In the past, poor-quality leaflets and flyers have given leafleting a bad name.  To make your leaflet or flyer stand out, good design and professional printing are essential. The creativity of your campaign will have a significant impact on the level of response.  Of course, the good news is that leaflets and flyers offer a great deal of creative freedom, restricted only by the size of the letter box, the look shape and weight of your leaflet or flyer are all up to you.  You can use more than one creative design or have different versions of the same leaflet if you are targeting different groups of people.  On the doormat, your leaflet will be competing with other door drops, post and newspapers. Your challenge is to create a flyer that captures the attention of the recipient and avoid it going straight into the recycling box!  Even if it just gets glanced at by a prospective customer as they pick it up from the doormat, a well-designed leaflet will grab their attention sufficiently to create an interest in your business and develop an almost subconscious respect for it, such that even if they do not require your services personally, they may mention your business to family members, friends or colleagues that do.  A printing company will be able to guide you as to what is possible and what isn’t from a creativity point of view.

A call to action

Your marketing message should be clear, with a call to action. Offers and coupons work well as an incentive and are likely to be kept and used.

Leaflet distribution

Distribution is a vital part of the whole campaign, and there are several ways to deliver your flyers. Many small-business owners pound the pavements themselves or pay casual staff to do the delivery. If you use outside leaflet distributors, ensure you employ trustworthy people who will deliver every leaflet to every house in a way that reflects well on your business.

If you are sending out large numbers of leaflets, there are specialist door-drop delivery companies that provide a professional service. The Royal Mail also offers a service whereby it delivers flyers with the post to specific postcode areas.

Leafleting is generally seen as a blanket-marketing method. However, as mentioned above you can take a targeted approach to your door drops and improve response levels. Study your local area and assess which streets are most likely to have residents that fit your target market.

Also for effective targeting, consider the timing of your campaign.  Could the sales of your product or service be affected by the seasons or a particular time of the year? For example, the Landlord of a local pub may wish to offer a Christmas party menu throughout December and the New Year period and may decide to use a leafleting campaign to promote it.  However, timing will be key here as distributing too early may cause the leaflet to be viewed as irrelevant and put in the bin and distributing too late may miss opportunities if prospective customers have been organised and already booked their Christmas Party meal.

Measuring the response to your campaign

Leaflet distribution gives you full control over where you advertise, making it easier to accurately gauge performance and success.  It’s a good idea to use a promotion or coupon to help you track response to your leafleting activity. Give different campaigns or delivery areas unique promotional codes or coupons so you can compare and measure the results.

Like other direct marketing techniques, leafleting is a numbers game and the bottom line is cost per response. Once you have calculated this, you can roll out the most successful creative approaches to the most responsive areas.

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Why Does Your Leaflet Advertising Fail

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , , ,

In my dealings with small business owners, I have discovered something very interesting: Leaflet advertising almost NEVER works for them. As you can imagine, since I own a leaflet advertising / marketing company that I grew from nothing using direct mail marketing, this comes as a huge shock to me.

It seems that, contrary to what has been proven over and over by thousands of other business owners, leaflet advertising actually doesn’t produce new customers, leads or revenue! I hope you can sense my sarcasm there.
Now, I will grant that not all marketing works for everybody. That’s a fact, too. But the truth is, marketing does work and it can work for you if you do it correctly.

Below are the 3 of the most common reasons why marketing hasn’t worked for you:

You don’t target your ideal market
You don’t communicate clearly
You give up

Now, please notice that they all start with “You”. There’s a reason for that. If you take care of the points above, you will have a change of heart — and revenue. The key is to find the marketing channel that works the best for your business and industry. However, if you commit the marketing sins above, even the best marketing will fall flat. That’s just the way it goes.

So let’s talk about how to avoid them. For each problem, I’ll lay out how you can solve it with direct marketing.

Problem: You don’t target your ideal market
Solution: Ask for a targeted mailing list based on the demographics of your current best customers.

For every business there is a smaller segment of the greater population that is more likely to need, want or respond to that business’s marketing. So, say you are a lawn care company. The people most likely to respond to you are those who can afford to have someone else do the work and those who live in a free standing home. Even more specifically, you can assess your current customer list to get most common income level and home value. The key is to find who that is for your business, then ask to target those people.

Problem: You don’t communicate clearly
Solution: Use proven copywriting and graphic design techniques to deliver your message with clarity.

If your prospect doesn’t grasp the point of your advertisement in the first fraction of a second, you’ve lost them. That means you need to read through your copy and take out anything that would slow down the reader’s understanding of the message. Be clear and to-the-point. Then, match that text with an image that supports the message. Atention, Interest, Desire, Action!

Problem: You give up
Solution: DON’T!

Think about leaflets in terms of television commercials. Do you ever see a commercial just once? The answer is no, because even if you have, you wouldn’t remember it! Repetition is the key to establishing yourself in the mind of the prospect, building credibility and being remembered. If you aren’t committed to marketing, it just won’t work for you, so don’t bother. However, if you are committed, go ahead and plan for more business!
Once you’ve corrected these mistakes, there is nothing standing between you and a significant increase in new customers.

For help putting together a successful leaflet marketing campaign get in touch with us here at Hallway Distribution.

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