Tag Archives: leaflet delivery

Marketing Via Leaflet Drops

August 29, 2017Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategydoor to door leafleting, hallway distribution, leaflet campaign, leaflet delivery, leaflet distribution, leaflet drops, marketing via leaflet dropsCheltenham Leaflet Distribution

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.

Leaflet Landing Page

August 4, 2016Websitelanding page, landing pages, leaflet delivery, leaflet landing pageCheltenham Leaflet Distribution

Is Leaflet Distribution the equivalent of a Website Landing Page?

I was recently watching a video tutorial on landing pages. For those who are not aware of the term, a landing page is the first page on a website where prospective customers are directed by search engines, and its sole purpose in life is to get a response from these prospects.

It underlined the need for a landing page to be able to focus the reader’s attention on the need to respond to what was being asked of them, and that was to do something.

It could be a request to sign up to a newsletter.
To Download an e-book.
To request a brochure.
The landing page demanded a CTA, a Call to Action.

However, the video made it clear that the landing page can only ask the reader to do one thing.

One page for each call to action, a landing page is actually a sales letter to the reader, and like any good sales letter, it always ends with a call to action.

After the video finished I initially thought to myself, well how great the internet is to bring people all this information. Then it gradually began to dawn on me; haven’t I heard this somewhere else?

Landing Pages are Sales Letters
I had already accepted that a landing page was a sales letter; a sales letter on a screen, but haven’t we been seeing these sales messages on paper for years?

Then it dawned on me a landing page is really a sales leaflet; a sales leaflet on the internet.

Like a landing page, a leaflet has to persuade a prospect to a call to action.

Like a landing page, a leaflet should focus on one call to action.

However, the two mediums follow different paths when it comes to targeting their markets.

Internet marketers rely on SEO and high rankings on the internet pages to drive traffic to their websites.

Leaflet marketers take expert advice on the areas where their leaflets should be distributed to ensure a good response to their calls to action.

Although the two mediums are different, they have more in common than many people think.

And many people who use door drops have websites, and the door drop leaflets drive traffic to their landing pages, a case of the old helping medium the new one.

It would be foolish and blinkered to think that the internet has nothing to teach us. However, I believe those of us who are involved in leaflet distribution can feel confident that our method can stand up against other forms of marketing.

In fact, I believe the internet has something to learn from us.

The sole aim of a landing page and a sales leaflet is to sell, and selling has been around since the beginning of civilisation, and leaflet marketers know how to sell.

Plus, remember, there are more media choices than ever before; Over 600 television channels, Over 700 million websites, Over 9,000 newspapers and magazines and over 400 radio stations…. BUT Still Only One Letterbox!

Trust GPS Tracking

January 6, 2016GPS TrackingGPS tracking, leaflet delivery, leaflet distributionCheltenham Leaflet Distribution

Here is a question to ponder for a moment, is GPS Tracking in leaflet distribution as effective as you might be led to think?

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based navigation system that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites.

The system provides critical capabilities to military, civil, and commercial users around the world. The United States government created the system, maintains it, and makes it freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver.

In addition the EU is at an advanced stage with an alternative system called Galileo. The €5 billion project is named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. One of the aims of Galileo is to provide an indigenous alternative high-precision positioning system upon which European nations can rely, independently from the Russian GLONASS and US GPS systems, in case they were disabled by their operators. It is intended that the use of basic (low-precision) Galileo services will be free and open to everyone. The high-precision capabilities will be available for paying commercial users.

The current US system has made it possible for Satellite navigation in cars and is now becoming a popular method for companies to track their employees in various work situations and this now includes the tracking or logging of distributors carrying out Leaflet Distribution activities.

What are the main types of tracking device in use by distribution companies?

There are basically three types of GPS tracking devices

A simple logging device that can be purchased for about £20-£30 on the internet. When switched on and logged onto the satellite system the device pings the satellites every 5 seconds or so and records in its memory the position of the individual at that point in time. When the device is plugged into a computer the positioning data can be downloaded and displayed on Google Maps or Google Earth to show a trail that the individual has walked whist the device was switched on.
The second type of device can be more correctly called a GPS tracker. These are much more expensive than the simple logger and are about £90-£100 in addition they require a Sim card with data charges for connection to a mobile phone network. These work in a similar way to the GPS loggers but using a mobile phone network the positioning data can be transmitted to a computer server and via the internet a user can log onto the server and can view the distributors distribution track in real time. This makes the process of tracking distributors much less labour intensive but at much greater cost. In addition to the £90 for each device you have the cost of the mobile phone network connection at around £10 per month plus the cost of accessing the Server where the data is stored and this can be anything from £5-10 per month per distributor.
There is also a 3rd option using a smartphone which has GPS capability. It is possible to use a a tracking app like Map My Walk or Strava. These are basically a fitness apps which are used by walkers, runners and bikers to track their activity and can be used effectively to provide a fairly accurate track of their distribution activity. The app has a free version but it will use the data allowance of the users mobile phone account. It is however possible to turn data off and then upload the track to Map My Walks servers when they get home via WiFi.

Pros & cons

Deliverers are unsupervised whilst they are doing their work and theoretically a track of where they have delivered to could be a definitive record of when and where the work was done.

Also by asking the deliverer to carry a tracker you are effectively telling them that less than 100% delivery in the drop area is not acceptable and that you are effectively watching them.

The technology works but it is far from fool proof. Loggers seem to be stable and produce the best track but downloading the data to a PC is a time consuming task. It can be made easier by an experienced operator but managing the data produced by the logger is still a job to be done which will not be paid for by the client. The logger need to be connected (logged on) to the satellites before it will start working and satellites signals can be hidden by buildings and trees. Even the very basic action of switching on the device needs to be done or remembered to be done by the deliverer. Similarly the deliverer needs to charge the device and remember to do this well before the planned delivery session. There are often incidents where the operative forgets to switch on the device and doesn’t realise this and completes the delivery. In these circumstances what is to be done? Would you make the deliverer do the job again?

Live trackers (loggers with a mobile phone data connection) have similar problems to loggers but as they are uploading the track to a server. It is possible minimise some of the problems of the logger. Firstly it will show you if the tracker is switched on and the deliverer delivering – or not. It will give you real time information about the deliverer’s activity – you don’t have to wait until the logger is back in the possession of the manager. The data does not need to be downloaded to a PC but the track displayed on the computer will still need to be managed.

Only a professional Leaflet distribution Co will properly use the tools

A track showing the paths to houses have been walked is not proof that a particular item was pushed through a letterbox so is never going to be proof of delivery and needs to be used in conjunction with effective management systems
The signal from the satellite can be lost and when this happens there will be no track of the deliverers activity – did they deliver to that area or not? And what do you do in these circumstances? Other back checking data will verify the true situation.
Loggers and trackers are expensive technology, they get lost, they become faulty or get damaged, batteries run out and wear out. If you have 50 delivery people in your team and they all have a tracker or logger, that’s a lot of equipment to purchase and maintain – only a professional company with good financial resources will be able to use these tools.
Despite the questions can GPS tracking make a difference?

GPS tracking should be seen only as a tool in the whole deliverer management system. A successful distribution company will have management systems in place to ensure that only the right people are employed to do the work. In this they will be motivated to do it for a number of reasons, for the exercise, or because they like working outside or because they can do it in their own time at their own pace (within clients time requirements of course) and not necessarily just for the money. However they will be paid a fair rate for the work they are being asked to carry out. The deliverer will be properly trained how to do the delivery. eg how to keep leaflet folding to a minimum, how to deliver properly in flats. How to deal with householders who don’t want the leaflets and importantly what they can do to show that the work has been properly done.