Tag Archives: leaflet distribution

Embrace Change

Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , , , ,

But We Have Always Done It This Way!!

If your business has been going for some years and appears to be doing well, it is easy to settle back and believe everything in the garden is rosy. But when someone from outside of your company or business comes along and points out that perhaps you should be further ahead than you are, what are you to do?

They point out that you must embrace change and state that the business is not advancing as fast as you should be but are just ticking over, and you are in danger of slowing down and perhaps stopping altogether in the not too distant future.

They also may point out that your methods are out of date, and what once worked for you, is now holding you back.

When faced with this situation, you may answer with the classic reply “But we have always done it this way” And this is usually where the problem lies.

Are you stuck in a rut?

The “We’ve always done it this way” (some of the most expensive words in business) has been the mantra of many businesses that have fallen into a rut and is best illustrated in the following story.

A little girl was watching her mother prepare a fish for dinner. Her mother cut the head and tail off the fish and then placed it into a baking pan. The little girl asked her mother why she cut the head and tail off the fish.

Her mother thought for a while and then said, “I’ve always done it that way – that’s how Grandma did it.”

Not satisfied with the answer, the little girl went to visit her grandma to find out why she cut the head and tail off the fish before baking it.

Grandma thought for a while and replied, “I don’t know. My mother always did it that way.”

So the little girl and the grandma went to visit Great Grandma to find out if she knew the answer.

Great-grandma thought for a while and said, “Because my baking pan was too small to fit in the whole fish”.

The point of the story is that the great-grandmother had limited resources and had to trim the fish, although she would have rather left the head and tail on.

The following generations of cooks just followed her, although over the years bigger and better baking pans must have become available.

When you began your business you may have started with a limited budget. But with your energy and determination, you made it work and enjoyed a lot of success regardless of the restrictions on your resources. Because of this success, you have kept on running your business the way you started; doing it the way you always have.

And this may have allowed you to fall into a rut, and be unaware of the opportunities you have missed that would have made your business grow quicker and be stronger than it is now.

Are you listening to the wrong advice?

If you have been using leaflet distribution to promote your business and you feel you may be in a rut, it may be because you have been using the same leaflet with the same layout and design with the same copy and offer.

You could also have been listening to the wrong people and taking the wrong advice and resisting changing your ways.

You must embrace change

The reason the Beatles career lasted as long as it did while Elvis Presley’s career stalled, is because the Beatles realised they could not stand still and churn out variations of their songs. So they experimented with new recording techniques.

They were also lucky in having an excellent mentor in George Martin who helped and advised them, and they took his advice.

Elvis did not embrace change and spent wasted years churning out formulaic films and below par records. His advisor was Colonel Tom Parker who was happy just to advise Elvis to keep doing what he had been doing for years.

Every Home Has A Letterbox

Leaflet distribution is one of the most cost-effective, targeted marketing solutions any business can use to promote their business.
But it isn’t just about putting leaflets through letterboxes, much more goes into a successful campaign than simply putting colourful pieces of paper onto doormats.

At Hallway Distribution we provide an honest, reliable, professional and unique service. With over 10 years in the industry, we have the knowledge, expertise and ideas to ensure that your leaflet distribution campaign achieves the best response and generates a maximum return on your investment.

We know each customer is different, so we’ll work together with you to develop a solid strategy and put a plan in place to create a campaign that has the best chance of success for you.

Share Button

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.

Share Button

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.

Share Button

Increase Marketing Strategy

Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , , , ,

Leaflet distribution is one of those things that you probably don’t ever think of when you hear the phrase “good marketing strategy”.

Many people consider the internet to be the best medium to market services or products because there are numerous ways to approach such a campaign. What these people don’t realise, however, is that leaflet distribution has evolved quite significantly throughout the years and nowadays it is a viable offline marketing strategy that doesn’t even cost much.

imagesLeaflet distribution nowadays has even more advantages in ways to increase marketing strategy than some of the most popular and common marketing campaigns. To understand what it really is all about we will have to take a closer look at how the professional companies handle the leaflet distribution process.

1. Price

What worries many people when they hear about leaflet distribution is the prices for this service because that involves designing, printing and distributing. However, some companies nowadays will not charge you for creating the design for your leaflet if you commit to order printing and distributing as well. And we all know that design can be the most expensive part of any marketing campaign. Finding a company willing to work on the design for free will save you money that you can use on ordering more leaflets for example.

2. Effectiveness

People usually worry about the effectiveness of a leaflet distribution campaign because they think that many of their leaflets won’t even be given to potential customers. Professionals, however, don’t allow this and supervise their employees to make sure all the leaflets have been handed to people. If for some reason there are leftover leaflets, they will be returned to you. In this case you can decide whether you want them to be distributed again or whether you will use them for something else.

3. Planning

A leaflet distribution campaign usually starts with a good amount of planning with the goal in mind to increase marketing strategy. When you choose the location where you want your leaflets to be distributed, the company you’ve chosen will integrate that into a digital map. This map will have boundaries that the distributors will not be allowed to leave and addresses that they must visit.

4. Tracking and reporting

Being able to see where your leaflets are being distributed in real time is of utmost importance. This gives you control over how the distribution process is going and certainty that your leaflets are being delivered as they are supposed to.

A professional leaflet distribution team will be equipped with GPS trackers so that you can check the progress of how everything is going in real time. The campaign will also be monitored by the company and the supervising team to make sure that no mistakes are made. The location of each individual distributor will be marked with a time stamp of every 5 seconds. In terms of reporting you will be able to see which addresses were visited and which houses were missed by the distribution team if any.

5. See for yourself

Not many companies offer this service, but some do. You will have the chance to go in a car with a supervisor and check on the distribution process yourself. This way you can be 100% sure that your leaflets are being delivered to the exact addresses that you want to target in your marketing campaign.

Without a doubt, leaflet distribution is one of the most effective types of ways to increase marketing strategy campaigns nowadays. Even though online campaigns have their advantages, offline marketing is still alive and kicking. And the best way to measure results, achieve maximum effectiveness and reach a large number of people with a low budget is through leaflet distribution.

Share Button

The Law Of Attraction

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just ask, besides what have you got to lose?

Share Button

Does Your Leaflet Get Results

Advertising, Direct Mail, , , ,

When a leaflet has been successful for some time, it is tempting to keep sending it out unchanged. It is also tempting to blame outside influences when the responses begin to slacken off. So ask yourself does your leaflet get results?

Perhaps a smarter question would be “Are the results the same as they used to be?”

It could be the economy; perhaps you have been targeting the wrong people. Maybe the product or service is losing its appeal.

imagesPerhaps you think leaflet distribution is no longer working and it is time to try something new. When things begin to go wrong, it is human nature sometimes to blame the messenger. However, blaming the messenger is hiding from the truth, and the real problem could be the message.

I am sure when you initially sent out your leaflet you were pleased with it and the response you received.

However, now some time has passed, and things may have changed for you and your business.

Perhaps there are features and benefits you can see in your offer that were not clear at the beginning. Maybe your product and service may have changed slightly.

Maybe your message has been seen so often that it is starting to look a little tired and weary.

They say familiarity breeds contempt. Perhaps the time has come for you to step back and review your leaflet with an older and more experienced eye.

And perhaps this more experienced eye will see some things you may have missed, or you think could be presented in a more persuasive way.

Of course, you may believe the following suggestions are things you have heard many times in the past, and I am sure they are. However, by taking a critical eye over old copy you often see how they can be improved to ensure your leaflet get results.

Your Headline

Does your original headline still have the power to hold your prospects attention? Does it highlight the major benefit you are offering your target audience?

Benefits not Features

How many times have you heard this? But it is one of the most common mistakes people make when they design their first leaflet.

The features of an umbrella are, it’s got a strong, wooden handle and durable cloth covering so it won’t break in the wind.

The benefits are it offers protection from the sun’s rays and keeps you dry in the rain.

What’s In It For Me?

The offering to the reader is the only thing that will interest your prospect. Does your copy make it clear to the reader that they are being offered something that will benefit them in some way?

Use the word “you” as much as possible.

Boost Your Credibility

The best way to do this is with testimonials. Have you asked your satisfied customers for testimonials?

Third-party validations will build credibility for you and what you are offering your prospects.

Make it Easy for Them to Respond

Have you told them how to respond?

The call to action or the contact details are one of the most important components of your leaflet. Make sure all contact numbers, e-mail addresses, and web links are easy to read.

Whatever your call to action is, you must tell the customer what to do and make it easy for them to understand. If you do not make it clear what they have to do, they will not respond.

The above tips are just a few of the things you can do to make sure your leaflet get results if it has not been performing so well. Remember the leaflet was successful for you in the past, and there is no reason for it not to be successful for you in the future.

Share Button

Leaflet Distribution Poor Relation

Leaflet Distribution, ,

leaflet distribution

imagesIt amazes me that when a discussion takes place around the merits of direct marketing, leaflet distribution is still seen as somehow the poor relation in the process, leaflet distribution is not and never should be regarded as a cheap alternative.

This unfortunate state of affairs was brought to my attention recently while I was reading a book on copy-writing and a chapter on direct mail. Part of this particular chapter gave the reader some twenty-eight creative tips for a mailing.

The creative tip that occupied the seventh position in this list was “The door drop mailer.”
Now some people will think the seventh place in a list of twenty-eight was not a bad position to be in, but it was not the position of seventh place that irked me, it was the way the idea that door drops were the poor relation to direct mail.

The benefits were described as having control of where the leaflet goes and the timing of its delivery. However, I believe these benefits should have been granted much more attention than the one sentence it was given. In fact, I did not think that door drop leaflets should have even been in the list of creative mailing tips.

The reason I think this is that I believe it reinforces the perception, in people who do not understand direct marketing, that leaflet distribution is a cheaper alternative to direct mail. When the truth is door drops can be an integral part of a larger advertising campaign, or they can be used as a separate campaign. Either way they have proved to be a highly effective way of reaching customers and creating sales.

Another area where I believe door drop leaflets do not receive the credit due to them is in the field of their creative work. Unlike the writers of direct sales letters, the copywriters of leaflets do not have the luxury of several pages to get their message across to the prospective customer.

They have to use a very limited space to get their sales message across. They employ their skills in copy-writing to produce short but informative text to emphasise the benefits of their offer as well as it features.

And you will not see “clever” tricks used in the creative work of leaflets. No sensible designer of a door drop leaflet will use the dubious techniques often seen in some magazines and on some so called “classy” website where an art director or designer places a large body of text on a solid black background with the type reversed out, making difficult if not impossible to read.

Door drop leaflets need to catch the attention of the prospect and make it easy for them to read the sales message. The writers and designers of these will use the correct typeface to utilise the limited space available.

Of course, the things I have described above are not widespread in the advertising and marketing business, but there are still a few unenlightened people who look upon leaflet distribution as the poor relation of direct mail. Let us all hope one day the penny will drop and they will see it for what it is, a valuable professional industry filled with highly talented and knowledgeable people who know how to use their talents and knowledge in creating sales for their customers.

Share Button

Leaflet Distribution Works

Leaflet Distribution, , ,

A wide range of companies and businesses both large and small use leaflet distribution because it works. They range from the giant multinationals such as Virgin Media down to small one man businesses.

Many of these businesses have used the medium of leaflet distribution to build healthy profitable enterprises. However, a large number of the smaller concerns often fall at the first hurdle.

The reason for this is so many people hoping to start a small business fall into the trap of believing door drop leaflets are a cheap alternative to other forms of advertising, and this is because at first glance it looks so easy.

No planning or money.

How many people who have decided to venture into the world of say, garden and tree maintenance, think they can launch their business on next to nothing?

imagesThey get a few cheap leaflets poorly designed, printed and distribute them themselves. When they receive no replies they get discouraged and give up. They are among the many that do not realise that to set up a business however small, demands some planning and most of all some investment into a marketing strategy.

Having a couple of hundred cheap leaflets poorly designed, printed and delivering them by hand in the blind hope someone will respond is guaranteed to fail. They do not realise the aim of distributing leaflets is not just to get a few odd jobs but to collect customers. Customers who will keep coming back to them time after time.

To achieve this, they need to make and draw up a proper marketing plan and strategy ideally in conjunction with a media specialist. It does not need to be an official business plan but some financial considerations should be incorporated to ensure the strategy can be afforded and how it can be made to work.

The leaflet.

Single A5 colour leaflets printed on coloured stock was often the norm for leaflet campaigns in the 80’s and 90’s. However in this day and age with full colour being so affordable a striking and eye catching leaflet can be produced very cost effectively.

Success is all in the copy.

An effective leaflet will have a good punchy stand out headline and well written copy listing the benefits the reader will enjoy taking advantage of. Some quality relevant pics but not overloaded with visuals and a persuasive CTA (Call to Action) to encourage the reader to take the next step and make contact.

Most people expect to see a web or mailing address on leaflets and a postal address will show that the business is properly established. It is easy to set up a simple webpage free of charge. This page should contain contact details and an expanded description of the services being offered. It should also contain the location of the business and a page where the visitor can leave their contact details.

More than just a mobile number.

However, if a having web page is not possible the leaflet should display a landline telephone number along with a mobile number. Having just a mobile number and no other contact details does not inspire confidence in prospective customer’s minds.

There is the added disadvantage of the mobile being switched off or out of range when a would-be customer calls. If this happens, it is unlikely they would call again, the opportunity to gain a client gone forever. A landline or virtual landline with voicemail would be a more sensible way to collect contacts.

Take expert advice on leaflet distribution.

Finally, there is the question of how many leaflets should be printed and where should they be distributed.

For this important information regarding the campaign plan, there is only one place to go; and that is to an expert. A well-established leaflet distribution company will not only be able to advise the would-be entrepreneur on the design of the leaflet as well as the content to include, how many leaflets he should have printed but the best area to have them distributed.

In fact, a good distribution company would be able to give advice on all the things needed to launch a small business, from design and printing to distribution. They will also be able to advise that it will usually take more than one drop to secure a good client base.

If more one-man startups or small businesses would take the time to talk to a professional expert, then more of them would able to overcome that first hurdle and prosper in their new enterprises, simply put leaflet distribution works, and that is a fact.

Share Button

Trust GPS Tracking

GPS Tracking, ,

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

 

Share Button