Tag Archives: small business advertising

Leaflet Advertising Vs Digital Advertising

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, Marketing Strategy, , , ,

In a world where discussions about marketing are dominated by social media and email advertising, it can be easy to assume that leaflet distribution has lost some of its relevance. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, what we are seeing is a reaction against digital advertising. Consumers are feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by the sheer volume of digital noise they are being inundated with, and are learning to ignore online advertising.

Instead, these consumers, exhausted by inbox overload and algorithmic bombardment, are becoming more and more receptive to offline forms of advertising that feel like an interesting novelty in our digital age.

Smart marketers are informed by what consumers are responding to; they don’t keep hammering away at channels that no longer engage customers. So we’re here today to break down this consumer’s turn away from digital advertising and to show you how leaflets can be your secret weapon!

Digital Fatigue Is Real
We all remember the golden age of social media, when those platforms were vibrant communities of real people. But those days are long gone, and now it feels like there are more advertisers on social media than real users.

Research conducted by Siteefy in 2024 revealed that the average consumer believes they are seeing over 10,000 social media adverts per day! Whether or not this is literally true, this perception demonstrates just how overwhelmed by online ads consumers feel. A recent survey by Hootsuite found that 59% of people think there’s too much advertising on social media and are “fed up” with digital advertising.

And it’s driving users away! According to Statista, consumers are spending 20% less time on social media than they did 5 years ago. This decline in time spent on social media is most pronounced among younger demographics, with the majority of Facebook users now over 55.

Why spend all that money on social media advertising when the people you want to reach just aren’t there anymore?

And the story’s no better for email. When was the last time you truly engaged with an email in your inbox? How often do you even open a promotional email?

So, if digital marketing is no longer an effective way to reach customers, what is?

Customers Engage With Leaflets
While people increasingly tend to scroll past digital ads or press ‘skip’ the moment they can, leaflets still command attention from consumers.

Unlike digital marketing channels, which measure their engagement in fractions of a second, leaflets measure their engagement in minutes. According to research done by JICMAIL, a staggering 95% of door drops are engaged with, and the average time that each leaflet dropped through a letterbox is engaged with is 56 seconds. That’s almost one minute of a potential customer’s attention! Compare that to 0.7 seconds for social media ads!

And it’s not just quantity, but the quality of engagement that improves when you choose leaflet distribution. Almost half (45%) of the UK keep leaflets in their homes for future reference, whether that’s on a kitchen table or pinned to a noticeboard.

That means that, even if your leaflet doesn’t immediately generate a sale, there’s a good chance your leaflet has stayed in the potential customer’s home and the next time they have need of a business like yours, the leaflet is right there.

Customers also remember leaflets! People recall information on leaflets 35% better than social media advertising and an incredible 49% better than emails.

Customers Act On Leaflets
Advertising isn’t just about generating impressions. Building brand awareness is great, but in the end, you want a customer to go out and actually try your business.

When asked, 71% of people reported that receiving a leaflet through the door had prompted them to actually go and try a new business.

That same customer whose eyes glazed over as they scrolled past your social media advertisement may have actually been inspired to go and try your business had they been engaged with a leaflet!
People are almost twice as likely to try a new business if they receive some sort of coupon or offer. And there’s no better way to deliver a tangible coupon that potential new customers can keep in their home than dropping a leaflet through the door. That offer they might have scrolled past online could stick around on a customer’s noticeboard or kitchen table for days or weeks for future use if delivered as part of a leaflet.

Here we see leaflets don’t just beat digital marketing when it comes to engaging customers, they also excel at getting customers to act. Especially over a longer period.

Customers Trust Leaflets
The problem facing digital marketing doesn’t stop at the issue of customers being fed up with the amount of it; increasingly, consumers are beginning to distrust it.

In an era of ‘fake news’, ludicrous stories and AI-generated fake ‘photos’ flooding Facebook feeds, the public is starting to think of anything they see online as suspicious, and this includes advertisements.

Your advertisement and, by extension, your business could be perceived as untrustworthy simply because of what it is placed next to on social media.

By contrast, customers trust leaflets. The tangibility of leaflets, that they are something physical the customer can hold, lends them credibility. Unlike social media ads that appear alongside fake news, leaflets come through the letterbox alongside important material like bills and government communications. An association that gives leaflets a sense of authority.

The data bear this perception out. According to Statistics, consumers are more than twice as likely to trust print advertising versus digital advertising.

Credibility matters. The likelihood that a customer will engage with and act on an advertisement directly corresponds with how trustworthy they find the medium through which that advertisement was delivered.

Stand Out From The Crowd With Leaflet Distribution
While your competitors are wasting money on digital channels that are becoming less effective by the year, your business can stand out from the crowd by taking advantage of a marketing channel that consumers still engage with, act on and trust, leaflet distribution.

Leaflets are a powerful tool in reaching a consumer base that is overwhelmed by and disengaged from digital noise, helping you to break through and share the great things your business has to offer. 88% of companies that dropped leaflets said they saw sales increase.

So take advantage of this opportunity before your competition figures out how powerful leaflet distribution can be. See what leaflet marketing can do for your business by getting a quote today.

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Postcard Advertising

Advertising, Business Branding, Direct Mail, , ,

If your small business is looking for an effective yet affordable way to reach and stay in touch with your customers, drop them a postcard.

Postcards are great tools to develop and enhance your relationships with your customers. Often overlooked by marketers, postcards have become a fast, easy and reliable way to increase your sales and profits without spending too much on advertising or promotion. It is a marketing tool that through content and design could break through the noise and clutter.

Postcards can be used in a number of ways. You can use it to generate leads, attract more website traffic, get new customers, and increase sales from your own customer base. It is also a great tool for announcing major changes in your business or events in your company.

Here are 5 great advantages of using postcards to market your products and services.

1. Easy to prepare.
Hands down, postcards win in the efficiency game. It is easier to prepare than direct mail or letter. You only need to write a short copy, no slaving for a 3-5-page direct mail material. Plus, you need not spend time folding and stuffing the postcards in an envelope.

2. Unlimited creativity potential.

Your goal in sending a postcard is not only to get the customer to read your message, but to keep your message! And you can achieve this goal by designing a creative postcard that could elicit the response you need.

One advantage of postcards is it allows you to experiment with size, shape, and artistic design, without cost getting too much in the way. You are not constrained by the letter size and the formal rules of etiquette. It is a medium designed for creativity and fun!

Some postcards are so creatively designed or have funny sentiment or useful information that customers pin them in their boards or in their refrigerators. Imagine a customer seeing your card (and reading your message) every day! Even better, a postcard’s staying power may mean that it can have the opportunity to be seen by the receiver’s business colleagues, family and friends.

3. Savings, savings and savings.

Postcards are more economical than a direct mail campaign. By using postcards, you can send up to four times (in full-colour) for about the same price as just one traditional direct mail package. You can realise savings in printing costs, paper, and labour costs. Plus, no envelopes!

Rising postal rates have also made direct mail expensive. A first class stamp, at the time of writing, costs 65 pence; postcards on the other hand are significantly cheaper. You can also  reach a wider customer base with postcards compared to direct mail.

4. Bite-sized information.

Postcards are quick and to the point. There are only a few words to read and you need to ensure that you get your marketing message across to the prospect reading the material. With the influx of marketing materials faced by consumers, it is important to shape your message briefly yet catchy enough to gain your prospect’s attention.

However, therein lies the challenge you will face when using postcards. You must have a unique selling proposition (USP) that you can craft in your message that will distinguish your business favourably apart from every other competitor. Why should the customer use your product or service? What is the unique benefit that you could offer? Customers want a company that offers them the best selection, the best prices and the best guarantee. In a few words, you must be able to write that message in a postcard.

5. Can make a big impression.

One advantage of doing postcards is its novelty relative to other marketing tools. While an increasing number of marketers are discovering postcards, postcards have not become too commonplace that it has turned to be an irritant. Many consumers already consider direct mail a scourge, and many direct mailings go to the wastebasket without even being read. Customers are also becoming inundated with emails as a result of spam that even legitimate emails are dumped into the virtual bin.

One advantage of postcards is its “openness.” Unlike direct marketing letters, you need not worry about customers simply throwing your mailing without even opening the envelope. With postcards, there is no envelope to open! The customer immediately reads your message. The more eyeballs, the more prospects, and the more customers you will have.

The key to finding success in marketing with postcards is to create the right postcard, mail it to the right audience and craft it with the right offer. The humble postcard can be a great tool to enhance your relationship with your customers. Best of all, postcards may be within your budget reach.

When planning a postcard marketing campaign (especially if it’s your first), it’s easy to get carried away with all the things you want in the design. After all, you’re sending an ad to hundreds, possibly thousands of potential customers, so you want to show off every aspect of your business. So, what do you do? You give your postcard marketing company 15 images, and you tell them they all must go in.

It’s a good thought. But unfortunately, it won’t leave a very good first impression on your customers. Most likely, it won’t leave any impression at all. Nine times out of 10, postcards that are too cluttered simply don’t get noticed. With too many images in your postcard, your headline, offer and call-to-action will get lost.

Tips on Using Images in Your Postcards

To improve the success of your campaign, here are some simple tips to keep in mind:

1. Keep images to a minimum.

On most size postcards, you’ll want a primary image on the front, your logo, some simple design elements on the back, along with a small image of someone on your staff (when appropriate).

2. You don’t need a picture of your office or building.

While it’s tempting to add one for credibility, it’s not necessary on a postcard. Save it for a brochure or your website. Otherwise, it will simply get in the way of your postcard’s primary messaging.

3. Let the experts help you decide.

Your postcard marketing company likely has years of experience in designing postcards for maximum response. Let them recommend the best possible use for your images.

Keep in mind that the primary goal of most direct mail postcards is to get a quick response. It doesn’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) tell the history of your company. You have only a few seconds to grab their attention and give them a reason to respond. Having 8-10 different images on your postcard won’t achieve that goal.

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Leafleting The Advertising Gem

Advertising, Leaflet Distribution, , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Direct Mail Doesn’t Work?

Direct Mail, Leaflet Distribution, , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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