.png){kind=logo}
Some types of small business make most of their sales to customers in their local area. Many of these businesses use simple advertising leaflets, delivered door-to-door (‘door drop mailing’), to market themselves to local households. This is a tried and tested method for generating sales leads. In this article, I’ll explain how to use advertising leaflets to best effect.
Leaflet advertising can be a very effective local marketing technique
Nowadays, when so much marketing has moved online, it might seem outdated to push leaflets through people’s mail boxes. But if you think it is, you might be missing a trick.
Remember that the purpose of marketing is not to use the latest technology or focus on a particular marketing channel. It's to attract, convert and retain the right customers. Any approach that enables you to do that efficiently and effectively is a good marketing technique.
89% of consumers remember receiving a door drop mailing - more than any other marketing channel.
73% of door drops are opened, read, filed or set aside for later.
45% of consumers keep door drop leaflets on a pinboard or in the kitchen drawer.
4% of door drops resulted in some sort of purchase related outcome in 2021.
Types of business that use advertising leaflets
Advertising leaflets can work well for small businesses that sell to customers in their immediate area. We’re talking about hospitality (bars, pubs, restaurants), house maintenance services (window cleaners, gardeners), professional services (estate agents, lawyers), leisure services (gyms, hair salons), trades (electricians, plumbers, builders, carpenters etc.) and others.
For these businesses, pretty much everyone living nearby is a potential customer. And almost all of us buy these services at some time in our life. Many of them are things we buy regularly. So if you follow the right approach, few of your leaflets will be completely wasted.
How to design effective advertising leaflets
The first step in your leaflet campaign is to design a good leaflet. Just bear in mind a few simple rules:
Lead with a strong message that addresses your customer’s need — spotless windows, a beautiful garden, maybe even jealous neighbours! Don't talk about yourself – focus on the benefits your customer will obtain from doing business with you.
Include positive testimonials from past customers — they’re one of your most powerful marketing tools. If you can’t include them in the leaflet, make clear that new customers can obtain testimonials by contacting you directly.
Don’t cram in too much information. Your leaflet is a sales hook to capture attention and pique interest, not a product brochure. You can provide more details to customers who get in touch with you directly.
Make good use of graphics. Eye-catching imagery that is relevant to your offer will help your leaflet stand out and boost awareness of your brand.
Make sure your leaflet is appropriate in size and print quality. A leaflet from a house cleaner doesn’t need to be as slick as one from a law firm. But just because it’s a leaflet, it shouldn’t look cheap and tatty. It will be the customer’s first impression of your business – what sort of impression would you like to make?
End with a CTA (call to action). In other words, tell the customer what you would like them to do. That might be to contact you via phone or email, download a brochure from your website or book an introductory meeting. Equally, you might just want them to visit your bar or restaurant. Be sure to include all the contact details the customer will need.
Make sure your campaign should be profitable
How should you work out whether an advertising leaflet campaign will be profitable?
Your first step is to estimate your ‘customer acquisition cost’ (CAC). This is the total advertising and marketing cost you would spend to win each new customer.
Your customer acquisition cost is a function of two things:
The cost to print and deliver your leaflets. Get quotes from a couple of local commercial printers (check several options for different leaflet designs and order sizes) and leaflet delivery firms. Often the same companies do both.
The ‘conversion rate’ of your campaign. This is an estimate of how many new customers you will win for every 1,000 leaflets you distribute. It’s usually expressed as a percentage. You can find estimates of typical conversion rates online. Your assumed conversion rate will only be an estimate, but doing some homework should help narrow the range of possible outcomes.
Let’s take an example, to make the calculation clear:
Let’s assume your print and distribution cost is 10 pence per leaflet. If you were to distribute 1,000 leaflets, your total cost would be £100.
Let’s estimate that your conversion rate will be 0.2%. So for every 1,000 leaflets, you aim to gain two new customers.
In this case, for every £100 spent on leaflets you should win two new customers. So your acquisition cost for each new customer would be £50.
The question you must then ask yourself is: would this customer acquisition cost be a good result in the context of my business profitability?
Think about the profit margin you make from selling your product or service, before allowing for marketing or advertising costs. If you usually make a profit per customer of £200 and you could win more of them by spending £50 on advertising leaflets, that may be a good option for you. Make sure you compare against the cost of other marketing channels you could use instead.
As you evaluate the profitability of your planned first campaign, don’t forget that some of the new customers you win could become repeat buyers. They might even recommend you to their friends and family as well. So even if your first campaign is in theory loss-making, it might still be profitable for you in the long run.
Calculate how many advertising leaflets to distribute
How many leaflets should you distribute in your first campaign?
If you distribute too few, you’ll see minimal impact. But you don’t want to distribute too many leaflets either. You could receive a surge of new enquiries that’s too large for you to handle. That would be a waste of your money and annoy potential customers.
So start with the number of new customers you would like to attract and combine this with your estimated conversion rate. This will tell you how many leaflets you should distribute.
For example, if you want to win 10 new customers and you estimate your conversion rate will be 0.2% (2 in 1,000), you will need to distribute 10 ÷ 0.2% = 5,000 leaflets.
Test and refine your leaflet design over time
Many of the assumptions you use in your first campaign will need to be rough estimates. So make your first campaign a small one. Then capture the results and use them to learn what works and what doesn’t. That way, you can make each future campaign more successful and more profitable.
As you refine your leaflet design, the factor you are aiming to improve is the ‘response rate’. This is the number of customer responses you receive for every 1,000 leaflets you distribute. The response rate is strongly influenced by how well you’ve designed your leaflet.
A good way to improve your response rate is to use ‘A/B testing’. This is an important concept in marketing. It involves trying out multiple different versions of an ad (e.g. a leaflet) to find out which ones give you the best results.
The most common approach is to run three ads in parallel. Evaluate the results periodically, drop the ad that performs the worst and replace it with a different one. Keep doing this until you find the leaflet designs that give you the best response rate.
(And don’t neglect your selling skills – it’s no use attracting lots of customer responses if you don’t know how best to turn them into paying customers).
Pitfalls to avoid
One of the biggest mistakes is to use letters in envelopes addressed to ‘The Owner’ instead of just using a hand delivered leaflet. Sending the householder a letter might seem like a more professional approach, but it’s expensive and inefficient.
When the householder gets an impersonal letter like this, they will usually realise it’s unsolicited mail and throw it in the bin without even opening it. That’s what I do. So customers won’t see your offer. They may not even see your brand name.
It’s far better to use a high quality colour printed A5 card with some nice imagery. Even if the householder immediately throws it away, they won’t be able to avoid seeing your brand name and logo. This makes them aware that you’re active in their local area.
They will usually also read your key message – if it’s short and prominent, which it should be. They will see that you provide something of value and would love to be of service. If they later need what you offer, your name will hopefully come into their mind.
Conclusion
Don’t judge a book by its cover, as they say. Door to door leafletting may seem old-fashioned, but it’s a relatively cheap form of marketing that can be very effective. If you run a small business that earns most of its income from sales in your local area, leaflets could have an important part to play in your overall business marketing strategy.
By following best practices around leaflet design and campaign planning you could soon be making this tried and tested format work for you.
.png){kind=logo}
Comments