Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: MrWindowClean on September 07, 2022, 08:09:28 pm
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So I've got 25k leaflets going out this week.
What would you expect I return off them?
0.05%?
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I’ve got 40k on the go over the next 10 days (subject to strikes) day 2 and already at 15 enquires but unknown the qty delivered
I would hope for 0.4%
Anything less than 0.2% would be disappointing
Darran
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I’ve got 40k on the go over the next 10 days (subject to strikes) day 2 and already at 15 enquires but unknown the qty delivered
I would hope for 0.4%
Anything less than 0.2% would be disappointing
Darran
Interesting, Darran what time of year do you deliver till?
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It depends what services you offer. If you can pick up a few four figure jobs, it makes a big difference.
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This is the latest we will leaflet - don’t want the Xmas brigade 😊
Then start again end of jan
Darran
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I’m interested to hear how this went?
I’ve had a very poor response to leaflets this year.
We dropped 450,000 in total and got only around 250 customers..
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I’m hoping maybe one day just one day someone will put a price on these leaflet drops.
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I’m hoping maybe one day just one day someone will put a price on these leaflet drops.
Mine cost about £18,500 for 218,000 I think… thereabouts
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I’m hoping maybe one day just one day someone will put a price on these leaflet drops.
Mine cost about £18,500 for 218,000 I think… thereabouts
My maths admittedly is terrible but surely that’s not right. 🤔
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I usually average 4 per 1,000
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What 12 notes per drop Jonny sounds cheap m8 🤣🤣
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I’m hoping maybe one day just one day someone will put a price on these leaflet drops.
Mine cost £350 per 10,000 to deliver (areas of my choice)
and £67 to print - 10,000, A6 double sided.
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I’m hoping maybe one day just one day someone will put a price on these leaflet drops.
Mine cost about £18,500 for 218,000 I think… thereabouts
My maths admittedly is terrible but surely that’s not right. 🤔
Think it was about £3,000 printing and £15,500 delivery
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I’m hoping maybe one day just one day someone will put a price on these leaflet drops.
Mine cost £350 per 10,000 to deliver (areas of my choice)
and £67 to print - 10,000, A6 double sided.
Thanks Robbo that sounds more like it.
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I’m hoping maybe one day just one day someone will put a price on these leaflet drops.
Mine cost about £18,500 for 218,000 I think… thereabouts
Ok so assuming your average customer price is say £18 that would leave you with a round of about £4500 per month. So its about x4 to get your money back then really from your spend. More expensive than paying x3 for canvassing but still has all the benefits as you do the quotes yourself and obviously better retention rates from customers from leaflets.
I'm always interested to hear the costs on mass for leafletting. I've always put the cost somewhere between paying a canvassing company and buying a round.
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I was getting my maths wrong. 😂
That is both reassuring and scary at the same time.
I suppose at that level though, 200,000 of flyers, the business is at a big enough scale to absorb a 20k advertising hit.
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What’s a leaflet ???
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These are my figures for first ever leaflet drop we have done, which was this year from April 16th - August 13th.
We charge extra, from 1/3rd to 2/3rds depending on frequency for all 1st cleans on windows.
Will also provide a recurring facia and conservatory roof add on service, which also has a 20% first clean charge.
We do provide a one off add on facia and conservatory roof service to new regular window cleaning customers, but do not carry out one off window cleans.
All customers signed up to Gocardless before first clean is carried out and all payments, for all services are taken through this payment method. We have a lot more 8 weekly customers ( which we prefer ) as we push/sell this frequency on our leaflet, and charge 1/3rd more then 4 weekly for this frequency.
All the broke down figures below
SPENT ON 65,000 LEAFLETS
Print £1959.45 ( leaflet type = DL C-Fold )
Leaflet delivery £2600
TOTAL SPEND = £4,559.45
RETURN FROM 75 CUSTOMERS
One off ad ons £205
Recurring add on 1st cleans £940
Windows 1st cleans £2,856
TOTAL FIRST CLEAN RETURN = £4,206
Recurring add ons into 4 weekly £93.3
Windows 4 weekly £171
Windows 8 weekly £1,885 ± 2 = £942.5
TOTAL REGULAR RETURN = £1206.8
every 4 weeks
The way I’m looking at it is not the return of customers per leaflet but return of money, after all first cleans payments for recurring add ons , widows and one offs are counted for we have nearly reclaimed the money spent on the leaflet drop. And have gained - 75 regular customers which we have self quoted, mostly on 8 weekly prices via Gocardless with recurring add ons for some.
Would appreciate the feed back if this is a good return or not as it s our first ?
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That's the important bit - spend Vs Return
you also need to factor in ongoing windows as income ( depends on how you wish to allow for this - say a set 6 months or until to do your next advertising campaign ) - less some ongoing costs - wages - fuel etc.. to service new work
My daughter is also canvassing - her hit rate is fantastic - usually coming back with 3 or 4 in a 2 hour stint - I was never that successful >:(
Darran
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I’m hoping maybe one day just one day someone will put a price on these leaflet drops.
Mine cost about £18,500 for 218,000 I think… thereabouts
Ok so assuming your average customer price is say £18 that would leave you with a round of about £4500 per month. So its about x4 to get your money back then really from your spend. More expensive than paying x3 for canvassing but still has all the benefits as you do the quotes yourself and obviously better retention rates from customers from leaflets.
I'm always interested to hear the costs on mass for leafletting. I've always put the cost somewhere between paying a canvassing company and buying a round.
Yes your working out are about right
So pretty terrible response, but still in the scheme of things not a disaster
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I was getting my maths wrong. 😂
That is both reassuring and scary at the same time.
I suppose at that level though, 200,000 of flyers, the business is at a big enough scale to absorb a 20k advertising hit.
Well it’s not a nice feeling to spend that money (my most ever by a long way) and get my worst ever response.
But business is currently still in rude health. I’ve got really good at managing my business finances and budgeting, so the money was there to spend on marketing. It wasn’t a gamble
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I was getting my maths wrong. 😂
That is both reassuring and scary at the same time.
I suppose at that level though, 200,000 of flyers, the business is at a big enough scale to absorb a 20k advertising hit.
Well it’s not a nice feeling to spend that money (my most ever by a long way) and get my worst ever response.
But business is currently still in rude health. I’ve got really good at managing my business finances and budgeting, so the money was there to spend on marketing. It wasn’t a gamble
you say its a terrible response, which may be you are right. All things considered though i would say that is a decent return on investment. As i said in my other message, people will happily pay x3 to a canvasser all day long or buy rounds from x5-x10 for decent rounds. So even if its a bad response from your leaflet campaign the ROI is still not bad too be fair. Which just leaves room for improvement on perhaps your next leaflet drop.
I can understand the worry though. That kind of outlay with literally no guaranteed return is scary. I guess you just have to put faith in the design of your leaflets, your office/systems in place and know that if you do things right the results will come one way or another!
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It’s also knowing your market - leaflets are also a slow burn - I’ve had people call some 3 years after a leaflet was delivered :o
They are pinned to notice boards etc- your there when needed (usually bespoke work) and of course you get seen in the road it’s a constant reminder to potential customers
Darran
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I’m interested to hear how this went?
I’ve had a very poor response to leaflets this year.
We dropped 450,000 in total and got only around 250 customers..
What are the new 250 customers worth?
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I’m interested to hear how this went?
I’ve had a very poor response to leaflets this year.
We dropped 450,000 in total and got only around 250 customers..
What are the new 250 customers worth?
Worth £4250 sales ( £650 profit) a month
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Paying 4x for leafletted customers is a better result than paying a canvasser 3x at the retention rate will be much better.
But still 18k for 250 customers :'( reckon I could get 250 customers for less than 2.5k in fb ad spend....
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I got 250 customers for absolutely no outlay whatsoever 🤷♂️
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But still 18k for 250 customers :'( reckon I could get 250 customers for less than 2.5k in fb ad spend....
How much time would you spend on gaining 250 customers on FB?
I’ve said it a million times (and you’ve disagreed nearly every time) but the thought of communicating with 250 customers on FB fills me with dread. Absolute cranks 95% of the time.
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I got 250 customers for absolutely no outlay whatsoever 🤷♂️
Do tell.... unless they were given to you, I would imagine that to be impossible. even if they were walk ups
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I’m hoping maybe one day just one day someone will put a price on these leaflet drops.
Mine cost £350 per 10,000 to deliver (areas of my choice)
and £67 to print - 10,000, A6 double sided.
Out of 10,000 I usually got about 40 enquiries.
From the 40 enquiries, 20 of them would be good at £20 per regular clean (not first clean).
Out of the 20 good ones, 2 or 3 would also have extra work done, fsg, pressure washing, soft washing etc at around £180 a pop.
I'm happy with that.
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I got 250 customers for absolutely no outlay whatsoever 🤷♂️
Do tell.... unless they were given to you, I would imagine that to be impossible. even if they were walk ups
It’s not impossible. It’s probably how most people used to start in this business. Door knocking.
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I got 250 customers for absolutely no outlay whatsoever 🤷♂️
Do tell.... unless they were given to you, I would imagine that to be impossible. even if they were walk ups
It’s not impossible. It’s probably how most people used to start in this business. Door knocking.
Your outlay was your time and your energy
That doesn’t come for free in a business
(I started by door knocking too)
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But still 18k for 250 customers :'( reckon I could get 250 customers for less than 2.5k in fb ad spend....
How much time would you spend on gaining 250 customers on FB?
I’ve said it a million times (and you’ve disagreed nearly every time) but the thought of communicating with 250 customers on FB fills me with dread. Absolute cranks 95% of the time.
Not nearly enough time to warrant not saving 15k in marketting costs that's for sure !
Well once you've set your ads up and your leads start to come in you need to contact them, give them a call or on messenger whatever way you want to set your leads up.
I disagree slightly, fb leads won't be as good as leafletted leads but they are better than canvassed customers for retention rate as they are not cold called. They see ads and respond to an ad .
I usually work on a 50 % conversion of a lead . So if an average lead costs £5 then and average customer signed up costs £10.
As an aside you can get 250 customers for free from Facebook if you play the longer game.
Last time I posted on free groups in one evening I got around 20 new customers and one evenings posting a few months ago got me over 100 enquiries resulting in about 50 new customers.
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But still 18k for 250 customers :'( reckon I could get 250 customers for less than 2.5k in fb ad spend....
How much time would you spend on gaining 250 customers on FB?
I’ve said it a million times (and you’ve disagreed nearly every time) but the thought of communicating with 250 customers on FB fills me with dread. Absolute cranks 95% of the time.
Not nearly enough time to warrant not saving 15k in marketting costs that's for sure !
Well once you've set your ads up and your leads start to come in you need to contact them, give them a call or on messenger whatever way you want to set your leads up.
I disagree slightly, fb leads won't be as good as leafletted leads but they are better than canvassed customers for retention rate as they are not cold called. They see ads and respond to an ad .
I usually work on a 50 % conversion of a lead . So if an average lead costs £5 then and average customer signed up costs £10.
As an aside you can get 250 customers for free from Facebook if you play the longer game.
Last time I posted on free groups in one evening I got around 20 new customers and one evenings posting a few months ago got me over 100 enquiries resulting in about 50 new customers.
I found this not to be the case - my first 500 canvassed customers from 12 years ago are still going strong - maybe 70 of these no longer with me - thats mostly moved - still have them at new address (those in the area) some oldies who have passed on and a small minority that fell by the wayside
At currently canvassing over the last 3 months - have yet to have one cancel
FB on the other hand - don't want to pay the price - always issues with the clean - then don't normally last until clean 3
I'll stick with leaflets and canvassing
Darran
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But still 18k for 250 customers :'( reckon I could get 250 customers for less than 2.5k in fb ad spend....
How much time would you spend on gaining 250 customers on FB?
I’ve said it a million times (and you’ve disagreed nearly every time) but the thought of communicating with 250 customers on FB fills me with dread. Absolute cranks 95% of the time.
Not nearly enough time to warrant not saving 15k in marketting costs that's for sure !
Well once you've set your ads up and your leads start to come in you need to contact them, give them a call or on messenger whatever way you want to set your leads up.
I disagree slightly, fb leads won't be as good as leafletted leads but they are better than canvassed customers for retention rate as they are not cold called. They see ads and respond to an ad .
I usually work on a 50 % conversion of a lead . So if an average lead costs £5 then and average customer signed up costs £10.
As an aside you can get 250 customers for free from Facebook if you play the longer game.
Last time I posted on free groups in one evening I got around 20 new customers and one evenings posting a few months ago got me over 100 enquiries resulting in about 50 new customers.
I found this not to be the case - my first 500 canvassed customers from 12 years ago are still going strong - maybe 70 of these no longer with me - thats mostly moved - still have them at new address (those in the area) some oldies who have passed on and a small minority that fell by the wayside
At currently canvassing over the last 3 months - have yet to have one cancel
FB on the other hand - don't want to pay the price - always issues with the clean - then don't normally last until clean 3
I'll stick with leaflets and canvassing
Darran
I think he’s referring to paying a canvasser, rather than doing it yourself. I have found my retention on canvassed customers fairly poor, it’s always paid in the long run though.
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But still 18k for 250 customers :'( reckon I could get 250 customers for less than 2.5k in fb ad spend....
How much time would you spend on gaining 250 customers on FB?
I’ve said it a million times (and you’ve disagreed nearly every time) but the thought of communicating with 250 customers on FB fills me with dread. Absolute cranks 95% of the time.
Not nearly enough time to warrant not saving 15k in marketting costs that's for sure !
Well once you've set your ads up and your leads start to come in you need to contact them, give them a call or on messenger whatever way you want to set your leads up.
I disagree slightly, fb leads won't be as good as leafletted leads but they are better than canvassed customers for retention rate as they are not cold called. They see ads and respond to an ad .
I usually work on a 50 % conversion of a lead . So if an average lead costs £5 then and average customer signed up costs £10.
As an aside you can get 250 customers for free from Facebook if you play the longer game.
Last time I posted on free groups in one evening I got around 20 new customers and one evenings posting a few months ago got me over 100 enquiries resulting in about 50 new customers.
I found this not to be the case - my first 500 canvassed customers from 12 years ago are still going strong - maybe 70 of these no longer with me - thats mostly moved - still have them at new address (those in the area) some oldies who have passed on and a small minority that fell by the wayside
At currently canvassing over the last 3 months - have yet to have one cancel
FB on the other hand - don't want to pay the price - always issues with the clean - then don't normally last until clean 3
I'll stick with leaflets and canvassing
Darran
This is the thing if you have a had a poor experience with leaflets, canvasser or fb ads then you are going to be of the opinion it doesnt work.
So my opinion is purely based on my own experience.
When is started out i spent about 10k on canvassed work. I used 4 different well know companies to do this for me. At first when i got results below what i expected i blamed the initial canvasser which is why i tried others, after doing this i came to the conclusion it wasnt the canvasser at fault but more the nature of canvasssed work. I havent done a lot of canvassing myself as i was always too nervous which is why i paid others in the first place but i did do enough to pick up around 50 customers which all went the same way as the canvassed work i had paid for, again reinforcing my opinon of canvassing,
I paid 3 cleans for canvassed work, generally i would get about 50 customers at a time so a whole week of doing sometimes minging first cleans. Out of that 50 i would get a mix of cancellign before the first clean, some that would never pay and a good amount only lasting a couple of cleans. I never kept a record but at a guess you would be lucky to be left with 50% of it 6 months down the line.
Now saying all that, i dont think its a horrific return, in reality this work was costing me more like 6x clean value BUT the work i had canvassed is some of my most compact, best earning work and in the long run has paid off.
With leaflets i found i was only getting 1 or 2 calls per thousand delivered, i have probably had about 20k put out in total. I stopped doing leaflets because i felt like it was much more of a gamble than canvassing. You were literally taking a handfull of money and posting it out and then sitting back with crossed fingers that the phone would ring. Quite a nerve racking time! At least with canvassing you are paying for direct results, 1 customer 1 payment, no customer no payment. Similar with a fb ad campaign, if you have spent 50 quid and an ad isnt working you can change it up and find something that does, you dont just shell out a few grand and hope you have that control.
When it comes to facebook ads, as above ive always found 1 converted customer to cost around £10 which for me is better than paying 1x clean value. At worst ive found the retention rate to certainly be no lower than canvassing and in most cases better because much like a leaflet they have responded to an advert and made the approach for a quote. Of course the downside compared to canvassing is the work is unlikely to be as compact.
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I got 250 customers for absolutely no outlay whatsoever 🤷♂️
Do tell.... unless they were given to you, I would imagine that to be impossible. even if they were walk ups
It’s not impossible. It’s probably how most people used to start in this business. Door knocking.
Your outlay was your time and your energy
That doesn’t come for free in a business
(I started by door knocking too)
Bang on, time and energy costs nothing if you have no work. I used to clean on Saturdays when people were in, clean one house then knock next door. I’ve never paid anyone to canvass and the nearest I ever came to paying for advertising was a website (now long gone - couldn’t take on more work).
This business relies very much on recommendation and word of mouth I’ve found.
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But still 18k for 250 customers :'( reckon I could get 250 customers for less than 2.5k in fb ad spend....
How much time would you spend on gaining 250 customers on FB?
I’ve said it a million times (and you’ve disagreed nearly every time) but the thought of communicating with 250 customers on FB fills me with dread. Absolute cranks 95% of the time.
Not nearly enough time to warrant not saving 15k in marketting costs that's for sure !
Well once you've set your ads up and your leads start to come in you need to contact them, give them a call or on messenger whatever way you want to set your leads up.
I disagree slightly, fb leads won't be as good as leafletted leads but they are better than canvassed customers for retention rate as they are not cold called. They see ads and respond to an ad .
I usually work on a 50 % conversion of a lead . So if an average lead costs £5 then and average customer signed up costs £10.
As an aside you can get 250 customers for free from Facebook if you play the longer game.
Last time I posted on free groups in one evening I got around 20 new customers and one evenings posting a few months ago got me over 100 enquiries resulting in about 50 new customers.
I found this not to be the case - my first 500 canvassed customers from 12 years ago are still going strong - maybe 70 of these no longer with me - thats mostly moved - still have them at new address (those in the area) some oldies who have passed on and a small minority that fell by the wayside
At currently canvassing over the last 3 months - have yet to have one cancel
FB on the other hand - don't want to pay the price - always issues with the clean - then don't normally last until clean 3
I'll stick with leaflets and canvassing
Darran
This is the thing if you have a had a poor experience with leaflets, canvasser or fb ads then you are going to be of the opinion it doesnt work.
So my opinion is purely based on my own experience.
When is started out i spent about 10k on canvassed work. I used 4 different well know companies to do this for me. At first when i got results below what i expected i blamed the initial canvasser which is why i tried others, after doing this i came to the conclusion it wasnt the canvasser at fault but more the nature of canvasssed work. I havent done a lot of canvassing myself as i was always too nervous which is why i paid others in the first place but i did do enough to pick up around 50 customers which all went the same way as the canvassed work i had paid for, again reinforcing my opinon of canvassing,
I paid 3 cleans for canvassed work, generally i would get about 50 customers at a time so a whole week of doing sometimes minging first cleans. Out of that 50 i would get a mix of cancellign before the first clean, some that would never pay and a good amount only lasting a couple of cleans. I never kept a record but at a guess you would be lucky to be left with 50% of it 6 months down the line.
Now saying all that, i dont think its a horrific return, in reality this work was costing me more like 6x clean value BUT the work i had canvassed is some of my most compact, best earning work and in the long run has paid off.
With leaflets i found i was only getting 1 or 2 calls per thousand delivered, i have probably had about 20k put out in total. I stopped doing leaflets because i felt like it was much more of a gamble than canvassing. You were literally taking a handfull of money and posting it out and then sitting back with crossed fingers that the phone would ring. Quite a nerve racking time! At least with canvassing you are paying for direct results, 1 customer 1 payment, no customer no payment. Similar with a fb ad campaign, if you have spent 50 quid and an ad isnt working you can change it up and find something that does, you dont just shell out a few grand and hope you have that control.
When it comes to facebook ads, as above ive always found 1 converted customer to cost around £10 which for me is better than paying 1x clean value. At worst ive found the retention rate to certainly be no lower than canvassing and in most cases better because much like a leaflet they have responded to an advert and made the approach for a quote. Of course the downside compared to canvassing is the work is unlikely to be as compact.
I have thought about doing facebook ads myself but dont really have any idea how to put one together .
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I can confirm that most of what Adam is saying is bang on really.
We do lots of lead generation / lead canvassing all done via facebook/instagram/whatsapp for window cleaners all over the UK.
What we have found is that door knock canvassing is always going to be hands down the most compact work but not always the best retention. Leafletting is always going to be the best retention work but costs more per customer acquisition. Lead gen/canvassing done via Facebook is kind of a mix of the two. You get higher retention than you would do with paying a door knock canvasser, and you can get higher prices too similiar to leafletting, but its not as compact as door knock canvassing and you do have to deal with the odd messer here and there, but we have a strict process to try and eliminate them from the start.
There are pros and cons to all methods, all suit businesses differently.
Often the case is that you try something, get a bad result/experience and give up instantly and condemn said method. I've realised that with enough time/effort/trial and error any business can seriously grow their business on a big scale with either door knock canvassing/leafletting/lead generation.