[paul@ctcs]

Having had my 1st 10,000 Leaflets printed  (Trade Print warehouse £69 on A5) Im about to embark on my first direct advertising campaign and have wondered after a few warnings if there is a method of getting my leaflets through potential customers doors in one piece and looking good?
 I'm sure the more experienced leaflet droppers among you may have a few handy tips we can all benefit from

Paul

[Big_Fish]

Hi Paul,
Are you delivering them yourself or are you getting an agency?

Personally, we'd never use anyone to deliver for us. By doing it youself, you can target certain areas/ streets & houses.

To ask an agency to deliver usually means blanketing an area.

It depends what your target market is but it's best that your lesflet doesn't arrive with a pizza menu, a double glazing leaflet and a plastic bag for the Help The Aged.

Comfortable shoes, determination and Good Luck!

BFN

[paul@ctcs]

Hi Big_Fish, I'm delivering myself and plan to deliver 1000 a week at least, I have in a very nearby city which has over the past few years been heavily developed with thousands of 200k + properties, so this is where i plan to start. Its the older places with killer letter boxes that I'm not looking forward too.

Paul

[ashplays]

allways deliver them on their own never put another leaflet with them your responce rate will drop big time  also it takes a few weeks for jobs to filter threw apart from instant responces after say a month u will get calls from say your first week as well as your 4 week  and so on and pick your areas wisely as certain areas are not worth doing ,  time wise u are looking anything from 5-10 hours to put out a 1000     i personaly use a semiretired bloke to do mine at £5 hour and i can make nice living off with him doing about 10 hours week

[Big_Fish]

Ashplays,

Where are you?

BF

[ashplays]

essex big f

[paul@ctcs]

Thanks for the advice guys

[rioclean]

I always deliver my own leaflets with good responce but as I am getting older I only do about 500 a week. That is what I am going to do employ someone to delivery them and pay them £5 per hour for 10 hours.

 But say to them you will follow up later in the week so you will know they will be delivered. Had fingers burnt before.
Yes a semi retired man ideal (women have to find toilets)

[woodman]

Persistance is the key

You could deliver 50000 leaflets in one hit and not get one reply

But, if you hit the same area, again and again and again, on a monthly cycle you will start to have an impact this is all due to the marvelous number 4.

What is commonly know in all marketing and business study programes is that it takes at least 4 drops to gain awarenes.

It's known as AIDA:

Awareness 1st drop
Interest 2nd drop
Desire 3rd drop
Action 4th drop

Research showed that 80% of sales came after the 4th drop

You may not agree with this theory but at least it gives you a systamatic approach to your marketing that you can measure.Doesn't matter if you do 50000 or 1000 the results will be the same.

This is all falls into the 80/20 Pareto Principle  which is valid world wide in all fields. It is an amazing theory that proves correct in almost all circumstances.

It goes like this;  80% of all your sales will come from 20% of your efforts.In turn 20% of your customers wil supply 80% of your business and 80% of your profit will come from 20% of your customers.

This is why and I stand to be corrected here by those that use it, the JP method says you must do at least 10 things to bring in the business ( already he's using the 80/20 rule) . 8 will either not work at all or very slowly and with not much profit, 2 will work with good profits and this 20% are the ones you must concentrate your efforts on to bring in  80% of the business.

Delivering them yourself is fine to start with but sooner or later you will need some one to distribute them.If Paul is to deliver them himself then he needs to hit the same properties  so break down your 10000 to 2500 to be delivered to the same addresses 4 times.In otherwords each address will get a leaflet once a month for 4 months

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Guys,

I've been doing leaflets for 20 years and am firmly of the opinon that you have to plan it , do it , stick at it.

I've often thought all these marketing formalae are a load of old b****.

Many are contradictory.

e.g Woodman's AIDA and 'the law of diminishing returns'

Those of us from a science background know that a theory has to be robust or it will be destroyed pretty quickly.
A lot of these marketing theories are very flimsy and artificially complex , giving the impression of something much greater than they really are.

In my hard life experience a leaflet drop in an area which you have not done for a while will often bring very good results.
Leafletting the same areas will bring brand awareness but this is not going to make a massive difference.
I have found that hitting an area too often does lead to a diminished return.

I do agree with Woodman , however than one of the fundamentals is persistence.

As I have said before I built my business into a viable concern with leaflets, it has evolved into other areas such as internet /YP etc but I still have leaflets delivered.

Cheers,

Doug

[woodman]

Hi Doug

I wouldn't entirely agree, although some one like yourself that has been carrying out leaflet drops for over 20yrs must be regarded as an expert

You say you leaflet drop in areas you have done previously so there is some awareness there.

The 80/20 rule definitely rings true,I would wager that if you were to back check you would find that 80% of your most profitable work comes from 20% of your efforts.Same goes for AIDA proven to work time and time again.

For entering new territory ( and to some degree your existing) the 4 hits rule would have to apply IMO, I can not see how how just dropping several thousand leaflets in an area once and just leaving it at that would have any benefit at all.People very quickly forget all about you I am afraid in this business unless you keep in touch.

[Doug Holloway]

Woodman,

If I delivered into a new area with a good leaflet I would expect plenty of action!

These customers would then go onto my database and be contacted as required.

I can see in retrospect that 80 % of my most profitable work would maybe come from 20 % of my efforts , but how am I supposed to know which 20 % in advance.

Cheers,

Doug

[woodman]

Thats the whole point Doug you don't, which is why in my orginal post I said that JP uses it with the ten points of sale theory until a new start or developing area can have their own data base and work out what is and isn't working.

Someone like yourself who is well established  can filter out what isn't working, obviously the leaflets have and still do work for you.

[carpet_bright]

Hi Guys

I try and deliver my own leaflets, I can use the exercise ! Sometimes however, I will get a couple of teenagers (who live next door) to earn some extra money by delivering them for me.
I pay them £4 per 100 leaflets and give them an incentive of 10% from a succesful completed job. I keep track of where they delivered and of course for these jobs I will inflate my price very slightly.

Anyone else do something similar?

Paul

[littlejack]

Do not poke fingers too far into letterbox!!


Nasty bites from dogs.

[paul@ctcs]

Evening Guys, Today was my first day of leaflet dropping.
It went ok, i managed to drop 200 in two hours so reasonable pace for a first timer, and all fingers still intact!
 If anyone has a method of getting leaflets through the bloody brush thingies some letter boxes have without crumpling them up please let me know.
Only 9800 leaflets to go

Paul

[Ian Gourlay]

I think Jenny uses a thin strong flat piece of wood somthing like a strong ruler.

Saves dogs bitting your fingers.

I do it the hard way often get grazed knuckles and back legs snapped at.

[jacko]

I deliver 'em myself - actually enjoy the exercise! I have had a 1% return. I have had a call 10 weeks after delivery. The record for fastest response is 10 minutes!

Worst experience was a Pit Bull Terrier charging at a front door and butting it to try and get to me. I had just managed to get flyer into the letter box but it jammed in the draught exluder stuff, - the "Friendly" canine ripped it with its teeth.

[Ian Rochester]

Working on the AIDA approach, why not just stick 4 leaflets in each door at a time!!!

Just a thought.

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Guys,

I 've looked up Woodman's Pareto Principle which was apparently misinterpreted to Pareto ,  who basically put a theory forward about 80% of the people having 20 % of the wealth and visa versa.

In my view it is a typical economists theory ie. it was derived to fit results which means if you want it to, you can make it  , and if you d'ont you can make that that well.

As for 'bloody Aida'( where does that come from),it may be more relevant to high cost items such as cars , but I have honestly not noticed much difference between areas that have been leafletted once and those which have been hit hundreds of times.

In my view marketing is just as much an art as a science and these formulae are a way to try to add credibility and make it sound like you have a system which works.

A couple of weeks ago we had the Tuesday is the best day for sales 'revelation' - more b***s but if you say it convincingly enough then people may believe it.

Cheers,

Doug