Ways to get your flyers distributed

So you have spent the time getting a really effective flyer designed and the money getting it printed. Now comes the big question of how to get it to your customers. This article will be a quick overview of the different methods you can get a flyer out to your customers, the advantages, disadvantages, and when it’s best to use them.

As part of a sale

Everything from the discount vouchers on the back of supermarket receipts to a flyers slipped into a bag with what was just brought fall into this methods. Now this is the easiest way to do it as you already have a customer in your store, but it’s the type of marketing you use that matters. The best kind of marketing material is a discount voucher for future purchases that either relate to the product just brought (oil for a lawnmower for example), or encourages the client to refer or bring their friends. They do have a better response rate over things like mailbox drops, depending on what is being offered, but by it’s nature it focused on existing customers so you won’t get as much success as a ‘cold call’ method to get new ones.

Email

Yes I realise that a printing company listing email as their second type of marketing is something that isn’t printed. Well we know that most companies now use email as the first line of marketing distribution, we use it ourselves, but there are some very good reasons why you shouldn’t rely on it as your only means of advertising. It is cheap and simple to do, especially with systems like Mailchimp that can automate almost all of the process. The downside is that you are limited to only your existing customer base and it has a very low response rate. Let’s face it, how email marketing messages do you get in a week that you delete without reading more than the subject line. Also many business make the mistake of spamming their clients inbox with too many messages every month leading to the clients just blocking it and putting the company in a bad light. Email works best for where you are offering exclusive or very time limited offers to your existing customers.

Social Media

We all see social media advertising, where a funny or thought provoking item draws people into the deal the business is offering. I’ve talked about here and when it’s done right it can really draw new clients in thanks to the power of viral trends. The challenge is that you have to spend a lot of time and money to get one of those viral hits, so for most business social media marketing becomes more of a post on their site that’s only seen by their existing followers. This doesn’t mean you should ignore it, just accept that it is a low cost, low response rate method, just like email. Social media works best when you have a more generalised offer that people may be willing to pass on to their friends, especially if there is a time or number limits to it.

Mail Box Drops

Remember when every few days your mailbox was stuffed full of flyers. Well it still happens and even the smallest of business can target a large numbers of households for a fairly low cost. With this you pick the suburbs you want to target, and if it’s homes or business then you get a number of flyers need from the distribution company. The printing company, like us Copy Express, will organize practical side and a while later your flyer is in everyone’s mailbox that doesn’t have a “No Junk Mail’ sign. Now you have to be aware that smallest of these type of runs are over 5000 addresses and depending on the size and number suburbs you are targeting, may require tens of thousands of flyers. You also have to allow the fact that it can take two or more weeks from the initial suburb quote to the marketing enduring in mail boxes so this is not the choice of the instant special that digital system allow you. Again there is a low response rate to the number of flyers you send out, but trends point to it being much bigger than the digital formats if you offer a range of specials over just one or two.

Direct Mail

I talk about it more here but in a nutshell, you have the option of directly reaching people through mailing lists compiled by specialized research companies. Depending on how ‘focused’ you want the list to be, you can be just as simple as all business of a certain type or households in a given area to very detailed social graphical information (Households with two or more adults and children of ages 0 to 13 years, with combined earning over $x, with more than 1 car, etc). You do have to pay for this information and depending who go to and what you want it can cost you hundreds of dollars. In return you much smaller pool potential clients where you can smartly tailor your marketing to get a much higher response rate. So this type of marketing is best for high premium services and products.

Walkabout

Are you on site working and have a lull period, or it’s a quiet time and you have workers doing little but getting paid anyway. This is a good time to get out there with some spot marketing. With a smartly designed flyer you can just walk around the neighbouring houses or business on the street and drop in a personalised flyer talking about what you are doing right now and what services you are offering the business/home you are standing in front of. Have a pad of them in the ute/van at all times and get out there with a personalized marketing when you can. Sure like all advertising it won’t guarantee a response, but it does put your name out there and shows you are thinking about their needs, which is great for building a link of your name with that service, so when they do need it yours is the name they think of.
Not sure what method you should use for your next marketing push? Don’t know if the product/service you have chosen to promote works for the way you are getting it out there? Why not book a meeting with Copy Express. Our independent viewpoint will help you pick the right methods to get your promotion out there and our design experience can help you ensure that have it say just the right things to make sure it gets noticed.