Pull in the locals with your leaflets

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Leaflets are a great way to bring in local business. Not quite so good, though, if you’re hundreds of miles away from your prospective customers. I would definitely use this method for any retail, restaurant or walk-in business where customers are ideally located nearby.

• You can distribute locally in a number of ways:
• Door-to-door (residential)
• Door-to-door (business)
• Newspaper insert
• Magazine insert (loose or stitched-in)
• As part of a mail package
• Use leaflet distribution to test full-page or large display ads. Send them by any of the above methods and gauge response before committing to that expensive ad.
• You should not dismiss leaflets too lightly. You may think of them as tacky or down-market. You shouldn’t. You can use them as enquiry devices in their own right, or as tests for adverts. We’ve all seen the door-to-door money-off coupons and the like. Be different. Ask the recipient to “put it on the notice board” for reference. If yours is a home market, ask them to “stick it on the refrigerator”. Even if they don’t respond straight away, they may keep it and use you in future.
• You can have leaflets printed and distributed cheaply. Single-colour printing is under $80 for 5,000. Distribution varies from $30 to $80 per thousand depending on location and whether targeting home or business markets. It’s much cheaper than mail, but obviously less personal.
• If you don’t want to print new material, send your standard brochure out the same way. You’ll have no extra printing costs and the distribution costs are the same.

A Low-cost Action Plan for Leaflet Distribution

1. Are you planning a big advertisement? Have you tested the magazine or paper with a smaller ad? You have? Good. Now all you need to do is book the ad. You know the audience is right. But how do you know the ad itself will work? You don’t? Test it cheaply by doing a leaflet drop. Print the leaflets exactly as the ad will appear, including the same response devices (coupon, telephone number, etc.). If you get a good response to the leaflet, go ahead and run the ad. Your test shouldn’t cost more than a couple of hundred dollars, the ad might cost thousands. That would be an expensive test!

2. Decide how else you could use these ideas creatively to promote your business. Make it something the recipient will keep. How about a free advice sheet like we discussed earlier? Ask them to pin it on their notice board. What about a bookmark? If it’s a decent one, they’ll keep it and see it again continually. Don’t forget to offer them free trials, money-back guarantees and the like. Reduce or remove the risk for them whenever you can.

3. Run a test. You may have to have 5,000 printed, but don’t send them all at once. Make sure it works first by sending 500 or 1,000. When it’s proven, send the rest and more! See Testing for more information.