Are you still using leaflets in your marketing? You could be wasting £0000’s

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

“I do loads of marketing - I sent out a leaflet last month!” 

I hear this a lot from businesses when we discuss their marketing efforts. It saddens me to know the effort and expense that they have gone to when, really, they could have done a fraction of the work for probably less than half of the cost!

Have you ever sent a leaflet drop out and been disappointed that you weren’t run over by customers immediately afterwards?

You may have even delivered them door to door yourself - so much work, and dangerous (fingers trapped in letterboxes are no joke!)

 There was likely no huge queue of new customers. No stampede of people desperate to buy from you.

The overuse of leaflets by takeaway restaurants has meant that they have almost become white noise that automatically gets put in the recycling box in most households.

Also, as leaflets are a style of interruption marketing (the household did not ask for you to send them your leaflet, you have interrupted their attention, sort of like a cold call) you don’t know if that household needs your services right now. There was no strategy behind giving that address your leaflet, no targeting, or demographic research. The chances are that they don’t need what you are offering and, if they ever did need your services in the future they will have forgotten that you sent them a leaflet once. 

There are so many variables that need to be in place for a leaflet to hit a household at just the right time that they happen to need to buy what you are selling. All other leaflets are effectively wasted!

Leaflets are an outdated marketing tool. They do work and there is likely to be more than one sale off the back of a leaflet drop but, you don't know for sure. The time and money invested into doing a leaflet drop are significant - I would want to know that it is going to work before spending so much.

The problem with leaflets is that the success rate can not be measured. You can not possibly know if every leaflet that you have delivered has been looked at and, if it has, did it generate a sale? Or did that household save your leaflet to refer back to in the future? You have no way of knowing.

So what should you do instead?

Digital marketing!

Online advertising and social media adverts are a much more efficient way to market your business. After all, most people have their phones in their hands scrolling through social media for at least a few hours a day! Just watch people stood in a queue. I bet there are only a few seconds between someone joining the queue and pulling their phones out. We have become intolerant to just waiting for things without having something to occupy ourselves with at all times!

You can advertise your business using digital marketing very easily. It is targeted to people that are within your ideal demographic and are likely to buy from you. It is also location-specific so that you do not waste valuable advertising budget.

This targeting is what actually saves you money, by only showing your advert to people that are likely to buy from you.

Imagine that you have a wedding dress shop - there are only going to be a small handful of newly engaged couples within your leaflet drop location and you may spend hundreds of pounds having those leaflets distributed. Anyone who is not personally planning a wedding will likely not look at your leaflet for more than a second before recycling unless perhaps they are the mother of the bride. As soon as that leaflet hits the recycling bin it is done with, the amount of money you spent to get that leaflet through that particular door has no return whatsoever.

Now imagine that you created a digital advert and invested a few hundred pounds into it. You can have that ad set up by a marketing agency, which can target the ad to women that have recently changed their profile to ‘engaged’. The chances of you having your advert shown to people that are actually looking for a wedding dress is hugely increased now and it has cost you significantly less money and you haven’t had to pound the streets delivering leaflets!

The best thing is that the advertising on these platforms is completely trackable. You know if your post has been looked at, who looked at it and how long for. You can even track whether that person clicked on any links for further information or if they went to your website after seeing your post.

This way it is possible to monitor the advertising spend, and see whether you have had a return on that investment. Did the advert work? If not you can improve it a little and run it again, making tweaks each time to really hit the mark with your customers. 

With a leaflet, you have no way of knowing if people had a positive response or if they came to your company because of it. There are ways to add a special code, or “bring this leaflet with you when you come to see us for 10% off” but in reality, this is not accurate.

Sounds like a no-brainer now doesn't it?

If you would like to know more about setting up targeted digital advertising, get in touch at hello@kellyjeffriewrites.co.uk