Home – New › Forums › Marketing mastery › Anyone tried direct marketing? Letterbox drops?
- This topic has 36 replies, 22 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 3 months ago by TimStokes.
-
AuthorPosts
-
February 24, 2016 at 8:27 am #1194123Up::0
I think it really depends on what you are selling! For example I actually really do read takeaway menus that go into my letterbox. Booze specials I will also read. Bra catalogs of course are ignored along with anything that looks trashy/spammy.
To be honest not a lot of stuff of interest ever arrives in my letterbox. Maybe just maybe I might notice and read a catalog of pot plants on sale. I also might notice electronics, car type things on sale.
I wonder why this sort of stuff isn’t typically marketed via letterbox?
February 26, 2016 at 4:38 am #1194124February 26, 2016 at 10:23 am #1194125Up::0I’m actually going to do a local letterbox drop of fridge magnets attached to a flyer in the next couple of weeks.
As other have said, plain flyers are not likely to capture much attention.
February 26, 2016 at 7:46 pm #1194126Up::0Quinzhee, post: 229476, member: 73034 wrote:As other have said, plain flyers are not likely to capture much attention.Oh, where do you get your stats on that.
Just out of interest, I put out 55 flyers one day, and scored a job in access of $20k from them. Just plain flyers did the job.
February 26, 2016 at 7:54 pm #1194127Up::0bb1, post: 229486, member: 53375 wrote:Oh, where do you get your stats on that.Just my observation. I have no evidence
February 26, 2016 at 11:57 pm #1194128Up::0bb1, post: 229486, member: 53375 wrote:Oh, where do you get your stats on that.Just out of interest, I put out 55 flyers one day, and scored a job in access of $20k from them. Just plain flyers did the job.
Do you target your flyer drops? E.g. Look on google earth for properties with certain gardens (the ones you typically get business from) then advertise to those?
February 27, 2016 at 6:13 am #1194129Up::0cshiel, post: 229491, member: 74620 wrote:Do you target your flyer drops? E.g. Look on google earth for properties with certain gardens (the ones you typically get business from) then advertise to those?When I have done flyer drops (haven’t needed to for a couple of years), I definitely target my areas.
- Street with bigger blocks.
- Streets with big expensive houses
- Obvious areas where one partner works and the other is out having coffee with the girls/or boys a;; week
- One village where I did all 800 houses, because mostly higher wealth area.
The interesting thing about this drop, was that it was not targeted, and definitely not planned, and definitely not in an area I had thought off. Very much an opportunistic drop. I had been called by a desperate work cover recipient, who had being knocked back by 8 others before me, because it was literally a $20 job, it was in my first 6 months, and I was trying to build up a bit of goodwill, so although I was most likely making nothing on the job I went and did it.
When completed I noticed that there were 55 letter boxes at the entrance to the units, and in went 55 flyers, while doing it I was told by a resident don’t bother as no one has gardens. About 2 weeks later I get a phone call from the chair person of the body corporate saying he received my flyer, and would I like to quote on the whole complex.
So 2 lessons here, don’t knock back a job that’s not worth the money, drop flyers where you work, FLYERS work (oops that’s 3)Just another comment, my business was built on flyers, I think initially I was up around 70% of work from flyers, now its 50 or 60% from referrals.
March 14, 2016 at 6:39 am #1194130Up::0I’ve done letterbox drops for businesses targeting families of young kids before and its always very successful. I would compliment that with other local advertising too though.
Good luck!
March 15, 2016 at 2:28 pm #1194131Up::0From my experience, it depends on your industry. For example, people I’ve dealt with have expressed great success within the food and gardening industry. So it is no surprise that “bb1” has also mentioned success.
They absolutely do work, but it really depends on what your selling.
For example
Every house typically has lawn, so flyers offering such a service makes sense that they’d be effective. As with food, people might not have time to prepare food and grab hold of a flyer to call for delivery.I know I use food flyers, I’m sure others do.
Some other businesses will send out thousands of flyers without a single response, so its very dependent on the business.
You’ve mentioned Pay Per Click, I’m not sure if you’ve experimented with both facebook and Google AdWords.
March 16, 2016 at 8:49 am #1194132Up::0Letterbox drops are definitely not effective when weighed against 2016 digital marketing tactics for your ecommerce business. When campaigns are setup effectively, you can target and retarget specific demographics who have created a metadata trail showing that they are actively looking to find a solution related to party supplies.
The fact that your PPC campaign is not working and costing you a fortune is not uncommon. Because many business owners don’t understand that throwing money at the wall for an easy fix will not solve the fundamental issue of your business needing to be easy to find in organic search.
In the US, you have the Amazon Echo which lets you talk to a device that recognizes natural language and assists you. These personal automated systems through voice or like WeChat with text chat bots in China is the future of search. You have to focus on ranking organically through a proper digital marketing strategy based around content and metadata.
Content is primarily text, images and video.
You don’t have a blog, hence no content that will ever rank organically.
Your about us says you are Helen, yada yada, but why not record a video, insert a profile photo? Pull out your phone, decent lighting, decent audio, download a basic editing app on your phone, upload it to the website.
You say you are a Melbourne based company but you don’t have basic NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information on Google so Google doesn’t give you any authority. At least get a virtual office on Gumtree for $60 a month and register with Google My Business if you don’t want to use your home address.
You don’t have testimonials so no social proof from your happy clients.
You don’t have YouTube account so no video
You don’t have Instagram account so no photos.
Where are the photos of your clients successful parties?
Your web designer is a Google partner and in the AWIA so they are not shift fly-by-night types. But maybe you chose the $750 a year + setup package?
Either talk to them about their digital marketing services, or another company such as myself, or get ready to sit down with a pile of books starting with something like
The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers DirectlyIt really depends on your budget and how successful your business is.
March 20, 2016 at 3:06 am #1194133Up::0CloudStorming, post: 230292, member: 53682 wrote:The fact that your PPC campaign is not working and costing you a fortune is not uncommon. Because many business owners don’t understand that throwing money at the wall for an easy fix will not solve the fundamental issue of your business needing to be easy to find in organic search.In the US, you have the Amazon Echo which lets you talk to a device that recognizes natural language and assists you. These personal automated systems through voice or like WeChat with text chat bots in China is the future of search. You have to focus on ranking organically through a proper digital marketing strategy based around content and metadata.
Content is primarily text, images and video.
You don’t have a blog, hence no content that will ever rank organically.
Your about us says you are Helen, yada yada, but why not record a video, insert a profile photo? Pull out your phone, decent lighting, decent audio, download a basic editing app on your phone, upload it to the website.
You say you are a Melbourne based company but you don’t have basic NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information on Google so Google doesn’t give you any authority. At least get a virtual office on Gumtree for $60 a month and register with Google My Business if you don’t want to use your home address.
You don’t have testimonials so no social proof from your happy clients.
You don’t have YouTube account so no video
You don’t have Instagram account so no photos.
Where are the photos of your clients successful parties?
Your web designer is a Google partner and in the AWIA so they are not shift fly-by-night types. But maybe you chose the $750 a year + setup package?
Either talk to them about their digital marketing services, or another company such as myself, or get ready to sit down with a pile of books starting with something like
The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers DirectlyIt really depends on your budget and how successful your business is.
Hi, thanks for the feed back. I do know throwing money at the wall is not going to improve things, and I am very aware I need the organic listing improved. This is of course the number one goal, but it takes time, it doesn’t happen automatically.I do have blog – it under the tab party ideas not blog, so perhaps you didn’t realize what it was. It is also fairly new, so only has a few articles so far.
I am registered with Google my business, and have been since December so I am not sure why it appears to you I am not. I have a registered business address with them (my accountant/solicitors office who holds all the company documents). It lists my contact number for my business, emails, but does hide the official street address (as per the option offered by google) from showing to the public, because I do not of course want people to actually show up at that address. Then I have my circle of where I trade set to the maximum allowed by Google Places.
I don’t have youtube, no, or instagram, but my website is loaded with photos. I also have Pinterest (still working on expanding this). I am trying to go for the mediums my clients actually use and peruse while planning a party. I also have google plus which seems fairly useless since I only know two people total who use it, and when I have tried promoting it through Facebook etc, no one cares.
My web designers have been hired on to do digital marketing, as of a month ago, and have made a few changes to optimize the site so far, but it seems to be a slow process………..
March 20, 2016 at 1:01 pm #1194134Up::0Hi Helen,
For sure, if you have a blog section, it needs to appear on the top Navbar.
I see now your Google My Business listing, however without a proper full address such as a virtual office at least, there is not much more you can do with it. You cannot have the same exact address as your accountant/solicitor, even with a different Customer ID. It’s good that you reply to your reviews, try to get at least 6 reviews on Google, then 6 reviews on Womo, 6 reviews on TrueLocal.
You haven’t done any citations, as you don’t have an address it makes it very hard to get a benefit from local SEO for non-physical businesses.
If your website is loaded with photos, you should use that on Instagram. When you say you are trying to use the medium your clients actually use, you have to be where people are. Everyone is different, and you have to be and respond to all channels. For example I contacted an Eastern European company a few days ago who do web development – I chose to use facebook to communicate with them instead of email. Two days later, no one has even looked at my message. What is the point of having a facebook page if no one monitors it? In the meantime, I am still looking around, so they might miss a potential big client just because they don’t monitor every communication channel.
Web designers don’t always make the best digital marketers, because the skills for these areas vary broadly. I realise I am just one guy, and My Work is 22 staff, but if they have put you on Shopify – shopify is not always the best choice for SEO. This is according to a really smart guy at the monthly Melbourne SEO meetup who was chatting about the issues he was having with the jewellery or cosmetic ecommerce company he works at full-time as a full stack developer.
As I said before, I don’t know how much revenue you are generating vs your investment, if you went for the $750 + setup plan or something higher.
And you have to be realistic, you aren’t going to rank on the first position on Google for Melbourne party supplies no matter how much you spend. Even these guys who have been around for 20 years in the same physical location are only #9 http://melbournepartyemporium.com/
And that is after you scroll past the adwords ads and the local 3-pack.
March 22, 2016 at 7:51 am #1194135Up::0Hi Helen,
Just reading through this now, did you do the letter box drop? If so what sort of response have you had?
March 22, 2016 at 11:10 pm #1194136Up::0CloudStorming, post: 230407, member: 53682 wrote:Hi Helen,For sure, if you have a blog section, it needs to appear on the top Navbar.
I see now your Google My Business listing, however without a proper full address such as a virtual office at least, there is not much more you can do with it. You cannot have the same exact address as your accountant/solicitor, even with a different Customer ID. It’s good that you reply to your reviews, try to get at least 6 reviews on Google, then 6 reviews on Womo, 6 reviews on TrueLocal.
You haven’t done any citations, as you don’t have an address it makes it very hard to get a benefit from local SEO for non-physical businesses.
If your website is loaded with photos, you should use that on Instagram. When you say you are trying to use the medium your clients actually use, you have to be where people are. Everyone is different, and you have to be and respond to all channels. For example I contacted an Eastern European company a few days ago who do web development – I chose to use facebook to communicate with them instead of email. Two days later, no one has even looked at my message. What is the point of having a facebook page if no one monitors it? In the meantime, I am still looking around, so they might miss a potential big client just because they don’t monitor every communication channel.
Web designers don’t always make the best digital marketers, because the skills for these areas vary broadly. I realise I am just one guy, and My Work is 22 staff, but if they have put you on Shopify – shopify is not always the best choice for SEO. This is according to a really smart guy at the monthly Melbourne SEO meetup who was chatting about the issues he was having with the jewellery or cosmetic ecommerce company he works at full-time as a full stack developer.
As I said before, I don’t know how much revenue you are generating vs your investment, if you went for the $750 + setup plan or something higher.
And you have to be realistic, you aren’t going to rank on the first position on Google for Melbourne party supplies no matter how much you spend. Even these guys who have been around for 20 years in the same physical location are only #9 http://melbournepartyemporium.com/
And that is after you scroll past the adwords ads and the local 3-pack.
Thanks for the pointers, I’d love to get more reviews.
My blog if on the top navbar under party ideas.
Hope my SEO guys nkow what they’re doing!
Im not on shopify.
And I know I can’t get first position, I just wanted to rank high enough to get, say, 6 sales a day. Thats all I’d need to be fine, even less for bigger sales. I don’t need (and couldn’t handle) the ‘one order every 9 seconds’ that The Party People get……… It really sounds discouraging right now from what I am hearing, I don’t seem to have any actual chance of really ranking at all.March 22, 2016 at 11:14 pm #1194137Up::0Paul Leach, post: 230452, member: 77149 wrote:Hi Helen,Just reading through this now, did you do the letter box drop? If so what sort of response have you had?
Hi Paul,
I decided against the drop, because I thought that perhaps my product wasn’t everyday enough to be worth it. As pointed out, I can see why flyers for something everyone has or could use every day would work well, gardening, take away items etc. My product is a once a year special occasion type, so I thought the chance of reaching people ready to buy right now when the flyer comes may be too low to make the ROI worth it. I have instead gone for cheaper options such as posters around town, school newsletter advertising and promoting to local play centres and other places that host parties. -
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.