Leaflet distribution is one of the most effective ways of marketing your business to local areas in London.
It provides excellent penetration of a local market which no other form of advertising can quite offer in the same way.
Your leaflets can make their way into almost every type of household in your selected area no matter the demographics of the residents.
But what is a local area and how is it defined? Let’s have a look at how to target and market to your local area with leaflet distribution.
Why local area?
London is a very competitive market. Advertising in an environment like this can be costly. Wasting marketing budgets or using them ineffectively can be detrimental to a business.
That is why we need to be careful to target only the people that are most likely to be interested in our services and not waste energy and resources elsewhere.
This concept should inform our choice of the London area we decide to market in.
Local business
If your business mostly focuses on servicing the geographical area close to your location, your decision here becomes simple.
Let’s have a look at a restaurant as an example of how we can determine what a local area is for a business.
First, we determine whether the restaurant in question runs take-away/delivery services.
We then have a look at the radius from their address within which the restaurant delivers. That is definitely an area that a restaurant owner might want to consider targeting with leaflet distribution campaigns.
On top of this we can look at other areas that are maybe slightly further, but that have demographics that are likely to visit the restaurant and that have good transport connection to the restaurant’s location. This would be another area worth considering for flyer campaigns.
If we are looking at advertising a local gym, we might consider targeting households in the same way. We might look at neighbourhoods within a walking distance of the gym’s location, as well as areas further away that match our target demographics and have good transport connections.
Sometimes all one needs is a place with perfectly matching demographics for a business three tube stops away, and another area of 10,000-20,000 households might open up for leaflet distribution.
London-wide business
On the other hand you might be doing business all over London or focus on online services.
Maybe you are a personal trainer and you like training people in their local parks. In that case you might want to target households all over London that are within a 5 minute walking distance from a nice park.
Maybe you are running a large business but mostly focus on specific demographics. In this case you’ll want to look at targeting the parts of London where these demographics are heavily represented.
Your offline marketing partners
This is why it’s very important that you choose your leaflet delivery company carefully.
Your distributor should be able to advise you on where exactly your leaflets should be delivered based on your needs.
They should have an in-house mapping system that excludes undeliverable addresses. This system should be based on geographical areas as well as demographics.
Decisions about where exactly your local marketing campaigns should focus can’t be made carelessly or without at least basic feedback from an experienced distributor.
Make sure that your company of choice has someone you can speak to about your plans and someone who can advise you.
Leaflet Marketing
As we are mostly talking about leaflet marketing in this article it would be good to establish some basic principles that apply to this marketing method.
Leaflet marketing gets to everyone – The unique thing about leaflet marketing we’ve already touched on is the fact that when you select an area for your campaign, you will reach almost every type of household within it.
With other forms of advertising you are likely to miss out on some demographics based on interest, the types of technology they use etc…
Your leaflets on the other hand will make their way through every accessible letterbox in the part of London you’ve selected. This is a unique advantage leaflet marketing has and one that many businesses take advantage of.
The most common targets for leaflet campaigns are privately owned residential households.
If you want to target businesses or council housing you will most likely need to use a slightly different system. Ask your distribution company about how they separate these three types of addresses.
Keep it simple
Your leaflets should be simple in design and format. Always use a professional designer and high quality photography.
Your flyers need to be clearly legible from a distance while looking professional.
Stick to a simple A5 leaflet format unless you are otherwise advised by your distribution company.
Think long term
Leaflets can get you a quick boost if needed but they work best when used long term.
Planning months ahead and building brand awareness in the London areas you care about is the way to go.
Leaflet marketing combines well with digital
Many companies use leaflet marketing to advertise digital services.
As many digital advertising methods are quite crowded nowadays, leaflets are being used to gain advantages in some niches.
A good example would be a delivery restaurant again. With a smart use of a scannable QR code on the leaflet a local restaurant can send the recipients of their leaflet directly to their delivery app profile.
Leaflet marketing also works well when combined with digital advertising. Running a leaflet delivery drop in a local area following a short geographically targeted facebook ad campaign can be very effective.
And then what?
So now we know where your local area is and how large it is. You know how many leaflets you need to cover this area in full and which parts of London you want to target.
At this point we tend to recommend for our clients to consider the repeated leaflet drop technique. This allows you to deliver your leaflets to the same homes multiple times with pre-determined rest periods between each drop.
Repeated drops
As we’ve mentioned above, leaflet marketing works best when applied over the long term.
This often includes delivering your leaflets to the same households repeatedly. This technique relies on the basic fact that repeated exposure to marketing materials works.
TV ads, Facebook ads, Outdoor advertising are all based on you seeing ads multiple times.
With leaflet marketing you can decide exactly how many times and when you want people to see your advertising.
Some examples of long term campaigns based on repeated drops can be
– 6 months long campaign with drops every 8 weeks
– 3 months long campaign with drops every 4 weeks
– two drop campaign with a 3 week rest period between deliveries
The decision on how many drops to each household are made and how long the periods in-between drops are should be made between you and your distribution company.
It will be based on your goals, budgets and the specific character of the local areas you are targeting.
You can read more about repeated drops and how they work here.
Summary
The principles of finding your local area and deciding where you should focus your leaflet campaigns are simple.
With that said it is always good to talk to your distribution company before committing to a campaign as one can easily make critical mistakes.
Don’t be afraid to ask for advice and no matter the size of your campaign always insist on talking to a real person before committing.
Leaflet marketing is not rocket science but you need to be using experienced professionals who know London and their craft well.
We hope that you now have a better understanding of both leaflet marketing and targeting of your local area after reading this blog.
If you have any questions or if you’d like to book a campaign please feel free to get in touch with us here..
