Introduction
In a large city like London pests are a reality everyone has to deal with from time to time. Whether we are talking about business premises or households almost everyone will need pest control services at some point.
Good advertising makes sure that your pest control company is on the list of places to call when the need comes.
There are many ways one can advertise a local pest control business in London nowadays. There are online methods that most often centre around social media and search engine ads.
There are also some very effective offline methods that are equally and sometimes more effective.
Advertising in trade publications for B2B marketing is a good example of an offline marketing method for a pest control business that works.
In this article we are going to focus on flyer delivery as that is our area of competence. When done right, flyer distribution is one of the most effective forms of marketing a local pest control business in London can use.
Pest Control flyer delivery to households
There are two markets you can focus on as a pest control company. You can either advertise to businesses (B2B) or to households (B2C).
Let’s have a look at households first.
There are some important elements to delivering flyers to households we need to understand first.
Most flyer delivery campaigns that target households focus on privately owned residential homes. What is most often excluded from this is local authority housing, businesses and inaccessible large apartment buildings.
This is important to mention because if you want to target any of these categories you will have to speak to your distributor and use a separate tailored service to do so.
The great thing about flyer delivery is that it allows you to reach every single household in your selected area. There is no demographic skew, no age categories overlooked or anything like that.
Every single household in your area receives your carefully curated physical piece of advertising. No other marketing method can achieve this for you.
On top of this many people tend to keep flyers they are interested in on hand for a period of time. If you want to find out more about the exact statistics on this see our blog that focuses on the topic here.
Your flyers will make their way through the letterboxes of every household in your area, people will have to interact with them in some way and many will keep them for a later reference.
Shared vs Solo deliveries
There are two ways we can distribute your flyers. Shared and solo.
Shared delivery refers to a technique where we deliver your pamphlets together with one or two flyers by other high quality non-competing companies.
Solo delivery describes a service where we deliver your flyers on their own.
In reality what this means is that when we do shared delivery we put your flyers in each letterbox as a part of a group of 2-3 flyers. In Solo delivery it’s just your pamphlet.
Most people intuitively want to use Solo delivery as at first glance it appears to be a better method.
We tend to discourage this where possible. When Shared distribution is capped at the maximum of three flyers and is conducted properly there is no difference in the response between Shared and Solo campaigns.
You will have exactly the same response whether your flyers were a part of a shared drop or a solo drop.
This is very relevant especially as Shared delivery can be cca 60% cheaper than solo campaigns. You can find out more about the costs of flyer campaigns in our blog here.
As such you can expect the same results from a well executed shared campaign at a significantly lower cost to a solo campaign. We recommend that you use Shared deliveries where possible.
Selecting the right area
You can use the savings from doing shared drops to expand your target area or run multiple deliveries over the same ground.
The way you select where you deliver your flyers should have a method to it.
Many factors can come into play when you are deciding on which area to target and as such you should discuss this with your distribution company.
When we help our clients in this we first look at geographical proximity as a factor. If you run a local business do you have your local area fully covered?
If you operate in a larger geographical area (like the whole of London) we look at where most of your business is coming from, demographics, income levels, types of properties and more.
We then pick the most interesting areas from this selection to fit your budget and goals.
We use a proprietary mapping system that has very accurate household numbers that we constantly update. We share these maps with you so you can be sure that the numbers of flyers used correspond to the number of households targeted.
Local Authority Housing
If you want to target local authority housing and council properties you can do so using a separate service.
We run deliveries that exclusively target these addresses.
These have to be separated from our regular door to door drops as the logistics of reaching local authority housing are considerably different.
Many estates use locked gates that need special keys or access codes. Their layout is also considerably different to other areas.
We have accounted for all of this and we do run a service that allows you to reach these homes. It just needs to be done separately from our large door to door drops.
If you know that you want your campaigns to target local authority housing please let us know.
You can also find some more information about household numbers in London here.
Pest Control flyer delivery targeting businesses
Pest control services are required by businesses as much as households. As such targeting local businesses with flyers is fairly common for pest control companies.
We can deliver your pamphlets to local London businesses in a similar way we can deliver to households.
There are some complications that come with targeting business addresses. Businesses are more spread out than residential homes.
Our distributors have to often introduce themselves when they enter a business and explain what they are doing.
All of this makes B2B flyer delivery slower compared to normal door to door campaigns. This means that per flyer delivered B2B campaigns are more expensive compared to B2C.
On the other hand a single hit on a flyer has a considerably larger spending potential compared to what you can expect from a single household.
As such if you often work with businesses it is a very good idea to target them with your flyers as well.
To find out more about how B2B flyer deliveries work have a look at our blog on the topic here.
Making flyers
We’ve discussed how we can deliver your flyers, the different addresses we can target and which techniques we can use.
It is worth mentioning at least a little bit about how you can create your flyers in the first place.
At The Private Postman we help our clients with the design of their pamphlets as well as print and storage.
Design
The design of your flyer is very important. No matter how carefully you plan your campaign if your pamphlets themselves are not designed well you are likely not going to get the best response.
You definitely want to work with a professional designer if you can. At The Private Postman we can either offer you free feedback on your existing designs or help redesign your flyers from scratch.
Flyer design has largely moved towards simplicity and the use of high quality photos. At least one side of your pamphlet will likely be taken up by a large image so spend some extra time sourcing quality photos to choose from.
When it comes to print you want to keep things simple. Try sticking to an A5 format flyer. Anything more complicated than that tends to create more problems than it solves.
With the paper you choose, try to stay between 170-250gsm for the best value. Your flyer distributor should manage your stock and store it in their warehouse facilities.
Also try to talk to your distributor about their contact with printing companies. There is a big chance they’ll be able to get you a deal for your print that’s considerably better than you could get on your own.
To find out more about flyer design and print see our page on the topic here.
