Introduction
We’ve discussed many of the specific elements of leaflet distribution in our previous blogs. You can read about how you should think about structuring your leaflets, the statistics of leaflet distribution, getting the best return on investment with leaflets or niche-specific guides for flyer campaigns.
Today, we’ll have a look at some fictional leaflet campaign examples that will demonstrate in high level of detail what specific approaches to flyer delivery can look like.
Example 1 – Local restaurant opening
Discussing the example of a flyer distribution strategy for a restaurant that is opening a location in a new area will show an approach that will be applicable to many other businesses.
Whether you are opening a new music school, a gym location or a hair salon business, the examples discussed here will apply.
As with most situations, you want to start planning your leaflet campaign well in advance, if possible. If you are planning to make an event out of the opening day, your first flyer drop can be focused on this fact.
You want to focus your flyers on one main service, event or product no matter the field you are in. You don’t want to have one flyer discussing your opening day event, all the dishes on your menu, the wine list and the awards your chef has received.
This is simply too much information for one flyer.
In this particular case you’d be looking to get as many people to your opening day as possible. You want to focus your flyer on this idea exclusively.
Include a mention of the type of cuisine you are offering and an invitation to the opening day event with en enticing offer of a free wine tasting or something similar. If you have good testimonials you can use those also.
You should use one main image on the front side of your leaflet and it should relate to the offer aimed at getting people to come to your opening day. If you are doing a free wine tasting, use an image of people drinking wine in a nice environment. If you are going to be serving your best pasta dish, use a great looking image of that.
Following the opening day you want to run multiple drops over the period of a few months. This is to gain mind-share in your local area. You want people to know about your existence and you want to remind them of it at least a few times.
The frequency and intensity of these drops should be something you discuss with your distribution company. Some areas benefit from more frequent deliveries and others might need a more subtle approach.
With these drops, you should be working on developing brand recognition. Show the best images of your most popular dishes, keep your branding consistent and if appropriate occasionally share an offer.
If you deliver your food, you can also run drops focused on informing people of this fact. Your flyers focused on food delivery can include a QR code that takes people to your profile on a delivery app of your choice.
After the initial period of a few months you can significantly reduce the frequency of your leaflet drops and discuss your further steps with your distribution company.
Example 2 – Established local gym looking to increase clientele
The example of an established local gym will also apply to other businesses that have seasonal surges in new clients. This could be schools, after-school clubs, martial arts gyms and others.
As the main focus here is seasonality, the first step would be to identify the points in the year when most new clients tend come through the door. The most obvious example of this is January for gyms.
New Year resolutions and after-Christmas weight gain tend to bring people to gyms in large numbers in January. To capitalise on this as a gym owner you want to consider running drops throughout the month.
As you will want to run the first drop as early in January as possible, you want to have your flyers printed and campaign planned at least a month ahead.
It can be challenging to get anything done over Christmas and you don’t want to be rushing this process in January. If you’ve planned correctly, your distributor should have your printed January leaflets in stock by early December and your drops booked around the same time.
On the other hand there are slower times in the year for gyms. If you are looking to increase your businesses in the slower parts of the year, you might want to consider running offers.
A flyer with a code for X% off the first 3 months of membership starting in May, can go a long way to persuade a potential customer to sign up during a challenging time of year.
Even though this technique can be effective, you want to make sure to not run too many flyers with offers and discounts. In general, two a year might be the maximum as you don’t want people to become hesitant to pay full price.
Example 3 – National Estate agent approach
Estate agents have a number of specific leafleting strategies that apply exclusively to their type of business.
A good example of this would be small drops of 100-500 flyers delivered to an area surrounding a recent successful sale. A large Estate Agent might be running up to ten of these at any given time around London.
These smaller drops should be focused on prominent properties sold. The properties are often recognisable by locals and can go a long way to build trust and establish authority with potential clients. The cost per flyer delivered in this way is considerably higher than traditional campaigns but this approach is so effective that when done correctly, the higher cost of delivery is worth it.
Having a good relationship with your distribution company, designer and printer can be very important when it comes to these drops. As the flyer design will be at least in some way unique to each drop, you need a team that can design, print and deliver these flyers reasonably quickly.
A distribution company that can also handle your printing in this case can be very helpful.
These drops would be done alongside the main campaigns which will be less specific but larger and more regular. It is not uncommon for an estate agent to deliver upwards of 100,000 leaflets a week in London.
Some larger estate agents prefer to plan and run these in their main office and others prefer to leave the leafleting strategy to local branch managers.
In both of these examples, the central office and individual branches should be informed about the timing and size of each drop. As such you want to find a distribution company that has systems to inform everyone in a reliable way.
On top of this you want to check the logistical systems of your distribution company. Can they handle multiple campaigns with many different designs happening at one time all over London without making mistakes?
