Introduction
Pamphlet distribution has been an important part of marketing campaigns around London for decades. It has remained very relevant through all the technological changes we’ve seen in this time.
Let’s go through all the steps of planning and creating a pamphlet campaign one by one.
Planning a pamphlet drop
Before you start designing and printing your leaflets it is good to first establish the exact goal of your campaign.
You might be running your pamphlet drops with a number of goals in mind. The most important thing at this stage in the process is for you to define exactly what the goal of your campaign is.
Even more importantly try to stick to a single main goal. Your design, distribution area and schedule will be heavily influenced by the varying goals you might be pursuing.
Campaigns aimed at developing local mind share
Leaflet campaigns that are aiming at developing local mind share will focus on repeated deliveries to the same households. Your distribution company will plan these sensitively with predefined rest periods between each drop. These campaigns will often (but not always) be focused on the area surrounding your place of business.
Drops aimed at advertising a specific service or product
You might be aiming at advertising one very specific service with your pamphlets. In this case your previous experience in where your clients tend to come from will be important in deciding how your targeting should work.
A good leaflet distribution company will also be able to direct you towards the most effective targets and help you discover untapped markets.
Drops aimed at reactivating your customers at a crucial time of year
If you are looking to reactivate your customers at a specific time of year you will want to plan your campaigns ideally months ahead of time. You can do this with the help of your distributor. By doing so, you can make sure to hit your customers at the most crucial times for your business.
These can be particularly busy times with a predictable influx of new clients like January for gyms or September for after-school activities. Or on the other hand you can use discount codes on your pamphlets to help you get over more quiet periods of the year.
Pamphlet design and print
Now that you know what the goal of your pamphlet drop is you can move into the design process.
One of the most important elements of modern pamphlet design are the images you use. Pamphlet design has been trending towards simplification of elements for a long time.
As such modern pamphlets that work well tend to use large high quality photographs or image and a relatively small amount of text.
Use a professional designer
Pamphlet design is not complicated but small mistakes can affect the response rates of your campaign. Using a professional will save you money in the long term.
Talk to a professional graphic designer, consult your distribution company and create a high quality custom leaflet. The quality of your flyer design will have a great impact on the success of your campaign as a whole.
Make sure to keep your flyer printing process simple. We recommend choosing a standard A5 format with GSM between 200-300GSM. Always sticking to a single page, non-folded leaflet.
There are rare situations where a more complicated format for your pamphlet might be appropriate. However, these are exceptions to the rule.
A5 pamphlets are
– Inexpensive to produce
– Easy to transport
– Easy to store
– Easy to deliver
– Effective in generating response from your clients
Getting your pamphlets to people in perfect shape is very important. A single page A5 leaflet of reasonable thickness is the best format for deliveries. It is robust and cost-efficient.
Targeting of your campaigns
The type of business you run and the goals for your campaign will have a big impact on which areas you should select for your pamphlet drop. (As mentioned above)
If you run a restaurant, your leaflets should be aimed at households within your delivery radius.
On the other hand if you are a personal trainer who focuses on training in parks you will be targeting households close to parks in areas with a high percentage of people that can afford your services.
You always want to plan the locations of your pamphlet drops with the help of your distribution company.
You also want to make sure that your distribution company has a high quality, proprietary mapping system they can use.
They should know where to find various demographics and how many leaflets you will need for each area. This might seem trivial but working with a company whose numbers you can trust is very important.
Most mapping systems of this kind will focus only on privately owned residential addresses and exclude
– Businesses
– Local Authority Housing
– Industrial Areas
– Large locked apartment buildings
If you want to have your pamphlets delivered to any of these places you need to make sure to talk to your delivery company. See if they have systems for targeting of the types of addresses mentioned above.
Pamphlet distribution
Most pamphlet drops are focused on privately owned residential addresses. This is sometimes called door to door leaflet distribution.
You can deliver your pamphlets as a part of a Solus delivery of Shared distribution.
Solus
– the distributor delivers your pamphlets on their own
Shared
– the distributor delivers your pamphlets with 2-3 other flyers
There are no differences in response rates between solus and shared distribution campaigns.
Shared distribution is going to be considerably cheaper as multiple clients share the cost of delivery.
Solus pamphlet distribution is relevant only in areas where your distribution company can’t find anyone to share your drop with.
You might also select Solus deliveries for campaigns that are very specific and small in size. A very good example of this is an estate agent advertising a successful sale of a house to the local community.
Drops like this might consist of only a couple hundred pamphlets and no shares.
With larger shared campaigns there are almost no limits on the numbers of leaflets you can have delivered each week. Literally hundreds of thousands of your pamphlets can be delivered every week in London.
On the other end you can go more targeted and deliver only 5,000 pamphlets every week to very carefully selected areas while still being on a shared system.
What makes pamphlet delivery effective
Reaching Everyone
One of the biggest advantages of using pamphlets is the ability to reach every single household in your area.
You can reach every demographic and every single household in local areas important for your business. You can do this reliably and repeatedly. And you can do this using a carefully designed physical piece of advertising.
This is a unique ability that no other advertising method gives you.
Combining your online and offline advertising
You can also tie your offline pamphlet drops with your online presence. By using QR codes you can direct people to your website, social media or mobile app of choice. This helps to combine the advantages of physical media with the efficiency of online systems.
Example 1 If you are a restaurant using food delivery apps you can use a QR code that sends people to your app profile to order
Example 2 If you are a charity you can use the QR code to direct people to your donation page or YouTube videos about your work.
There are endless use cases for QR codes on flyers.
Repeated exposure
Repeated pamphlet deliveries to your local area are a great mind share building tool. It is hard to compete with the ability to have your physical pamphlet coming to people’s home repeatedly with careful rest intervals between each drop.
Repeated drops are a great tool and almost no other marketing method will allow you to develop mind share like pamphlet distribution
