The most common mistakes first time clients make is only doing one leaflet drop in a new area they have never leafleted before, then judging a delivery response too quickly and…stopping! (Doh!)
As with all advertising, it takes time to take effect. SEO, for example, takes six months, or even years, to show a return on investment. Google AdWords and social media can take 10 months, only to find out it’s not right for your business anyway. Traditional press and media can take at least four to five months. Leaflet advertising is instant in its delivery, but its effects still take time to work
The subtle difference with leaflet distribution is that we are planting seeds for future sales and the present, so clients don’t have to search for you. You have already found them. And vitally, once you get it right with us, you can do it ‘till the cows come home’ because the letterbox does not move or change every six months like digital media.
As we have pointed out, results will be greater the second and third time you drop on the same ground. We call this the ‘bedding in period’. After this, providing you have a well-designed leaflet, the market is right in your area, and it’s executed at the optimum time of year, you should see good results.
We have conducted countless studies over our ten years in the industry for major clients who distribute millions of leaflets a year, and whose main source of sales leads and new business has come from decades of leaflet marketing!
This is what we have learned
1. Responses do not only come in that day, or the week after dropping, but up to 3–6 months after the point of delivery.
2. The average response time is around 6-8 weeks after point of dropping. People will and do keep leaflets, but it may be the second drop that triggers them into final action
3. If you have run multiple leaflet drops over the same area in the last 3-6 months, the hits you get in any given week, will NOT just be from ‘your last drop’. They will, in fact, be from all of the drops you have done. We call it the “roll on” effect.
How to measure results?
There are a lot of different methods of judging results these are some of them…
1. Copy on leaflet : Please mention leaflet when enquiring
2. Promotion code on leaflet they must quote
3. Use a different phone number on leaflet
4. As most people will go to your web site, look for upturn on hits on web site that month and next two months after the drops. two months after the drops.
5. Asking phone sales team to ask where they heard about your services
6. Use different product codes for this promotion
