So after a great first summer, i am coming to terrible first winter. I have been hand delivering flyers lately and im not covering much ground. I want to mail some out now. How do you go about doing this? Is it done by zipcode, neighborhood, etc. Also do i go to the post office to get help, or can i pay online/ are there programs that help. Anyways if i could get like a step by step action it would help. thanks
You can put them in the paper box. Its much faster then walking.
You could go the post card route…
There are sites that will print a full color post card, provide a targeted demographic mailing list, and mail the post card - so pretty much everything. You can even select which streets the post cards go out too.
Quantumprint.com, vistaprint.com and USPS.gov are just a few of the sites that offer this service. It’s pretty inexpensive for sending out mass mailings…
Thanks guys. anything helps, i don’t think a lot of people actually do mail outs. if so there not really trying to respond. anyways business is fun. good times.
I made up my flyer and had them put in my local paper. Im getting a 3 percent response rate which i was thrilled with. It cost me 1500 to distribute 25000 in the paper. I did the door to door thing but really, its not that much more to have it put in paper. (unless you do the printing urself off your printer)
nice. i was doing the math on 3% of 25000 and thats a really great deal. ill have to check out that option.
How long ago were the fliers distributed? If you offered a “call to action” like a special discount if they call before a certain date, has that offer expired?
whoa, pump the brakes. Let me get this straight. You are getting 3 jobs for every 100 fliers? 30 per 1000! I guess you are thrilled with 8300 jobs.
Did you mean that you put out 2500?
I am tired, maybe my math is wrong…
No, 3 percent of 25000 is 750…which is not all done at once. I do a few zip codes a month because i am a one man show i dont wanna get overloaded…from those 750…i landed about 500 or so. Remember response rate is the number of people who call you…not the number of people you get jobs from. on my flyer i have my website so they can go on and fill out a form if they dont want to call…i get a lot of these jobs from the lettering on my truck and referalls which i pay 10 bucks to the customer for each succesfull referal.
No, Its just a simple flyer. Its in bus docs section. Being there when the customer calls makes a huge difference too. People dont want a machine. They want a live person. having the fill out form on the website set up to text message me the info is great too so the response time is quick when im on the road. Some of this stuff i learned working for other companies and trial and error as im learning the art of running a business myself. WCR has been and still is a big help for it. All i can say is read, read, read the **** out of this forum.
Did the paper print the flyers for you? Did you approach them w/ this idea or did they have a program in place for doing this?
Jeez, I was a little tired. I could of just reached for my calculator :rolleyes:
Even if you only made $100 per job you would have grossed $50k from
$1500 worth of fliers. I would say thrilled is a understatement.
How do you manage to do those 500 jobs, not including from other sources,
referrals and your current customers? You must be doing 2-3 per day, every
day. I need to take a nap just thinking about it.
3% is a massive response for that form of advertising. Good job
I told the newspaper what i wanted the flyer to say…i already had one designed and was passing them out but it was taking too long and wanted something faster. The 1500 is everything…printing, 90# paper, delivered. I only targeted certain areas. For example, you dont want low income zip codes Then when i did the job, i always told the customer…ill give you ten bucks for each referral…so if i just did their house…id say your gutter cleaning in the fall will be 75.00…if i get 8 referalls from you, you will get paid 5 bucks to have your gutters cleaned…also if im doing the estimate and they are home, ill say something like…ill give you 10 bucks off if i can do it right now…its things like this that make money, because the longer they have to think about it, the greater your chances of you not getting the job goes up. Remember, you need to be a salesman too, not just a window cleaner. I did all the jobs myself, and scheduled them close together geographically…my first year in business, but i have been doing it for 9 years and learned what works and what doesnt working for other companies prior to this.
Did you send them a pdf w/ the flier info?
No, i went down there in person to talk with the rep. Business is always done best in person IMO.
I am also sending out a flier w the local newspaper at the end of this month. Most likely around 5000 fliers.
FYI - Our newspaper in town puts out (2) types of publications. One comes out near the weekend, and includes a lot of shopping ads, plus the paper is free, and their distribution covered some 30,000 residents/businesses/stores/etc…it is like a shopper/clipper newspaper with classifieds.
The other publication they send out is a paid subscription newspaper, with local news and events - very little advertising. The circulation on this paper reaches about 5,000 PAYING customers.
The salesman at the paper wanted me to go with option number one. I declined, and am going with option number two. The latter option costs more per thousand to send, but you are reaching a better demographic of PAYING customers who are looking forward to opening their newspapers which have very little advertising (fliers) if any. So be sure when entering into this type of deal that you understand who is going to be receiving your ads. The first option distributes free to all types of residences - apartments, low - mid - high income, businesses, churches, schools, etc…
I believe I will get a much better response rate while marketing towards PAYING customers, with less competition by way of fliers.
Good Luck…
BTW - Pricing for 5000 fliers $150-
Price to insert in newspaper $40/m
Total investment to reach active, interested, paying customers = $350
Putting out 5000 fliers by car used to take me days to do. Now I can do it all in one fell swoop.
Thats a good deal, and idea. We used to do that, it lasted for a couple of seasons before the paper changed there policy. They no longer allow that by us… Wish they did.
I used a distributor of a local paper for delivery. They charged me .065 per
piece, printed and delivered. They did not insert it, it piggy backed. They
basically put the ads on top of the paper.
worked real good. If I were doing more window cleaning I would do that weekly
