As every great comedian knows, timing is everything. The same goes for leaflet distribution.
You’re excited about leaflet distribution, you know all of the great things it can do to boost your business, and you’ve got your campaign set up and ready to go. But to really maximise the effectiveness of your leaflet drop, you also need to consider when to do it.
A leaflet sent at the wrong time or with the wrong frequency will not see the returns you’re hoping for.
So, when and how often should you send leaflets?
Never Just Once
Too many businesses drop leaflets once, don’t immediately see the results they want and then never drop leaflets again. But that’s just not how leaflet marketing works.
The first leaflet you send will always be your least effective, because leaflet marketing works by building brand awareness and trust over time by repeatedly exposing potential customers to your brand.
Most people aren’t ready to purchase the day your leaflet comes through their letterbox, but when they are ready to purchase you need to make sure your business is the first one they think of. Seeing your leaflet multiple times makes them far more likely to remember you. That way, when the time comes for that potential customer to make a purchase, yours is the leaflet they take off the kitchen noticeboard and it’s you who gets that call.
Return on investment is 266% higher for the second campaign than for the first leaflet campaign. And that number only goes higher for subsequent leaflet drops.
Some of our most successful customers, who see the best return on their investment, have leaflets distributed to the same addresses once every month.
Consider signing up for a service like DOR-2-DOR’s 100 Club that helps you build a comprehensive leaflet marketing strategy, targeting the same addresses at regular intervals, to build brand awareness.
High Season Or Low Season
Whether your busy period is Christmas, the summer or elsewhere in the year, most businesses see some seasonal variation in their sales.
The eternal question is: do I drop leaflets in my high season to make it even better, or do I try to give my usual low season a boost with leaflet distribution?
Typically, customers do see a higher absolute return on their investment by distributing during their high season, as this is when consumers are typically looking for the products or services they sell.
However, this does not mean that the low season can be discounted entirely, and there are benefits to advertising during your low season. For example, your competitors are unlikely to be distributing leaflets during your industry’s off-season, and therefore, there’s a greater chance your leaflet will get noticed.
We also have testimonials from our customers who have dropped leaflets during their typical low season and have found that they had both a better low season than normal and a better next high season because leaflet distribution boosted their brand profile during that time!
This means that there’s no easy answer to the question of what time of year it’s best to distribute leaflets. Instead consider your own budget and business goals, if your budget is limited concentrate on the high season. But, if you have the budget and are willing to invest, there are plenty of tantalising advantages to distributing leaflets in the low season.
The good news is that, whenever you choose to start your campaign, leaflet marketing boosts your business at any time of year.
Alongside Other Campaigns
Your marketing channels work best when they work together. We often think about each of our marketing channels working completely separately from each other, but that just isn’t the case.
When you’re thinking about marketing, the keyword is: impressions. That means how many times does the potential customer see your brand? Every impression boosts your brand awareness, which also increases your brand trust, and it doesn’t matter whether that impression is from a leaflet, an email or a social media post. The more they see your brand, the better.
For the same reason, it’s important to send subsequent leaflets to the same addresses in a relatively short time frame; it’s also important to send out your leaflets at the same time you’re doing a big digital marketing push. Because this way they can help each other out! An impression from one reinforces an impression from the other!
Research by the Direct Marketing Association shows that, when timing leaflet drops and online marketing pushes together, this multichannel strategy increases the effectiveness of both by 24%!
Develop A Leaflet Drop Strategy
What we’ve learned is there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to what time of year to drop leaflets that applies to all business types, budgets or business goals. Instead, what matters is developing a leaflet drop strategy that works for you
This leaflet drop strategy can take into account when your business’s busy season is, what distribution frequency will help your budget go further and coordinate with the rest of your marketing plan.
Developing a leaflet drop strategy with an experienced leaflet distribution company, like DOR-2-DOR, you can get expert advice on how you can maximise the return on investment and impact of your leaflet drop.
So don’t delay, get a quote today and see what leaflet distribution can do to grow your business.
