Can leaving something at people’s doors be successful marketing?

A few weeks ago, I entered a post here about how turning down business can be effective marketing. I had just turned down a piece of business which would have entailed distributing flyers door-to-door for this prospect. The flyers were already printed up and ready to go. Lev Promotions’ only part in this piece would have been the physical distribution of the flyers. Why did I actually turn down this business? Because I did not believe that the way this marketing piece was designed and distributed would be effective. I was not willing to take this business’ money to help them carry out a marketing strategy that I thought would be microscopically successful at best.

Is this to say that I think that all door-to-door campaigns are doomed to be unsuccessful? Absolutely not! We have implemented programs for three different clients where something was left at people’s front door. In each of those cases, the response was far greater than the 1 – 2% average return you could hope to get on a general drop-off (it rivals an untargeted, direct mass mailing for response rate).

It always amazed me that, in the month after my house was painted, we had no less than six flyers from house painters left on our doorstep. The paint job was a good one and clearly no in need of so much as a touch-up. Yet six people thought that their information would be relevent to me. It wasn’t relevant enough to look past the type of service being offered and then it went right into recycling.

But, even in such a case as the house painter who simply has his/her staff deliver a flyer to the front door of every house in the neighborhood where they are currently working, there is one simple thing they can do to cut their costs and make their flyers more effective: target! What if they only approached homes that actually looked like they could use a paint job? They would distribute fewer flyers (lower costs) while probably getting about the same people to respond as if they put one on every door.

Not to mention that very few of these types of marketing flyers have anything on them past the features of the company. This is what we do, so use us. Sometimes they are messy or the contact information isn’t complete. At the very least, a well-designed, nicely printed flyer with complete contact information, a list of benefits and a call to action would up the ante on the response rate.

Of course, there are ways to make this flyer even more successful, but that is entirely dependent on the company, their goals, and their target market.

Buying Promotional Products Online vs. from a Promotional Products Consultant

It fascinates me the lengths people will go to to save a few dollars on a product that will bear their logo/message and will be distributed for marketing purposes. Take, for example, a recent request I received for pricing on mugs.  I lost the order to an online company that charged $0.50 more per mug on an order of 100 mugs. Now it looks like that company saved themselves about $50.00. That’s a nice savings, wouldn’t you say? Let’s look at what was involved with this $50.00 “savings.”

(This request came from an acquaintance of mine who I see on a regular basis. I would check in with him when I saw him to see how his order was proceeding. The numbers and facts below are directly from him.)

1) The person who was doing the research spent three hours online finding this mug instead of doing her normal job duties. She gets paid $10.00/hour. Total cost of research to the company: $30.00

2) When they placed the order, there were repeated problems with the “stock”  artwork provided by the online company causing the customer to spend a total of about 1-1/2 hours going back and forth over the artwork. Total cost of artwork issues to the customer: $15.00

3) Due to the artwork issues, the mugs that should have been delivered within three weeks took two months to get there. This wasn’t an order that was tied to a specific event, so a time-sensitive delivery was not a major issue. The customer, however, was holding off on launching a marketing campaign until the mugs arrived. Cost of delay in the launch: not completely knowable, but he was told by two prospects that they had just needed his type of services a month ago and went elsewhere because they didn’t know about him. Had he gotten both these accounts, he would have made at least $750 in immediate sales.

4) Because the online vendor doesn’t care where you are, they just want to make the sale, the mugs were shipped out of Florida. Now mugs are a heavy item to ship and the difference between shipping to a customer in San Diego from Southern California and shipping from Florida can be tremendous. In this case, the shipping cost from Florida cost the customer about $80.00. The cost of shipping the same mug from Los Angeles to San Diego: about $37.00. Cost difference: $43.00.

Even if we don’t count the labor cost involved in sourcing and ordering these mugs, the shipping difference alone left a total of $7.00 savings over going through a promotional products consultant who could have recommended a mug from a factory that was closer to the delivery point and would have dealt with any artwork or product issues that came up.

If the labor cost is added in, the customer actually spent: $88.00 more on this order. Plus the aggravation of dealing with the vendor over artwork issues and a delivery that was later than they wanted.

Which way do you think you’ll go next time you need a logo’d item to promote your business, organization or event.