Tradesman Marketing Series: Marketing with Leaflets

With any type of marketing the are Pro's and Con's. As a business owner you need to consider these to ensure your marketing is giving you the "biggest bang per buck", otherwise you are literally giving your money away. Quality enquiries are what we are all looking for. Some methods of marketing create an instant return but, the quality of leads might not be quite so high. Other methods might be a little more of a slow burn but offer a better quality of customer. Leaflet marketing, I feel falls into the latter.

Let me tell you a short story about our own experience in the very early days of our business. I used to be a Technical Manager with a well paid job with over 20 years experience. One day I decided I had enough of the industry and wanted to work for myself. I setup my own trades business and knew I needed customers quick! I had 3 months notice to work. In that time I needed enough customers ready to start work on and make me feel secure when I entered the world of a small business owner. Alot of the experience I talk about in these articles comes from the first year of becoming a small business owner. I was lucky that I had sales, marketing and website experience before hand which helped A LOT, but even still. You're entering the world of the unknown.

One of the first methods of marketing I tried was leaflet / flyer marketing. Why leaflets? They're relatively low cost. Not many people use them anymore so they make more of an impact. You can also target them to a specific area.

Now 1 mile down the road from myself was a relatively affluent area which I knew would be good to target. So I created a leaflet on Canva. Had 1000 leaflet printed and away I went. It was around 3 weeks before Christmas, which if you know anything about a trades business is the quietest time of the year. I had no idea about this so away I went regardless.

I delivered around 300 flyers in around 4 hours into 2 estates. I delivered my last flyer and I was walking back to my car when I had a phone call. It was a house which I'd just delivered a flyer to and they said could I come back to quote. To keep the story short I ended up doing 1 weeks work for them. They then recommended me to their friends and so on and so on. This area now has become my best area, working on a number of different homes within around a 0.5mi radius. The good news as well is it's only 1 miles from where I live.

Before the success of the first call I did another 2 leaflet drops. One in this area and one in another area. I didn't have one single phone call! That's the thing with marketing. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The difference between failure and success is only usually 1 or 2 customers so make sure you give any method of marketing enough time to prove itself.

I later read that with leaflet marketing should be delivered leaflets 3 times in relatively quick succession. The first time someone sees the leaflet they may not of heard of you and not trust you or the information they read. The second time might raise interest. The third will hopefully get the customer to take action.

I'd highly recommend leaflets and deliver them yourself. Let people see who you are and that you're putting in work to get new business.

If you need to discuss help with getting new customers to your business then speak to us at Small Business Website Designs and we can help from a small leaflet design to a full marketing plan.