[tim handley]

please advise!    are folks still doing large leaflet drops, ive read of people doing 10000 to 50000 a month and other numbers inbetween. Ihave to say ive never really bothered apart from a few very small amount ive dropped myself a while ago with no result. 99% of my work comes from ccn and i now want to add more marketing to get more work. Im interested to know to what dgree large leaflet drops work nowadays when everyone seems to be on google and other online search engines for work.
If anybody is willing to share their leafletting experirences (recent) i would be most gratefull. Another thing, what is ther best way to get theses large amounts delivered, if indeed they are still working..........

[Graeme Brown]

I leaflet regularly for my lawn business ( getting set up and trained for CC as we speak) I my business went from zero to full time for two of us in three months using only leaflets although we are on a fortnightly repeat with every customer April till October. We put out 35000 leaflets and got 286 customers so above the 0.5% Mark which is regarded as standard response. This year we took on a part timer and put out 20000 and got 90 responses a bit below. I do rather well from them and will be putting out 35000 CC leaflets at the end of the month hoping for 175 responses.
I believe leafleting is like gold mining you go though a lot of dead ground to get pockets of gold ie you have to go big to hit the figures because not ever 1n 200 house wants your service but you could get ten in one street. So if you only put out a few thousand you could miss the pocket of gold and think it's a waste of time. Also get a company to put them out it cant be done yourself . Your local printer should know a good company to use.

[Hilton]

Hi Graeme

can I ask what did it cost you to put out 35000 leaflets and what is your average on price to cut a lawn bearing in mind you are cutting twice a month.

I have no idea about grass cutting but it seems you are not giving yourself enough credit, those returns by any standard would be considered pretty decent ,replicated in CC your business's would be doing very well indeed although of course frequency on CC would be at best yearly.

[Paul Clapham]

There is no way on earth you will get 175 responses from 35,000 flyers.

[Lewis Newby]

Tim we trialed a small drop round here a few months ago.

7k went out over 8 weeks. It cost around £380 for design,  print and distribution.

Some weeks got no calls and others got several. Some areas which didn't book did pass flyers on to friends and family who did book tho.

I had a lot going on so I didn't strictly record it's progress but if I said it was easily 12-15 jobs and most were £100+ (we had a few go for the advertised 3for99 offer and add areas or furniture/rugs)

I was pleased as we have had enquiries several weeks after also.

Another firm has put thiers out all over this area in recent weeks and this has sparked people to shop around,  my prices have been better it seems and have picked up several jobs this month and I had seen his flyer around the home or mentioned on 2-3 jobs I won just this week.

[Graeme Brown]

Hi Paul I can only go on the figures from my current business and may be comparing apples with oranges here but that is where I am with grass cutting customers which is a home service like carpet cleaning and people can do it themselves like carpet cleaning. I can obviously totally agree that results are variable and never guaranteed but if I get an acceptible  ROI I will be happy to keep sticking them out. Will be running a FB campaign as well and may try AdWords but that looks complicated
At the end of the day if a spend a grand and get over two back it will go viable to me

[Graeme Brown]

Of coarse my 25 years in sales and marketing before stress nearly killed me and I went self employed may give me a skill set which helps 

[Hilton]

On rough figures mentioned you would only need 19 customers to break even assuming your response rate is around .3% you should get around 100 prospects, convert 25% and your in profit.

You are doing a vastly higher conversion rate on grass cutting but I dont know what your costs are to leaflet or average job value but it must be pretty good.

[Graeme Brown]

The leaflets are £365 for 35000 and I get a deal of £20 a thou but it's usually £25  so it comes in at £1065 all in. My average sale in grass cutting is £225   
( £15x15 cuts for the year) so there is the bare bones of my business. 
Milton can I ask what your average sale value is no need to put number of sales of course

[Dave_Lee]

Many years ago I built my CC business off the back of leaflet drops, but the initial response averaged just .001% or 1 in a 1,000.
Of course the overall response spread over a greater period and often resulted in up to 10 per 1,000 before doing the same area again. However the average response over 6 months was around .005 or 5 in a 1,000.
Just a couple of years ago when my printer made an error and I ended up with 10,000 leaflets free of charge, I handed them over to a local newspaper for distribution. That resulted in just 2 small jobs which didn't even cover the distribution costs.
They don't work like they used, that's for sure.
Dave.

[Paul Wisdom]

My thoughts on this. I am a carpet cleaner who got stuffed for a lot of dosh and needed some income. So i went and whacked out a load of leaflets for both gardening/tree services and carpet cleaning, two separate leaflets.

carpet cleaning response was virtually NIL
Gardening/tree response blew me out of the water. Unbelievable response and i am now virtually 7 days a week doing grass cutting, hedge and tree work. This was four years ago and I now concentrate on the Tree/ garden stuff more.

[Graeme Brown]

That is very interesting. I too certainly have more work than I can handle during the gardening season and there are ten gardeners in my town of 35000 houses. We all get on because there is enough to go round and I pass work to people who specialise in things I dont. I am looking at CC to get a bit of a turn between seasons. I am lucky that I can Chuck a grand or two at it and not worry too much I will be doing FB and SEO so hopefully will get a turn.

[Hilton]

Hi Graeme
I am not in the game any more haven't been for sometime but like others have said you do not get anything like the response you have had for grass cutting but I do have an interest in Direct Mail and have done some very successful campaigns for friends and family.

When I had a cleaning business our average was £95.00 but we did some very high end work and some very large jobs.

I use a different metric than most, for instance I can see from your numbers that you could quite easily grow your business without touching CC but given you already have a data base of customers to market to I can also understand why you would be thinking about adding another service.

I don't know the grass business but I would guess its seasonal and you probably start marketing around Feb/March for new customers?

As your material worked so well you could potentially send out 35000 a month for 7 months or 245000 at a cost of £7455 and would only need to acquire from that 34 new customers to break even over the 7 month period which you would do with ease.Its more likely given the level of acquisitions you mention above at 280 odd a pop (is that number actual new customers?) that you will break even in the first month,to me its a no brainer .

[Stoots]

From my limited experience with leaflets, response has been roughly

Pressure washing 3 jobs in 5000 leaflets
Car valeting 6 jobs in 5000 leaflets
window cleaning approx 10-15 in 5000

ive not tried carpet cleaning yet, for me its generally not worth the outlay depending of course on what you are paying.
however im going to use it to build my window cleaning round over winter as usually a window cleaning job is a repeat job.

I have an idea that i am going to be implementing as soon as i get chance that will see me get 5000+ leaflets out per month for free...will take a fair amount of work to get this idea into motion but once running should be a long term strategy to build m business.

[Ian Harper]

response rates depend on message to market match and offer. What I find funny is 50% off? how can you drop leaflets in an area regularly and never have a price change? also its not about large drops more "big fish little pond" Just ask Mike

BTW cut your leaflet cost and give yourself the ability to test different messages and offers buy a second-hand Riso. printers costs eat into your margins. i have had few now great quality and only cost around £200 if you can get one that prints A3 your ready to go with pink flyers. cost will be around £1k for a good one that will take artwork from laptop