Have you tried putting flyers on cars?

[seedubya]

We had a threat of a €120 littering fine for putting leaflets on car windscreens

That's because it's illegal and while you may have gotten a few jobs there will be plenty of people that you'll have completely alienated who'll never do business with you and will tell their friends not to do so either.

 

[Amanda]

You can't put them in or on mailboxes... but the plastic newspaper holders are fair game. In previous jobs I have stuff the holders. It took valuable time away from the office and didn't really produce any results. Good luck if you decide to go that route.

 

[TenYardFight]

If you feel its worth your time and money and (possible) risk, do it on Sunday at 6am right after the Sunday paper is delivered. Place your flyer on top of the paper. If you are really enterprising, sell the back side to another local business. In my area, it works. Barely, I've heard.

 

[Whitman]

thank you

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question. So fliers, are out then. I have done a lot of research and it seems the way that works best is non applicable to our line of work (brand reps), though everything I have seen says to stay way from print, radio and t.v. adds. Has anyone found a way to market to college students that really works?

 

[seedubya]

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question. So fliers, are out then. I have done a lot of research and it seems the way that works best is non applicable to our line of work (brand reps), though everything I have seen says to stay way from print, radio and t.v. adds. Has anyone found a way to market to college students that really works?

Fliers are not out! What about doorhangers? Or you guys in the States have EDDM (wish we had!).

That being said, a flyer is a short term medium - if it doesn't hit just when they need your service then it's probably getting tossed in the bin. You can extend this a little by attaching a coupon they can cut out. You should not expect more than a 1% return unless your offer is AWESOME and that's very difficult with computer repairs.

To do a good flyer you need

1 a great headline to capture attention - mention their pain!
2 a story in the middle - not just a few bullet points. Make it like a sales letter
3 an offer - the best you can muster. It must address the pain in 1 and 2
4 a call to action - whatever you want them to actually DO on foot of your flyer - usually CALL US NOW

Yes I know that's all clichéd but it's what works.

EDIT: Just realised I didn't read your post properly - what do you mean by brand reps?

 

[Maxable]

Fliers are not out! What about doorhangers? Or you guys in the States have EDDM (wish we had!).

That being said, a flyer is a short term medium - if it doesn't hit just when they need your service then it's probably getting tossed in the bin. You can extend this a little by attaching a coupon they can cut out. You should not expect more than a 1% return unless your offer is AWESOME and that's very difficult with computer repairs.

To do a good flyer you need

1 a great headline to capture attention - mention their pain!
2 a story in the middle - not just a few bullet points. Make it like a sales letter
3 an offer - the best you can muster. It must address the pain in 1 and 2
4 a call to action - whatever you want them to actually DO on foot of your flyer - usually CALL US NOW

Yes I know that's all clichéd but it's what works.

EDIT: Just realised I didn't read your post properly - what do you mean by brand reps?

From previous Direct Sales jobs, your list is pretty spot on. I am in the process of completing my flyer to go door to door prospecting and I am following that list idea.

 

[joydivision]

Fliers don't work, I have got around 10,000 out over the past few months and got a big big big fat 1 job from them!.

 

[carlitos31]

Doesn't work

I printed out 10,000 flyers, just as a test I paid someone to distribute 1500 on a residential area, this guy is one of those that place them on door hangers,
that was 3 weeks ago..so far ZERO calls.
SO what did I do with the other 8500? I have been giving them to people that walk in the office, 3 or 4 at the time. Now doing it this way, so far 10 new clients for around $900 profit ( 10 out of 500 flyers give, so I still have 8000 more), so already paid off doing it in the store,

 

[Rosco]

I just mailed out brochures early on, did the whole thing by hand too. Got 2 calls. One client has paid me $1000's in training and support. Well worth it for the one good one.

I went to the library and got a list of businesses in one zip code, then mailed those out.

THought i was the only one that did this. I went to the library and get all the street numbers from the streets i wanted to canvas. Then made the flyier into an envelop and sent them out.

 

[PC-MOT]

Fliers don't work, I have got around 10,000 out over the past few months and got a big big big fat 1 job from them!.

Snap.
It must be a UK thing where we don't like them, I walked round loads of local estates, and got about 3 jobs from 1000 leaflets/cards, I didn't do them all on the same day I may add, over the course of a few weeks.

I also Flyered a few local car parks while the wife dragged me shopping in town, and probably worse than a fine, I got a call from a traffic warden, advising me that really I would have to go back and walk around taking them all off the cars, thankfully I managed to talk him out of that at that time by promising not to do it again lol.

 

[Richard P]

I have had pretty good luck with refrigerator magnets. I have tried ones with just my info (business card type), calenders, and ones with local resources contact info (local non emergency police number, animal control, local Post office number etc).

The calender and local resource ones get a much better response as people are more likely to actually put them up and look at them on a semi-regular basis and every time they do my business name gets drilled just a little farther into their brain.

Most real estate companies have a welcome pack they give out to new home buyers, getting them to put your magnet in the pack is a good way to get them handed out.

 

[Ccomp5950]

If you really want to waste your time putting leaflets on peoples cars.

Make leaflets for your competitors and leave those on cars. Poisoning the well as it is. Moral? Neah, but then again we're already talking about leaving leaflets on hundreds or thousands of vehicles so I think we're beyond that consideration.

 

[SilverLeaf]

If you really want to waste your time putting leaflets on peoples cars.

Make leaflets for your competitors and leave those on cars. Poisoning the well as it is. Moral? Neah, but then again we're already talking about leaving leaflets on hundreds or thousands of vehicles so I think we're beyond that consideration.

I hate these things. Every time I find a flyer on my car, I make a mental note to NOT patronize the business responsible for putting it there. So aside from the questionable morality, I'm sure this would work.....at least on me.

 

[joydivision]

3 jobs out of 1000 leaflets is actually quite good. I would be quite pleased with that. Ok it might take me around 6 hours to deliver but 1000 leaflets cost around £10 so apart from time it is a not too bad.

 

[TapIT]

After reading all the replies in this thread it made me wish we had similar mailbox laws.

It's so bad here in Australia that we have "distribution" (getting their kids to walk down the streets stuffing all the mailboxes with flyers) companies that just sell their mailbox stuffing services to local businesses...it's bloody ridiculous!

Even the mailman stuffs junk mail in the box quite often (wouldn't be surprised if Australia Post also sold the service). At least if it was addressed to me I would feel special for a few seconds each time...

 

[Steve202]

3 jobs out of 1000 leaflets is actually quite good. I would be quite pleased with that. Ok it might take me around 6 hours to deliver but 1000 leaflets cost around £10 so apart from time it is a not too bad.

Are these full colour or just black and white?

Someone once told me a 3-5% response rate from flyers would be considered good. I think it comes down to where you deliver them to and the time of year. My first batch of 100 (printed myself years ago), I had around 10 customers from it. Looking back at it they looked crap but must have done something right because I haven't had a response like that since.

 

[joydivision]

Are these full colour or just black and white?

Someone once told me a 3-5% response rate from flyers would be considered good. I think it comes down to where you deliver them to and the time of year. My first batch of 100 (printed myself years ago), I had around 10 customers from it. Looking back at it they looked crap but must have done something right because I haven't had a response like that since.

Full colour on 130gsm paper. Here it is

 

[Steve202]

Full colour on 130gsm paper. Here it is

[img ]http://www.m21technology.co.uk/v10comp.jpg[/img ]

That's a good price, I'm paying around £30 per thousand and that's from a company outside Manchester. Printers round here cost a fortune.

 

[joydivision]

That's a good price, I'm paying around £30 per thousand and that's from a company outside Manchester. Printers round here cost a fortune.

I don't pay per 1000, I usually order A6 leaflets per 5000, cost around £65.00 I use a company in Scotland called Fairprint as strangely it is far cheaper than any of the Greater Manchester ones. I order them on ebay.

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

It hasn't worked for me. I would do it beginning of each semester and right before mid terms or finals when they cannot afford to have their computer down. The rest of the time they find a freind to fix it for free. But when their grades are at risk they will pay$$4it.

We are only four blocks from a university and college students are our target market. Everyday the streets are lined with cars. It seems to me that flyers put out on a Wednesday and Tuesday the week before midterms/finals would increase name recognition. I understand that it frustrates some people, but I was wondering if any of you had tried this in the past and had any luck with it.