Marketing Fliers - are they worth it?

[Bronze_Palms]

Have you ever run marketing fliers?

I reached out to our local newspaper flier company. They add these beautiful, glossy inserts to the inside of the newspaper that showcase local businesses.

To reach 30,000 homes within a 3.5 mile radius of me, it will be $8,800 for the 3 months. It is not like Valpak that has 10 different advertisements for discount carpet cleaners and oil changes in a quarter page leaflet. These ads are large, glossy sheets that look high quality.

Have you ever looked into this or run these before? Would love any insight! I have personally as a consumer bought from these ads before.

[mksavage]

Hey @Bronze_Palms! I imagine that whether or not it's worth it depends largely on who your target market is, and if they're consumers who read the newspaper/would take action from a flyer. For us, personally, we gain a lot more traction through social media marketing, direct outreach (newsletters), and word of mouth. We did some magazine ads in a well-respected publication for a year and mostly just had current customers telling us "oh, I saw your ad!" It didn't actually bring in any new business, as far as we know. But, depending on your community and ideal customer, it might be effective, especially if there was some sort of incentive for booking a service & bringing in the flyer (which you could track to know if it was worth continuing for another 3 months later on).

I was going to suggest that it could also be worth talking to a local printer about Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM), which would allow you to send a similar flyer to all of the houses within that radius, but if there are really 30,000 homes in that radius, it might not be any more affordable.

[GourmetOnWheels]

The USPS does the same (EDDM), less cost and targeting per zip code.

René

[JUYBoutique20]

It depends on who your target market is.  For my business I don't think it would be beneficial because my target market is definitely on social media.  If it's your market though you should definitely, do it.

[Lovewell]

@Bronze_Palms Another options could be paying to have your own nice postcards made and having them sent out to neighborhoods in your surrounding areas! We did this for our first birthday to announce our birthday and to give people a percent off if they brought the card in. Sometimes houses will opt out of the news papers or people will throw them away before giving them a glance but if its an eye catching poster card you created you may have more luck with people seeing it!

[DinaLRosenberg]

It really depends on a few things- as a tanning salon I imagine that you have a definitive amount of time slots that you can fill in any given day. I used to have a business that had a similar model. I would evaluate my pricing based upon what "available inventory' I had left to sell. So say you can only accommodate an additional 3 clients a day- does it make sense to spend that much money to fill those spots?

Also- what's the demographic of your customers? marketing inserts go to everyone- a broad net- many of those people would never, ever be your customer- why pay for them? Say your clients are women 18-30- what if you partnered with a local nail salon and spa- you can cross promote with a coupon for example.

Just a few ideas.

[mksavage]

Love the cross-promotion idea, @DinaLRosenberg !

[DinaLRosenberg]

thanks.... I always think it's a great idea for complimentary businesses to work together.

[GourmetOnWheels]

@Bronze_Palms we use 4 times a year postcards that we use the USPS for. They have great rates, and the success rate is very good.

We target only 4-6 zipcodes. 

Learn more here: https://www.uspsdelivers.com/marketing/

René

[PartyManiaMD]

I've found marketing mailers/fliers to be extremely underwhelming over the years. Even in magazines that have extremely high readership it isn't worth it IMO. The price point is generally too high for the return and maybe I'm old school but that $8k could be put into inventory. I'm also in a niche industry where if people don't need something from us marketing goes in one ear and out the other. The only marketing I've ever seen actually boost our business was when groupon was new and people would buy thousands of them. Now it's so saturated that we won't sell a single one except to existing customers, at this point we generally only put money into google marketing because you're paying for performance.