Nov 13

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While someone might suggest that leafleting, technically, is similar to cold calling, I will argue that it is not. With a leaflet you are in control, what to say ( include) and leave the other one to make up his mind, in his own time whether they want your services/ products or not.     

  

Cold calling is aggressive, interrupts your day and mostly proves to be counter-productive. For more info on cold-calling, read this Freer e-book Frank J. Rumbauskas, http://www.nevercoldcall.com/ColdCalling.pdf

1. Cold calling destroys your status as a business equal.

2. Nobody likes having their day interrupted by a sales pitch no matter how good or well delivered it is.

3. It is invasive and disruptive

4. People do not like to be sold to

5. It’s limited to the number of people you can reach through only one or two mediums

6. It is a whole lot easier in the information age to find buyers rather than sell to people

7. The conversion and drop out rate for cold call generated appointments is several times higher than getting buyers to come to you

8. You can sell without cold calling and cut out 90% of the time you would spend in situations that will not buy.

9. Spending time in situations that will not buy is the number one reason sales people and new businesses fail

10. I could easily go on.

Buying and self marketing. It’s a difficult one to understand at first, but essentially “buying”, as Frank suggests, is the act of willingly purchasing something that someone needs – whereas “selling” is attempting to convince someone to purchase something whether they need it or not.

Self marketing, as Frank discusses, is about leverage and about scaled down, low-cost, marketing efforts to help promote and market you and your business. These include:

• Use flyers and use a flyer distribution company to make it automatic

• Use email instead of phone, and use auto-responders to make responses automatic. Use video email to get a better response.

• Use direct mail, and sales letters to a prospecting list then follow up via telephone or email.

• Build a website or a blog and keep it up to date and make it easy to understand your products, services, benefits and contact you.

• Use a free newsletter and send prospects free, valuable information.

• Become an authorized expert by writing articles and posting them on your blog, sending them into a newspaper/magazine.

• Write your own PR pieces, or hire a PR consultant and put them on a retainer.

• Conduct your own seminars, and make them free. If you’re seen as an authorized expert you could charge for the exclusive content.

• Employing trust-based selling to become truly consultative and not another sales rep.

• Networking. Join business networking clubs, forums, etc and get yourself seen.

• Follow up and make your appointments• Make your sales

• Keep your customers/clients happy.

 Leafleting if done properly, in a clever, peaceful and reliable way, is cheaper, brings more results and leaves people that “breathing space” that they need to think-and-take-a-decision in their own time; something that not every marketer or salesperson understands clearly. Leafleting or cold calling? You decide.

Now the costs.

*If you engage a call calling team, the costs are considerably more than calling on a leaflet delivery team.

* delivering 10.000 leaflets takes 2-3 days, making 10.000 phone calls can take weeks/ months.

* to produce a leaflet costs 2-3 pence, to deliver it around 4-5, a phone call costs more than 6-7 pence and in most cases considerably more for mobiles.

* once the clients puts the phone down on you, he will forget you, even if s/he needs your products, but a leaflet/ flyer will be there on his table as a reminder.

 Reasons are plenty, its you that decides what to do and what method to employ, we suggest Leaflet Distribution anytime over cold calling; not as its our bread & butter, but because one of main reason many new businesses fail is persistent cold calling and bad sales techniques. Go for Leaflet Distribution. By Fast Letterbox part of  LADS-3D Ltd. Masters of Local Advertising075 300 577 53 - www.leafletdistribution-lads-3d.co.uk 

Nov 13

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Lately the demand for these methods is on the increase as many businesses are seeing returns from them. It is a simple fact, that to reach out to customers one must get as close as possible to the public at large and that is where handouts and promotions came in.

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LADS-3D engages often in different types of distribution, according to client’s specific requests, such as in shopping centers, major tube and train stations and at large gatherings of people like theatres, cinemas, stadiums, shopping centers etc.  We distribute for a wide range of businesses, from the creative individual working from home up to large organizations like NHS. All our clients have one aim to reach the members of public at large.

As a rule, handouts are more expensive and take more time to plan and organize, but they have several advantages over door-to-door advertising: 

·      Leaflets are handed out directly to the people.

·      Distributors can engage with the public feedback exchanged both ways.

·      To spread a message very fast [alongside with billboards, text messaging, radio, morning papers, handout-fliers are amongst the fastest to spread the word]

·      Used near the place of promotion [bar, club, restaurant, supermarket, shopping centre] they can contain discount tokens or vouchers and exchanged right away.

·      Are more concentrated and can target more people at any given time.

·      Accuracy, with handouts it is easier to target urban professionals 25-40 y/o, young families or OAP.

·      Door to door, is more time consuming, physical and harder to organize and control.

·      The penetration level or attracting the attention of the customer, isn’t easy to achieve.

·      Door to door distribution has to compete with other promotional materials coming through the letterbox.

·      Door to door leaflets as a rule have a higher degree of wastage. Unlived properties, ones that are being renovated, families in holidays or places where the distributor is unable to deliver-for different reasons.

·      Door to door distribution attempts for area saturation and as such is indiscriminate, so it may be hard for an International College of English to target young people from 18-24 y/o by using such a method.  

Handouts are often used in stadiums, tube stations and shopping centers; businesses can use them for a restaurant opening, a premiere, shows, musicals, theaters or simply to spread a message that will benefit their sales, increase exposure and achieve brand recognition at a particular place. 

Numbers must be taken into consideration. Leafleting as the simplest form of advertising is a numbers game, the higher the numbers the bigger the chance to get you better known in the community. Handouts require careful planning and serious organization.  The Handout Operatives need to be well trained, supported and supervised.

By the nature of delivery, people carrying handouts must be well spoken with a high degree of understanding and spoken English, they have to be confident and presentable. Once the printing work has finished and you are ready, get in touch with your Distributor and communicate clearly your aims:

·        demographic groups you need to target.

·        places where handouts should take place.

·        time frames [do you need the morning commuters or people at own leisure] 

 As per any kind of leafleting in general, Promotions & Handouts are no exception; they work in the long term in order to bring gradual and steady returns.