Leafleting | Letterbox marketing | advertise your business

Getting to the top brass or the decision maker of a company can be a headache. Especially when the gatekeepers are not letting you through.

Trying the get the head of sales, or head of marketing is quite a task as they are never at their desk. When they are, hearing a cold call from you is sometimes the last thing they want.

Then there is the PA and the Secretaries, when they put you on hold……. (music)…… “Sorry he’s not available, do you want to leave a message”
you know ninety percent of time they are just not interested in your sales pitch.

There maybe other techniques but this is the one I use which works for me.

The Get around
All you need is a name. Call up company X and say you are calling from (your company) and ask for the name of the Marketing Manger, Director or whoever you which to speak to. Most of the time you will get it. If you are asked why you want the name, you need to think fast

After you have all the names you then prepare your mailshot using your favorite program, I use MS Word Mail merge, and import the contacts from MS Excel

Getting Pass the gatekeepers
It’s now time to print the labels. Here, you simple add the word ‘Private and Confidential’ above the contact name. This would ensure it’s not opened by the PA or office administrator and trashed before it reaches its intended target

Private and Confidential
John Blogs
14a Regents Street
London
W1

In this document is your killer sales letter or marketing material, do a follow up call in a few days.

Being an online and offline marketer there are certain parallels that work online and well as offline.

For example, the most important part of a link bait would be the headline or the hook.

Use a good headline or eye candy to draw readers or your marketing materials. I’m not going to bore you with how to write a good headline as its all over the web, rather show how you can use the link baiting techniques to get your clients interested in you marketing campaigns.

The headline or the hook

The Copyblogger’s cheat sheet works just as well offline in your advertising copy

Here is a Quick Way to save money on your heating

1. Who Else Wants [blank]?
2. The Secret of [blank]
3. Here is a Method That is Helping [blank] to [blank]
4. Little Known Ways to [blank]
5. Get Rid of [problem] Once and For All
6. Here’s a Quick Way to [solve a problem]
7. Now You Can Have [something desirable] [great circumstance]
8. [Do something] like [world-class example]
9. Have a [or] Build a [blank] You Can Be Proud Of
10. What Everybody Ought to Know About [blank]

The Eye candy
A picture is worth a 1000 words right, why not use this to your advantage. Never be afraid to use images or pictures on your materials, Use Humour or Puzzles, they can boost the response tremendously. When you are buying a car online or looking for a new flat, you would normally click the post with an image first don’t you?

The tool
Make your material useful. How does this work?
When you print your materials add a calendar, an astrological Chart, a game.

The resource
On the back of your material list all some local telephone numbers that are hard to fine.
Or this years must see event, maybe city tours of famous artist

Be creative with your print materials and don’t be afraid to experiment.

For years I always had a vision of my ad being across the platform at Victoria Station, Bank, or Kings Cross underground. In my vision hundreds of people would just stare at my advertising, mesmerized by the elegance of the artwork. They would then make a mental note of the website, or even better yet write it down.

On their journey home my business would be on their minds, once home they would rush upstairs log on to my website and make their first order. Boy was I naive!

This was a few years back, I splashed out around £3000 including design for a cross platform advert at Bank station and Leicester square. I was promoting two businesses I was running at the time. One was for a business sms application and the other an entertainment website.

I sat back and expected to phone to start ringing or massive subscribers and it didn’t happened.
Later I went to the underground station at bank and sat for 4 hours watching people go by. To my astonishment half of the people don’t even look at the adverts and those that do read only the advert that is on front of them.

Also the advertisement done on the underground are never response oriented, more like a branding excersice and part of a marketing mix.

Like they say you live and you learn, I should have spent the money elsewhere