If you stop to think of the cold calling technique of door-to door
advertising, you would discover how sometimes humiliating it is to have
a disinterested and irritated individual slam the door in your face,
yell insulting things toward you, or be escorted off of their property.
To combat this instantaneous humiliation, the idea of door-hanging
advertisements gives the sales person a means of getting the word out
to more people faster than before but more importantly, it saves the
person the anguish of the advertised becoming irate over the
interruption. Having been in situations were I have used these
techniques either selling for other companies or trying to gain
customers for a newly opened business, I came up with the idea of
trying a door-to-driveway or door-to-doorstep advertising campaign to
build brand awareness for a national car sales corporation that needed
grass roots advertising for the local area around their dealerships.
Basically,
I was a car salesman that was responsible for bringing in customers to
buy cars, and my pay was determined by how many people actually came in
and bought. Since I have leg injuries from an auto accident, I needed
to find a way to cover the same amount of territory as my competing
sales people. The company already supplied a few thousand door hangers;
however, the advertisement brought awareness to all of the local 11
dealerships and I wanted to build awareness just to the dealership that
I was at, and more specifically, I wanted the traffic created to come
specifically to me.
Keeping in mind the flyer campaign I was
apart of at a professional basketball game in which the sales team
handed out 7,000 flyers to build awareness of a local college
basketball season, I designed a half-page flyer text
advertisement - therefore, two ads can be printed on every page - that put
emphasis on my name, my contact information, and schedule. You can
substitute any advertising design on this half-page ad.
I chose
a colored card-stock weighted paper for printing because I needed paper
weight for the distribution method used and a lower cost than the cost
of printing in color. Printing black and white on colored paper is
easier and cheaper than printing expensive color ads, unless you can
afford it. But for the purpose of this campaign, you do not need to
spend a fortune making your company look good in print.
Once the
printing is done, cut the full-page printed page in half, which
produces two half-page ads. Next, take the ads and roll them into a
cigar shape and secure with small rubber bands. Tiny rubber bands can
be purchased at the local office supply company, but the best bet for
the appropriate size can be located at a local beauty supply company -
ask for small hair braiding bands, usually kept in 500 and 1000 count.
Keep a large box handy to place the rolled ads in until it is time to
distribute.
Now it is time to distribute. Normally, door
hangers would take about 2 1/2 hours to distribute 500 hangers and
would receive a few inquiries for the effort; so being limited to the
amount of walking I could do, I decided to drive a car and throw the
ads onto the edge of the driveway at peoples houses. I wanted the
advertisement to be in the same placement as the local newspaper so the
ad had the best chance to be noticed, picked up, and acted on by the
potential customer.
As a homeowner, I myself have had numerous
advertisements thrown in my driveway, and as the homeowner I am
responsible for picking up the ads in my yard. I have seen ads for
grass cutters, electricians, Avon sales, donations to thrift stores,
and many more, so any kind of message can be placed on these ads.
Now
with the new way to distribute, I could get 2000 ads out in
approximately 1 1/2 hours and had responses before I returned to the
dealership. It makes me wonder how many people really do watch the
front of their house and wonder what a slow moving vehicle was throwing
at their house. After seeing the instant results of my effort, every
sales person at the dealership enacted the same door-to-driveway
campaign for the shear fact of the number of ads distributed for the
time distributed was achieved with far less effort than before. Results
we quicker and slightly higher; but, I do not know the exact increase
numbers because I did not do any kind of analysis on exact number of
responses for the number distributed. I do know that I got a lot out a
lot quicker than before and I didn't have to walk anywhere except to
the car.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Make sure it is NOT going to rain on the day that you distribute.
- Try NOT to distribute after 2:00 PM because of children being released from school and them walking and playing in the streets.
- Try NOT to distribute during the weekend because that is when you
want people to be acting on the ad that has been delivered, and the
kids are in the streets again.
- The perfect time seems to be
between 10 AM and 12 PM, a two-hour break in morning commute traffic
and the beginning of lunch hour traffic.
- Keep a map and mark the streets covered as to not deliver in the same area too often.
--------
Webmaster to:
www.aimhockey.com
www.avonbymaki.com
www.quality-gifts-galore.com
eric b smith tampa, fl
b.a. marketing usf tampa, fl
a.s. information systems hcc tampa, fl
