Does this sound familiar to you? You get yourself a box of smart leaflets delivered from the printer. You’re delighted with them. They’re going to make you look fantastic. And yet, apart from handing out a couple to friends and family the majority end up sitting in your office/ shed/ garage/ boot of your car (delete as appropriate). Why is that? Why do so many of us end up with something we’ll never use?
Well to start with, I think that many people ‘get some leaflets done’ simply because that’s what they think they need to do. I think that there’s a common misconception that you need leaflets to promote your business/ make yourself look professional. I’m passionately against this approach. I would never recommend that any of my clients got some ‘generic’ leaflets printed without discussing in more detail how they intended on using them.
Secondly I think it’s only when we get that box of leaflets home that we start to think about how we’ll distribute them. And I have heard people say to me that they don’t want to ‘waste’ their leaflets by giving too many out!
Think about what you’re going to do with your leaflets before you have them designed and you’ll find that they make you a lot more money.
If you have some leaflets created as a part of a well thought through marketing plan then these leaflets should never sit in your garage unused. Start by thinking about addressing a specific marketing objective. What do you want to tell people about and what would you like them to do? How will you distribute them to people – door drop/ high street flyering/ post/ networking events? And then (and only then) should you think about the format this needs to take.
If you’re thinking about what you want each piece of marketing to achieve before you create it, you’ll find that you increase your response rates and reduce the amount of money that you waste. But what about your business? What’s your experience of having leaflets printed? Do you find that you use them or do they sit in a room unused and unloved?
