Why Your Flyer Campaign Didn’t Work

You launched a local business and one of your first ideas to get customers is to carpet the city with flyers.

“If I put 2,000 flyers on all those doors, and conservatively estimate a 2% response rate, I’ll get 40 customers!”

So, you go out and find a local print shop and assemble a team of flyer-passer-outers to hit the streets. You wait for the phone to ring. And it never does.

Or maybe you got lucky, and two people called in. One was a crotchety elderly person who yelled at you and slammed down their rotary phone.

What happened? Why didn’t your flyer campaign work?

Well, there are a few reasons why your flyer campaign didn’t work.

Let’s go over them, but let’s get to the most important concept first.

1. You haven’t hit 7 to 17 touches

At Judicious Inc., we’ve been using this sales and marketing rule of thumb for years now. I read it in a book decades ago. I remembered the stat, but I can’t remember where I read it. But it’s now baked into the marketing models that we use here.

You need to touch the same prospect 7 to 17 times before they decide to do business with you. A touch can be a prospect reading a flyer, hearing about your business on the radio, or from a friend, finding your business on Google, etc. Multiple touches from the same marketing channel or activity count as individual touches. So, if they read two of your flyers from different campaigns, months apart, that would be two touches.

Dispelling a marketing activity myth – “We tried that, and it didn’t work”

I’ve been talking to business owners for over 25 years, and I always run into someone who says something like, “Yeah, we tried that, and it didn’t work.”

What they are saying is they tried a new marketing activity and touched a large group of people once, and didn’t get any return. The problem is they only touched each person once. What they really needed to do was touch the same people upwards of 17 times.

You don’t really need to devise a campaign that covers a large area or audience. You only need to target and touch – sometimes just a handful of people – many times over.

This bad habit, or lack of understanding, will infest all areas of business development, sales and marketing in an organization. Whether it’s how they try to do Google advertising, networking, print campaigns…you name it. There’s always a willingness to try a new marketing activity or campaign to “see if it works”. But if in the end you’re just trying another way to touch a new group of people once, it’s not going to do anything for you.

The takeaway: You have to keep covering the same ground, over and over again.

2. Your offer stinks

Now, even if you are covering the same ground over and over again, and touching the same people, a bad offer can ruin the efficiency of your campaign. No matter how many times you give the same person a flyer where there’s absolutely nothing compelling being offered, you’re not going to generate any business from it.

This should be pretty obvious. I just don’t want you running off thinking the only thing you need to overcome is the number of touches. A good flyer campaign takes a certain amount of elbow grease.

An example of a good offer: Bruegger’s Bagels

I get a weekly mailer in my mailbox. Usually on the back page, Bruegger’s Bagels will run a coupon for a free bagel sandwich if you buy a large drink. So, I go get a large coffee and the free bagel sandwich about once a month. It totally works on me. The offer is compelling. It’s targeting a coffee addict. Works perfectly.

Now I’m not sure it’s a good offer in the sense that it’s going to help grow the business. I’m now trained to only go when I get a coupon. But maybe it has a different effect on other customers that’s a net positive for the business.

Listen up! This part is key.

If you’re running a flyer campaign, you’re most likely promoting some sort of offer. It could be a discount; it could just be a differentiator – whatever it is, you need to really spend time and energy working on it.

Most business owners are extremely busy, so they don’t have the patience to really sit down and focus on their offers. This is probably the biggest mistake most small business owners make. If anything is going to move the needle, it’s designing good offers, messaging and differentiators.

This means spending time talking to customers, collecting feedback, running surveys and really understanding your customers. Also, if you can collect data on why existing customers buy from you, then you can develop super potent offers. The bottom line is this time-consuming analysis is the key to unlocking your business growth. Do it!

3. The flyer isn’t easy to read

I see this every week in my mailbox and on my doorstep. And as I get older and my eyesight gets worse, this flyer boo-boo becomes even more apparent.

One of the biggest issues I see is that there’s too much information, which results in smaller text size. And that means it’s hard to read.

Since I’m just scanning this stuff that’s most likely junk, it really has to catch my eye quickly.

In less than a second, I need to find something compelling enough to keep me reading the rest of the piece.

4. The flyer design and aesthetic look low-budget

For flyers, this isn’t as important as the other points above. However, a good-looking flyer that’s well designed will instill more trust with prospects. A junky-looking flyer that looks like it was created by a fly-by-night operation will probably receive less calls. A good-looking flyer will increase the conversion rate of your flyer campaign, so it’s always worth it to have a professional design your flyers. Remember, you’re building customers for life – not just one-off sales.

How can Judicious, Inc. help you?

1. We can always review your flyer before it goes to print. Give you feedback.

2. We can refer you to some graphic designers who will do a great job.

3. We can help you get repeat touches using additional marketing channels.

Just message us below:

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