Make your marketing more effective by following these hints and tips:

1 )Do use a headline, not just your business name

Your flyer is an advertisement of what you can offer, not a business card, it needs to sell your product or service. Customers are interested in what they need or want so offer something that meets their needs.

For example, instead of “Brian’s Gifted Gardeners” look at what is important to your potential customers and use your headline to show them the benefit of your services.

Try:
“Get your lawn in shape for summer fun!” or “Enjoy Saturdays instead of scrubbing the shower!”

2 )Don’t List services, raise problems and solving them.

Your advert should include your key features or services but you need to tell your customer the benefit of your services. I’m not really interested in vacuuming, dusting or mopping, but offer me a clean house without spending my weekend scrubbing the shower and you have my attention!

Show the problems and solutions that set you apart from your competitors or your customers doing nothing or having a go themselves.
You can even get your business name in there!
“Tired of coming home to the same dusty house? Let Kate’s Cleaning transform your home!”

3 ) Do Get personal
Your customer wants to feel comfortable using your service or buying from you, set yourself apart from the big faceless companies and help them to trust you. Many people would love to buy from small businesses as they feel they can trust them more than department stores.

4 ) Don’t finish passively
You’ve persuaded your potential customer that they want your services or product, you’ve earned their trust by telling them how your grandfather started the business 70 years ago, now you need the potential customer to pick up the phone or e-mail you instead of putting your flyer on the kitchen table to do later.

Adding an offer such as “book before (date) and receive £10 off” works well but obviously does reduce the profit on your product or services, ideally you want to encourage repeat custom.

“Book before (Date) and receive a coupon for 10% off your next purchase” This way you reward your new customer when they return to use your services again in the future, another example is the 5th cleaning visit being free (that word is a big attraction!)

“Book before (date) to take advantage of our winter sale” This gives a negative consequence to any delay of contacting you, limits of availability or quantity will have a similar effect if suitable for your business or services.

5 ) Do make your marketing go further by asking people to pass it along
Not everyone is looking to have some help with their gardening but they may know someone who is, you can tap into the word of mouth advertising by simply suggesting on the flyer “If you can’t use our service, please pass this flyer along to someone who can”

It’s not guaranteed to prevent your flyer lining someone’s rabbit cage, but for no extra cost it could be an extra customer.

6 ) Don’t leave the reverse blank,
While printing only on the one side is cheaper than the reverse, it’s not normally much more to print on the reverse. If you’re paying to have your leaflets distributed then you’ll be getting more of your message out there for the same cost.
Your second side shouldn’t compete with the front of the flyer, you can use the second side for:

• A menu or comprehensive list of services – You’ve convinced your potential customer they want your product or service, now you can give them the options to choose from!

• Location map – let people know where you are, save them looking for your address on google, they can just look at your flyer, bundle the family in the car and come straight to your door.

• Customer testimonials – A short snippet from your current satisfied customers “Kate’s Cleaning is great, if you didn’t know she was coming in each week, you’d think fairies were sweeping the dust away” – Sue, Basingley

• More space to get personal – You’ve told your potential customer what they need from you, now you’ve space to tell how your grandmother started your bakery just as Churchill was getting ready to fight on the beaches.

Use the second side to support, expand or enhance the message on the main side, it could be the extra needed to turn that potential customer into a regular customer.

7 ) Do get noticed,
Marketing experts believe that you need to reach people at least three times before they notice your marketing, don’t despair, there are a couple of ways to do this.

• Repeat leafleting, you can, with a space of a month or so between, distribute leaflets in the same area, what was perhaps not noticed the first time will be the second time

• Local notice boards, Some community centres or even supermarkets have noticeboards that local businesses can advertise on, one of your flyers can become a mini poster.

• If you’re a local business you may be able to arrange a deal with other local businesses where they’ll keep some of your flyers on their counter in return for you doing the same for them.

Don’t go sticking flyers up on lamp posts etc, you can get into trouble for it.

8 ) Don’t distribute your flyers in the wrong place,
You’ll need to target where you distribute / have your flyers distributed.

• Proximity – If you travel to visit your existing clients as a cleaner, it’ll be easier if your clients are all in one location instead of scattered across town, you’ll be able to group your round, saving time not wasting fuel traveling as far between locations.

• Reaching the right people – It’s a waste sending 80 flyers for a gardening service into a block of flats, if you’re paying a distribution company to put your flyers through letter boxes you may be able to have them exclude flats from the route (They may be very happy to, think of all the stairs!)

9 ) Do test responses from your marketing
If you’re thinking of sending out a second set of flyers it may be worth changing the offer or headline to see if a slight change gains more attention, sometimes a different way of saying the same message gives better results.

10 ) Don’t submit your order without proof reading it first!
Once your order has been printed, it can’t be changed, save your design, have a cup of tea, lunch or anything else you need to do and come back to it in an hour, read everything again and check that it all makes sense, that you’ve not spelt anything wrong, even better get a friend to read it too.
Mistakes in your text can undermine your message, especially if you’re advertising your proof reading services!

At Flyerzone we can check and print a file you’ve created or we’ve got thousands of online designs you can choose from: http://www.flyerzone.co.uk/catalogue/designs/flyers