Leafleting

[Former_Member]

I've been thinking of getting some postcard sized leaflets printed and dropping them in houses in houses in areas or my target market.
It would have perhaps my shop banner and different product photos and information along with a link to my shop.

Has anyone tried this, and more importantly has it been worth your printing costs?

[Former_Member]

I've been thinking about using a service offered by the post office (https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm?) but I haven't calculated costs. It seems reasonable, and you can always deduct this stuff from your taxes if your business is registered legally.

[Former_Member]

If you do it personally just make sure you don't open any mailboxes as it is a federal offense. Drop them somewhere else, by their door or something.

[Former_Member]

Oh wow, that's really interesting, I'm in the UK so we don't have any laws against putting flyers through peoples letterboxes, I might see if we have any equivalent of that service though as it would save so much time.

[HausofAriella]

I've never tried it, but honestly, I don't think it would be worth it. It might be worth it for certain local businesses who offer services that people generally need - restaurants who leave delivery menus, auto places that leave coupons for oil changes, etc. I feel like your products (and most of the products on Etsy) are too specialized for randomly dropping off flyers at people's houses to be really effective. Also I think that people don't particularly like coming home to find random flyers stuck to their doors, so most of them would get thrown out anyway. If you distributed a ton of them, you might get a sale or two, but probably not enough to justify the cost of the printing.

If you really want to do a campaign like that, I think you should try to find a mailing list of people who are interested in home decor somehow. I'm not sure how you would go about that, but I know that there are people who sell mailing lists. Maybe you could talk to some local interior decorators and see if any of their clients might be interested in your products.

[Former_Member]

I see, I lived in the UK for a few years but know nothing about their postal service except that their post offices are cool! Seems to me like an easy marketing idea though. Can't hurt. Your shop is beautiful by the way!

[Former_Member]

I agree with Ariella - I don't think it would be worth it. Something so random would require an awful lot of flyers for the chance of a few sales. And also consider not just the printing costs, but the time you would spend distributing all that stuff.

Maybe there is a place - a coffee shop or other small business where you could post a flyer and have business cards available? Then only interested people would take them.

[Former_Member]

Ariella, That's a good idea, I know that there are usually little postcards in boutique stores that I go in I guess I could contact them about having a pile along with the others.

[Former_Member]

My dad was telling me I should do something similar, but instead of leaving them at people's personal properties, he was saying I should mail some brochures out to local businesses. You could do this with local boutiques. I haven't had the guts to do it yet, though. I made the brochures for local shows, but haven't mailed them out yet. I say try a few to keep your costs down and see how it goes.

[SelkieCrochet]

I don't think it would be worth it for me but good luck with it.

[Former_Member]

I agree with working with local businesses to get the word out. I get so much crap in my mail, and I don't look at most of it. The most frustrating is when I can't figure out how to make it stop!