We distributed some flyers yesterday...
 

Hi,

Actually, my wife did the work of spending 45 minutes placing flyers on 35 doors in a middle-class neighborhood near us. (She's 59 and she can run rings around me.)

I wrote and printed the flyers. I wrote little ads about three of the items from the wholesaler John McTighe told us about. One of them was the 300 piece drill bit kit. The other two were hunting knives. I did searches on eBay for the items available from this wholesaler, and I looked for completed sales in which people had actually bought something (and I noted the price the item went for). The drill bit kit and the two knives actually sold at eBay.

The flyer distribution was about 24 hours ago, and so far we haven't gotten any calls.

We also placed a $7.65 ad in our local shopper newspaper, and after the ad runs I'll report back about what response we got.

Adventures In Entrepreneurship!

- Boyd

Re: We distributed some flyers yesterday...
 

Boyd,
I was thinking on this flyer distribution thing for this and wouldn't it be better to maybe distribute the flyers to cars at shopping centers?
That way you would be able to get a lot more than 35 of them out.

> Hi,

> Actually, my wife did the work of spending
> 45 minutes placing flyers on 35 doors in a
> middle-class neighborhood near us. (She's 59
> and she can run rings around me.)

> I wrote and printed the flyers. I wrote
> little ads about three of the items from the
> wholesaler John McTighe told us about. One
> of them was the 300 piece drill bit kit. The
> other two were hunting knives. I did
> searches on eBay for the items available
> from this wholesaler, and I looked for
> completed sales in which people had actually
> bought something (and I noted the price the
> item went for). The drill bit kit and the
> two knives actually sold at eBay.

> The flyer distribution was about 24 hours
> ago, and so far we haven't gotten any calls.

> We also placed a $7.65 ad in our local
> shopper newspaper, and after the ad runs
> I'll report back about what response we got.

> Adventures In Entrepreneurship!

> - Boyd

Re: We distributed some flyers yesterday...
 

Hi,

Good idea, but I remember seeing something on one of the boards about that kind of flyer distribution being illegal. Or am I mis-remembering something?

Best,

- Boyd

> Boyd,
> I was thinking on this flyer distribution
> thing for this and wouldn't it be better to
> maybe distribute the flyers to cars at
> shopping centers?
> That way you would be able to get a lot more
> than 35 of them out.

Re: We distributed some flyers yesterday...
 

No, it's not illegal to distribute flyers to houses. We get 'em all the time.

Boyd -- I'd try running that under 'garage sale' or some such in the weekend paper. You're more likely to get responses then.

Re: We distributed some flyers yesterday...
 

From what I understand you have to get permission from the owners of the parking lot (which is not always the same as the person who owns the store it's in front of). But I could be wrong about this.

I was actually suppossed to ask a local grocery store today about possibly putting flyers on windshields, but I forgot. I guess I'll be doing that tomorrow.

> Hi,

> Good idea, but I remember seeing something
> on one of the boards about that kind of
> flyer distribution being illegal. Or am I
> mis-remembering something?

> Best,

> - Boyd

Did someone say they took some action?
 

Boyd:

First, Kudos for doing something (and posting about it).

Second, 35 flyers won't really tell you anything useful other than those 35 people might not want any of the items.

Imagine for a moment, the flyer you have created gets a PROVEN 60% response. If you have no response to your 35 flyers it only means you have found the first 35 people out of 100 who were not ever going to buy anyway.

If it turns out that your flyer is a 10 percenter, then technically you have another 55 yet to distribute and get no result from before you get a result.

And if your flyer is a one percenter, then you roughly have a one in three chance of finding that one person in one hundred by distributing 35 flyers. It may turn out to be the 100th flyer distributed before you find that 1 in one hundred person.

My point is, a test of 35 only tells you those 35 are not interested. Do not take it as being an indication of the overall response.

Looking at it from another angle...

How many of those 35 people have demonstrated a desire or want (no matter how small) for a hunting knife? Or drill bits?

Are these the people most likely to buy or would they be the ones most likely to call the handyman who has those drill bits to come and do some drilling.

In other words, are these people in the "target market" for drill bits and hunting knives?

If not, who is and where are they most likely to be found?

As for your ad...

One insertion is not going to tell you too much either.

I have run ads where I have had zero response for the first ten days of the month. And then it's as if something clicked and everyone wanted what I was offering and the phone rang off the hook for the rest of the month.

If I had just run the ad once and made my choice to continue based on the results, I would have chucked the whole thing in after the first week.

Point: one insertion ain't gonna tell you too much either.

There are a lot of things to consider...

Does the "Target Market" read the local shopper?

Where within the local shopper is your ad?

Display or classified?

Is it grabbing?

Targetted? Does it need to be or can it be generic?

Is there ANYTHING going on in the world right now that would/could lower the possible response? For example: Are people getting ready for July 4th celebrations?

World Cup Final? Wimbledon? How's your city's team going in the World Series?

Lots to consider.

No matter which way it pans out, as I said at the start, Kudos for taking action (and posting about it).

Michael Ross.


Get yourself a copy of The Success Report today. It's only $20.

We need something that sells with flyers
 

Hi,

We need to find an item that sells with house-to-house flyers, because we're supposed to walk everyday anyway, and we might as well get paid for it.

I wonder if local seminars at the local library would sell with flyers? It would have to be a free seminar that we figure out some way of making money from. Maybe free seminar to free newsletter to sale? Something like that?

Best,

- Boyd

Another 'doer' leads the way!
 

Hi Boyd,

I remember a quote from some place that said something along the lines of 'The good Lord gave everybody a head to think with and an ass to sit on. The successful ones use one a lot more than the other.'

Congratulations! You're using the right one. LOL.

If selling by house to house leaflet distribution is where you are at, and you are quite right about the desirablility to be paid to take a walk, then look for a product or service that those households MUST need.

I'm not sure that drill bits or knives are universally demanded.

Take a leaf out of the catalogue companies like Amway. Offer plastic garden refuse sacks, brand your own cleaning products, bulk order pet food.

Or how about a home PC/TV cleaning service?

Or a drive and patio pressure wash cleaning company.

Take a leaf out of the book of the lady who sold encyclopedias door to door. After months of struggling, her sales suddenly took off because she started to only call at homes with bicycles and boats out front.

When the householder said 'I can't afford encyclopedias', she answered 'Surely you don't put your boat ahead of your children's education?'

I'm not sure about the ethics of her line, but the point is that faced with a neighborhood of similiar properties, she found a way to select a subset that would need, and could afford her product (bicycles = kids, boat = money).

Sounds like you made a great start. Keep us posted on how you progress.

Best wishes,

Martin


FREE ebook: Success stories, articles and much more.

Car detailing, perhaps?
 

Hi,

You can see their vehicles as you walk up to the door, maybe you could target houses that look like they sacrificed to have a certain car. In our mobile home park there are cars that I know cost more than the home-owner's house. Maybe as a bonus you could give them stuff that played on whatever psychology is going on.

Maybe you could have a flyer for each particular kind of car, sort of the Gary Halbert customized sales letter technique. "Mr. McDonald, did you know that 8000 years ago your noble name etc., etc." "Hello, my name is Boyd and I love black Mustangs like yours. I have one myself, and I keep mine perfectly detailed every day of the week. In fact, I've developed the perfect method of detailing black Mustangs like yours that makes them look so good that every man who sees it will immediately feel smaller than the smallest pissant. My method allows me to work so fast that I can charge an extremely low price when people hire me to detail their Mustangs. I even throw in a framed 8 x 10" color photo of your fine car as part of the deal, as well as a software disk that contains the best black Mustang clubs and resources on the Internet. Blah blah blah, etc., etc."

Just my two cents as usual.

- Boyd

Re: We distributed some flyers yesterday...
 

> Hi,

> Actually, my wife did the work of spending
> 45 minutes placing flyers on 35 doors in a
> middle-class neighborhood near us. (She's 59
> and she can run rings around me.)

> I wrote and printed the flyers. I wrote
> little ads about three of the items from the
> wholesaler John McTighe told us about. One
> of them was the 300 piece drill bit kit. The
> other two were hunting knives. I did
> searches on eBay for the items available
> from this wholesaler, and I looked for
> completed sales in which people had actually
> bought something (and I noted the price the
> item went for). The drill bit kit and the
> two knives actually sold at eBay.

> The flyer distribution was about 24 hours
> ago, and so far we haven't gotten any calls.

> We also placed a $7.65 ad in our local
> shopper newspaper, and after the ad runs
> I'll report back about what response we got.

> Adventures In Entrepreneurship!

> - Boyd

Boyd,

I'm curious. Did you purchase the drill bits and hunting knives from the wholesaler and are now trying to sell them? Or are you testing the waters to see if there is a need and then will fill it if you get responses? The reason I ask is I was thinking of doing the same thing but when I checked on the wholesaler they had a minimum order of $100.00 or some such thing. I guess I'm not the do-er I need to be yet.

Thanks for the information and the post.
Ken