“Door hanging” is an effective method of marketing lawn care, landscape, pest control and similar services. Depending upon the quantity and size, you can print high quality 4 color brochures to distribute for less than 16 cents. If you or your staff has down time and can distribute the hangers, then the distribution cost is just fuel cost. An able bodied person should be able to distribute between 600 and 800 “door hangers” a day depending upon neighborhood concentration. If you go through almost a tank of gas per day in your “door hanging” efforts, you’ve spent an additional $42 per day or 6 cents per brochure to get your message out to targeted homeowners. That’s 22 cents per piece in marketing costs, plus your time. Compared to mailing a similar piece, which would cost between 48 and 58 cents, the door hanger is a cost effective, targeted marketing tool.

If you’d like to protect your leave behind materials from the elements, use over-sized post cards stuffed inside door hanging plastic bags. This adds a little more labor, but the post cards are less expensive and you can add additional materials to the bag such as a business card, or a "special offer" flyer that can be customized for the season. Plastic door hanging bags run a little less than 2 cents each.

Distribution of door hangers depends on the neighborhood. In areas where mail boxes are located curbside, they can be hung from the mailbox post. In neighborhoods where the mailbox is near the front door, then they should be hung from the door knob or slipped inside the storm door. One of our clients had great success leaving stuffed plastic bags on driveways. Whatever you do, never place the hanger or brochure inside the mailbox.

“Don’t some people just throw these brochures away without looking at them?”

Sure, but that's true of any direct response marketing. Timing is critical as is the offer you present. The doorhanger allows you to present your message to a highly targeted area at an extremely low cost per piece. The disadvantage is the time it takes to get the pieces distributed. With direct mail, 1000s of pieces can be delivered in a single day. This is just another method you can use to get your message to targeted prospects cost-effectively.

“What if I don’t have the time to distribute these brochures?”

In most markets there is a company that will distribute them for you for between 16 and 19 cents per piece. Even at about 34 cents per distributed brochure with printing, that’s still significantly cheaper than direct mail. These companies are generally local or regional, (there is no national doorhanger distributor) so you will need to check them out thoroughly to insure that you brochures are being distributed where you targeted them and not being distributed to some dumpster. You may even find a church or civic group of volunteers willing to distribute for you as a way of raising funds for their group. Or maybe you just know someone who needs some part time work. However, you get them distributed, Direct to “Door” Marketing should be part of your Marketing Plan.

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