Print media marketing is a great choice for many different businesses. It’s an affordable option for just about any business, and it can be done quickly. It’s also very effective. Let’s look at some of the options for print media marketing that you can use for your business.

Print Media Marketing 1 – Door Hangers

If you are on a tight budget, I believe mailbox flyers or door hangers are the best ideas. They are inexpensive and extremely effective.

A photocopy only costs about $.08 and you can fit 3 to a page. If you do the math, if you are getting 1 customer for every 100 you put out (1% return rate), it will cost you $2.66 for that customer effective. My success rate has been in the range of 1-5%.  However, this is good considering such a low cost, and many of these customers I have maintained for years.

It is illegal to stick flyers in mailboxes (even if it’s just touching the flag or the post). So I wouldn’t do this. But if you were to do this, it would probably be much faster putting them out, and you would only get caught maybe one out of 5 times. And you should try to time it so that you put them out just after the mail comes otherwise the mailman might take them out of the box and call you and tell you not to do it anymore. And maybe use a florescent color paper, so it stands out from the rest of the mail. Ehem. But I am just guessing these things would theoretically be effective.

Anyway, a better idea might be door hangers. Although they are slower to put out, it does allow you to start a conversation with the homeowner, if so desired. If you talk to the people, they are more likely to respond than just to a flyer in their mailbox.

We have been really pushing these door hangers in the last couple of years simply because, in this business, you make money on density. It takes two seconds to throw one on the door across the street and the more accounts you get in one area the better off you are going to be.

Keep in mind that although many of the leads will come in a day or two following the placement of the flyers, leads trickle in throughout the season as people tend to hold onto these flyers and call later in the season for whatever reason.

Print Media Marketing 2 – Direct Mail Marketing

With the painting business, direct mail is our primary method of advertising and gives us good results, about 1% return.  This is however on much larger projects so a 1% return amounts to a much higher dollar value.  So I thought I would try this method for my lawn care business.

Attempting to expand in 2008, it was my first year attempting to use a direct mail campaign for my lawn care business.  In 2008 I sent out 2500 parcels (at approximately $.60 per parcel) and only got 1 customer through this. It is a very good, full service, high paying customer. But a high price to pay at $1500.00. This is the 4×6 postcard I sent out in 2008:

These are the controllable factors with direct mail. However, some factors such as the weather when the mail hits, as well as the exact properties that receive the mail, cannot be controlled. This is why I have chosen mostly to hand-deliver the parcels with mailbox flyers (besides the obvious difference in cost.) With the mailbox flyers, you know exactly who you are delivering to and when they will get it. Direct mail is a complicated marketing campaign since there are many options to choose from. Besides the obvious factors of design and type, the demographics must also be chosen.

In terms of demographics, there are many choices such as geography, dwelling type owner/renter, and household income. There are the demographics that were relevant to my campaign.

I knew the zip codes I wanted to market in. This was easy; the area where I normally do service. I knew I wanted a single household dwelling and not sending it to rental houses. However, choosing the homeowner income was a more difficult choice; I chose homeowners with a combined income of $75,000 to $125,000.

My logic in this was that I didn’t want people that couldn’t afford the luxury of having their lawn mowed, and didn’t want people with so much money their expectations were too high.

I opted to send the mail in 3 different mailings, 1000 on April 3, 1000 on April 10, and another 1000 on May 5 (note there is an additional $50 charge for breaking up the mailing.)

What I have learned is that direct mail is complicated and multiple mailings need to be sent out before any usable data is acquired.  Since I only tried it once, I don’t have too much to go by at this point.

UPDATE: 2014 Direct Mail Results

Since updating this website on direct mail 6 years ago, an incredible amount of things have changed in the company. One major thing has been our marketing budget- We have a $25,000 marketing budget this year.

I had learned a ton from attending the GIE-Expo in Kentucky as well as various SBA meetings. I wanted to give direct mail another try.

So in 2014, I decided to try the USPS’s EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail).

With EDDM, you no longer have to pick demographics. The idea is, the postage is cheap since they just put one in every mailbox based on the route codes you give them through their system.  It is a flat rate for any size parcel fitting their criteria, so I opted for the largest, 6×11. My 2014 direct mail examples are below:

This time around, we sent them to the same addresses 3 times throughout the spring. What I like about the EDDM is you drop them off exactly when you are ready and you know the weather, etc.

We recorded a total of  32 total leads from our direct mail in 2014. 18 of these 32 leads were converted to clients. So that is a 56% win rate on these estimates from direct mail, or a .02% response rate (32 leads out of 15,000 sent). $5000 was spent on mail, which means we paid  $156 per lead and $278 per client.

Expensive, for sure, but once we exhausted all cheaper marketing channels this still got us additional work we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Additionally worth noting, that many customers that said they “saw our truck” also saw our direct mail just didn’t mention it as to where they heard of us. So there are many not immediately seen benefits from sending out 20,000 pieces of marketing with your logo on it.

This year we are putting a stronger offer on our pieces in hopes of a better response rate.

Print Media Marketing with Flyers & Business Cards

Another method I have tried is posting advertising flyers and business cards in locations such as grocery stores, local gyms, home improvement stores, and coffee shops.

This is another very cheap and passive way of gaining new lawn care customers.

One of my highest paying and loyal customers I got using this method. Simply putting up a flyer with a description of what you offer and little rip-off tabs is effective. Many times they get taken down, but you can print and put up several flyers around town in a few hours. I would recommend doing this in combination with other methods to get your name out there.

In addition to deliberate advertising rounds to local bulletin boards, I always keep business cards in my wallet. That way, whenever I see a bulletin board where people put their business cards I can tack one up there amongst them.  Also, if a see a business where people put their cards on the counter, I will ask if I can leave mine up there too.

When I have the budget to hire a full-time marketing person, you can bet that this tactic will be on my list of job responsibilities. I would have them regularly make rounds to put up business cards and flyers all over our work areas.

I have used this tactic since I first started and to this day, it still proves to be a very worthwhile marketing tactic.

Job Site Print Media Marketing

By on-site advertising, I mean having your employees wear company t-shirts and having your company name and phone number on your trailer and/or truck.  Our trailers are all enclosed with our logo and phone number right on them which I know for a fact gets us a ton of visibility, let alone keeping our equipment dry and safe.

Yard Signs

Neighbors will see these and recognize your small business. Just last year (2014), I started really pushing the yard signs. In the past, I had always put about 15 or 20 of the sign below, only at our client’s houses. We always get heavy-duty (not the normal flimsy) sign stands, otherwise, they just blow over in the wind.

I noticed a local tree company trying to establish themselves had a lot of signs up, all over the place. Not just on customer’s properties but public, high visibility locations. If I was noticing them everywhere, then surely others were too.

I purchased 25 signs and plastered them all around town for fall cleanups. We were getting a ton of calls! Especially in combination with our direct mail hitting the areas at the same time. They were so successful, I purchased 25 more. Our signs were simplified, and straight to the point, easy to read, very effective.

Given how successful this campaign was, I decided to do it again this spring, except I started with 50 signs which I have yet to put up. It will go out with our EDDM direct mail and I will update this page with its results.