fliers/ good idea or bad?

[yergus]

I was told once by someone that in order to suceed in business you need to talk with someone that has already suceeded. I did. About fliers, and he told me that fliers did not work, that people usually throw away the fliers without ever reading them. Well I did something really stupid, I went against his advice and handed out fliers, door to door, and guess what. BIG SUCCESS!!!!
I really don't know if it was the fliers that doubled my business or if the customer was just sick of their previous lawn care techniciaans. Plus it got my company name out.
Does anyone else use fliers, and if you do, how often do you hand them out, and when.
I found that the best time is the last part of August.

[sheppard]

In Tallahassee FL they work very well. Most of the people I talk with tell me they will keep it if the current lawn guy 'drops the ball'. A significant number of people forward them to family members. One key ingredient with passing out fliers is to go to the library and look at the Hill Donnely listing for the streets you passed out fliers on. I copy the streets and call them that night or the next. Works very well. In Tallahassee, most of the people say something like"thanks for following up with me, I'll hold on to this, Do you do fertilizing, if I go with you do you have a mower that will not tear up my lawn?"

Cordially,
Sheppard

[dhicks]

I like 'em. I can target the neighborhoods that I want and have been cost effective.

[kutnkru]

Heres a discussion from a while back that gave both some pros and cons:
http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10923&highlight=fliers

Good Luck!

[Mike (MLC)]

I've heard that some people have not had any luck with fliers. But, for me that is how I got a good portion of my clients. I passed out bunches of fliers and also posted them on telephone poles in neighborhoods. I made them bright and colorful and people really noticed. After a few months I started to notice other lawn care guys were putting signs out, but nothing like mine!!!:p

[mdb landscaping]

like dhicks said. its great cause you can get into a neighborhood youd like to mow in. i put out fliers this spring in a few nice neighborhoods and i got great success from it. i had people call me two to 4 weeks after i put the flyers out. most people hold on to them.

[MATTHEW]

There is an old saying in the sales world. "SOME WILL,SOME WON'T, SO WHAT". The idea is to get your name out there. You never know who will need your service and who won't. Fliers did well for me, if you think 2% is good. (and it is the average) Everyone knows that name recognition is the key. Get it out there and keep it out there. Repitition.Repitition. Repitition.
Word of mouth will reap the "best" customers, but takes time.
Just keep on keepin' on, you will succeed!:blob3:

[solaras]

Flyers have been a huge success for me as well as very cost effective. $.06 per flyer vs $.32 + envelope + flyer = way too much money for me. Oh yeah, my time is worth nothing until I can turn business away.

[RMDoyon]

Flyers have been good for me but I pay the newspaper to hand them out.
I spent $456 on 11,000 inserted flyers and it resulted in over $5000 in annual business.

I am planning on tripling that this September.

I will not canvass door-to-door, I am comfortable neither receiving nor distributing in this manner.

Roger

[cantoo]

I have always wanted to pay boy scouts, girl guides, a local soccer teams or someone like that to hand out fliers and see what the response would be. I would think that people would be interested in signing with you if you said that for every yearly contract you get you would donate X dollars to them as a fund raiser. Of course this would work better in a smaller community than the big city but still I think it would work well.

[LoneStarLawn]

Originally posted by RMDoyon
.....
I spent $456 on 11,000 inserted flyers and it resulted in over $5000 in annual business.



Not really great for that number of flyers but atleast you got something.

[RMDoyon]

My feelings exactly LoneStar.

I was very diasapointed at the number of responses but I cannot dispute the return on investment. However, this ad ran on the Friday after the Fourth of July which everyone here warned me was a bad time to pick up accounts.

One note, that $5000 was only in maintenance accounts directly as a result of that flyer. I picked up an additional $1600 account from one of the new neighborhoods I started cutting in and around $500 in side work.

Roger

[SLS]

Flyers can work great provided that they are neat and placed in the right area.

Last year I put out a measly 75 on a few streets right around my house and had a call from one of them. I talked to the lady and got the account. The sweet thing was is that her lawn guy had just quit and she knew 8 other people that he cut...she liked my work and call all of those people...and I snatched them up too! 1 flyer generated 9 accounts in 1 day. :D Pure luck of the draw...I shoulda headed up to the casinos at Tunica while I was on a roll....

I've gotten good response from running an ad in the neighborhood paper too.