Door To Door Marketing With Doorhangers

Merbs

Hey Everyone. I am trying to increase my company's exposure in a particular city. Has anyone had success with doorhangers? The city I am targeting only has about 20,000 people. I am planning on doing this myself throughout the whole year. My goal for this marketing campaign is to land 20 kitchen or bath remodels. Let me know what you think from your experience and if my expectations are too low/high. Thanks.

will575

I had a bunch printed up this past summer for remodeling, repair, handyman svc etc. I had several people look at them, everybody thought they looked good (but who knows) I had 2 of my teenage sons put about 300 out over a period of a couple of weeks. This will be a gold mine I thought

I got 3 calls. 2 were from women looking for work for their husbands (I assume the husband didn't call for himself because he was not interested in work or was passed out drunk, or both) the 3rd was from an old lady that couldn't believe we would charge for a service call. I still have a big box full. Thinking I may still put them out, but it's not much of a priority based on what happened so far.

What went wrong? I don't know. Wrong neighborhood? could be. door hanger design sucked? could be. Kids didn't really put them out? I really think they did.

So next I decided to get more targeted. Part of our business is roof repair. I got a little smarter this time, decided to do a test before I dropped $400 on a bunch of hangers. I made some flyers on card stock, drove around, put about 25 out on houses that were missing some shingles. Results? 0. I changed the design, made them less cute and maybe a litle more to the point. Did it again in a different neighborhood. Results 0.

I did some research, read that some studies have shown that people don't like krap stuck on their door. OK I'll try mailing. I drove through some neighborhoods, made a list of about 50 houses that had some shingles missing. Got ownership info from county assessor. Mailed post cards. Responses? (drum roll) 0.

Hate to rain on your parade, just my experience.

Maybe you can do better, I'd be interested in hearing anyone else's experiences.

BUT, I'll tell you what has worked like a charm. (for roof repair) 18" X 24" corex signs on those little wire stakes. Put about a dozen out in the city. Got a call right away. It was codes enforcement: TAKE THEM DOWN OR ELSE!!!So I put them on all the main streets going out of town like 100 feet into the county. As soon as our rainy season started the phone rang off the hook. No tire kickers, no bargain shoppers, I literally sold every single job I estimated, and I did not go cheap! Made money by the wheel barrow full (until it stopped raining). Next I'm going to try the signs for the other types of work we do.

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pcplumber

We discussed flyers a few weeks ago. We have been using them for 35 years. There are many ways to get flyers delivered, positively, for 5 cents or less.

http://www.contractortalk.com/showth...557#post531557

dougchips

I tried it south of Boston in a few towns without any luck.

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ultimatetouch

You have to do thousands forget hundreds.

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Ultimatetouch
Illinois Remodeling Company, Kitchen Remodeling Chicago, Room Additions Illinois

neolitic

My guess is, if you can't work the
"search" function here, you can't
make the hangers work either.

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buildpinnacle

Funny!

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Glasshousebltr

If you spend all that time delivering .....don't waste it ......take notes on a pad......address/needs roof etc. ........leave notes on the fliers (noticed you might need a roof ..etc)........pick up a cross reference real estate directory ....$$$$ .....but worth it .....that will tell ya own or rent .....years there .....name and number.

you know then what ya need to...."I was by the other day Mr Smith .....did ya get my note."

Turn a cold call into a warm one.

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Bob

silvertree

Here's my take, you send out thousands if you have the money for that, and the money for some good closing salespeople. If your a small company you are the sales force. If you get a lot of hits you can't get to them fast enough.
But forget that, look who's using these things. Specialty service companies who also have a coupon attached. Free window upgrade, free sink, 2 rooms cleaned for the price of one. Valpak does this successfully. But 20,000?
Might work, I would do flyers after trying print ads. But no one knows for sure what will work, but rest assured people in the cities are getting flyers every single day six days a week.

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SethHoldren

Great post.

Studies have shown that a personal note (especially a yellow sticky note) increases response by a ton.

It would probably be more effective to do 100 this way than it would be to do thousands "non-personalized" by bulk.

Nice idea.

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TileLady

I did some door hangers (a couple hundred maybe) this past year around my residential neighborhoods and got 0 calls. I made the door hanger myself (it looked really nice) and put a perforated business card type thing at the bottom so they could just tear it off and put it on their fridge. Who knows, maybe one day I'll get a call from somebody who actually saved it.

I honestly don't think people like the idea of door hangers because you're trespassing on their property. I can relate to that myself. I don't like when people put door hangers on my house either. I'm always wondering if they trampled on my flowers or something. It's similar to when people put flyers on your windshield. That really pisses me off!

I did have some successful results when I put flyers in people's mailboxes but I got a phone call from the Post office yelling at me so I didn't really do it again. That's why I tried the door hangers. Oh well.

A good combination might be to mail people your information. Like to mail them an actual flyer or information and then personally sign it. Yes, it costs more for postage but if you target certain houses, it might pay for itself. Make the envelope handwritten so it's personalized and it will entice them to open it rather than throw it out.

SLSTech

My take - we are not a Domino's or a Pizza Hut. I managed for Domino's for a while - we would get 2500 put out in 1 area - we might get 5 or 10 more calls in the area hanged (mostly apartments) that night & during the whole week maybe we would be up about 20 to 25 calls. The numbers may be up slightly the next week but generally they were down by about 5. Work the percentages on those numbers & they are not good. All we ended up doing was enticing a customer with a another option for something they needed to do anyways - which was eat.

Unless they really need XYZ work done now or very shortly, it probably ended up filed in the appropriate container - the trash. If you are working on a house in the block, I can see a special hanger being useful - maybe excuse the dust, any problems call & here is 25 off XYZ service. These would work better if you can actually introduce yourself to the customer. Just my .02

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pcplumber

For those of you who want to try to figure out how to use flyers, read the information in this link.

I keep reading posts saying why flyers don't work. Obviously, if I am running a shop with 35+ employees, and we are probably one of the busiest the busiest shops, in Los Angeles, flyers must work. Maybe you need to change the name from flyer to brochure. They work great when you know how to design a good 'brochure' and get them printed and delivered for only 5 cents. You can get them printed and inserted in your newspapers for 5 cents, or less. Just think! You brochure falls out of 30,000 newspapers every week. Do you think the readers will notice your flyer? Will the same number of readers see your display ad?

http://bestlineplumbing.com/Flyers.htm

MEDIAINSTALLS

We did this as well and never took a serious call from it yet. But we did notice the number of visitors on our webpage go up during that time. It showed people did look at it and were curious. Its a tough sale but you do force that person to look at the paper when they take it off the door.


[quote=TileLady;551870]
I did have some successful results when I put flyers in people's mailboxes but I got a phone call from the Post office yelling at me so I didn't really do it again. That's why I tried the door hangers. Oh well.

You got lucky on that note its actually a crime to put anything in mailboxes now and lucky you did not get fined.

will575

Seems to me that if I did hundreds and got no calls (that I wanted) then if I do thousands I doubt the results would be worth the expense. Seems to me Glasshouse is on the right track.

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nlgutters

How many of you who didn't have any luck no what they are doing? or hired a professional to do it.

I believe they work if done right.