Quora Question

Dailen Spencer
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

How does one go about contacting local businesses and asking if you can distribute flyers for them?

I need money quickly and this is something I read about some time ago. I was thinking $100–125 to design, print and distribute 1000–1500 fliers; is this reasonable? What businesses would this work best for? Should I cold call or cold approach?

The Answer:

Should you cold call/cold approach? No
What type of business would this work best for? An out of date one
Reasonable: No

Lets clarify what you really want to accomplish. You want to outreach to local businesses and then design, produce, and distribute flyers that would have a positive impact on the respective business’s growth. In summary, you may acquire a few customers here and there but nothing to scale. Let me explain.

There are 2 reasons that you should ultimately decide this is not going to be a good venture to embark on

Reason 1: Dilution

Example 1: Email Marketing

In the early days, the open rates on an email marketing campaign were absolutely booming(over 90%)! Why? Because the attention of the consumer in that arena was incredibly high, and undiluted. Overtime, as more and more email marketing methods were introduced and the pool of email marketers overflowed, the medium became diluted and thus losing the attention of the consumer. We can begin to see why the open-rate of a email marketing campaign is much lower today.

Example 2: Cable Television

Sally is watching her favorite show, Dexter. A Fedex commercial suddenly appears in the middle of her show. Sally immediately mutes the television until Dexter returns.
Dilution

Example 3: Radio Advertising

Sally is jamming to T-Swift on her favorite radio station when an ad about the new library being built in downtown comes on. Sally quickly changes the station
Dilution

Example 4: Physical Advertisement

Sally is walking down the sidewalk. Around her, 1000s of advertisements span the land. Billboards, stickers on trucks, flyers, banners. Sally doesn’t see a single advertisement. Why? She has a phone.
Dilution & Medium(by medium I mean the medium of the phone is more interesting than looking at the real world)

Reason 2: Tracking Return On Investment

It is 2017 and businesses have FINALLY decided that they are not going to blindly handout money. When a business decides to invest, they look for concrete evidence that what they’re paying for will give them a positive return on investment. The issue with posting flyers is that any slightly intelligent business will want to see what return on investment will be created. There is no way to track how much revenue/attendance/brand awareness was generated from your flyer which makes it pretty hard to calculate the ROI.

The Solution

Super simple. Super easy. Online Marketing.
A wide range of tools have been developed to solve the issues I mentioned before. With online marketing, you can track the success of a marketing campaign in unimaginable ways. Here are a few

• Customer Targeting: Target by income, age, gender, relationship, location, ethnicity, and much more
• Financial Tracking: Track return on investment. You’ll be able to see exactly how much you’ve spent and exactly what you’ve made on that investment.
• Data collection: Collect data on your investment. Visualize what worked, and what didnt.

I could write a book about the wonders of online marketing so I wont go too in depth but its pretty epic.

Checkout my website

website: dailenspencer.com

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