The SUPERPRO, PRO Argument

Digital vs Doordrops? Which has the upper hand

5 minutes read

 You are reading an ad-hoc article to the Digital Marketing vs Leaflet Distribution that we published earlier.

I researched and wrote this article below based on my ten years experience both with digital marketing and the door-drop campaigns. I felt compelled to write this article because earlier this year I met with a client, who was vaguely interested in leafleting but was a strong proponent of the digital marketing alone, and thought that there was no reason to even waste time with leafleting.

Of course, I strongly disagree, based on the years of experience where I have seen time and time again how powerful the leaflet distribution can be. After providing a great leafleting campaign for my customer I would like to think they changed their mind completely. Using this media here I would like to try and convince everyone else as well in the strengths of well thought out and planned leafleting. I do not dismiss digital marketing in any way, and I believe they should work together. Here, I will make the case of the biggest weakness of digital marketing in opposition to leaflet distribution and where precisely leaflet distribution needs to come into play. I can also offer many other arguments but I am choosing this one because I am surprised how a lot of people nowadays have become biased towards digital marketing alone.

Digital marketing – results explained

Here is my bonus fact why leaflet distribution campaigns are an effective channel, especially in the digital marketing age, and why using only digital marketing is a grave error - a lesson easily learned by every single notable brand in the UK - despite their massive budgets and capabilities all large brands never forget to do leafleting as well. 

Every time we rely solely on the digital marketing channels pay per click ads, display advertising, remarketing ads, and so on, we are extremely limiting our audience only to the market share that these services can track. Your client from last week, your web visitor a few hours ago, the persons that search for similar products and services. Yes, there is nothing wrong with targeting these people; these are natural "marks". However, there is a big problem here. These are mainly users that have already used your services, buying your products currently, or at least the same products in your area. A small percentage of these may be people that have suddenly spurred their interest in something new and have or are doing research, despite that chances are they will first see online ads from all the other products or services they used in the past.

There are several reasons for that.

First and foremost, digital marketing has become increasingly expensive with or without the paid ads - just to run a proper SEO for your online presence you need constant budgets and most likely a whole department or at least an external supplier. Running ads on keywords, especially in competitive markets, is highly expensive, with double digits paid per click in many cases. So, as a result, you as everyone else narrow down your pay per click and ads keywords to the most refined choices that would uniquely match your audience to increase the conversion rates. So your ads are displayed mainly to people already familiar with you and your products.

Secondly, same like us and you and everyone else around (perhaps there are exclusions but not many) you have not bothered to set your ads personalisation settings on any of the digital services you use to anything else but what the default settings are (yes and on Gooogle search engine too). These default settings state on all of them that they will supply you and offer you tailored and personalised ads and offers - taken out from your search queries, from where you clicked and what you have visited. These online services like everyone else are trying to increase the conversion rates to such an extent that ONLY a very narrow audience is exposed to your brand.

As we all know from world events, this has created online exposure only to our own biases, and our past choices and experiences. It is putting the consumers in a loop where they only see what we once experienced and nothing new, nothing that could be better perhaps.

 What about the other part of the market share that never gets exposed to your offers simply because they already use a competitor?

Let’s look at a plausible scenario (from actual cases). What happens if you are a business that sells in an immediate geographical area product A, and within your same area you have several competitors, also selling very similar products, B, C and D.

Let's be specific; let's say you are a takeaway pizza restaurant. Your clients faithfully order and prefer your brand, so they order online from you, they may occasionally search your website to order online, they might receive offers by email or text from you, and you would probably be a faithful digital advertiser create a lot of paid social ads, spreading the word about your business. Same would be valid for your competitors.

You are displaying your ads mainly to the vast majority that have already purchased from you in this area one way or another. You are only limited to your existing circle of clients. So does your competitors if you all stick to digital marketing.

Now let's say you decide to go ahead and distribute your menus and other flyers with specialised offers and NEW products, in your immediate area, in addition to your digital marketing.

Yes, you will not know who like your brand A pizza, but make no mistake. In one thing, you can be very confident. Your leafleting is not discriminatory. You will be exposing your brand to all the clients that have always liked Pizza B, D or C and have never seen your delicious products online - Pizza A.

Depriving your business of the benefits that the leafleting provides is an error because if you don't do it, your competitors will. Then they will be the ones exposing their delicious Pizza B, C or D to your clients that have never seen their products online and didn't consider buying from them.

Leaflet distribution, as additional, or even as a primary marketing tool, is a way to remain in control of our marketing and business development strategies. Staying digital means staying under the supervision and influences of the digital players and let's be honest - they have their priorities, and yours are not on the top of their list.

Organising a leafleting campaign means you expose your brand to potential customers that have never been able to see your brand online before merely because of the way the paid advertising and suggested searching online works. Well known to all big brands around the UK, who advertise with all channels and particular with leafleting week after week.

Happy Leafleting!

 Check out the previous article Digital Marketing vs Leaflet Distribution.

Did you find this article useful? Share it with your friends or colleagues on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.

 Do you need help with arranging your leaflet distribution or perhaps additional advice? Book a meeting or a demo here. 

If you are ready to take the next step and book a leaflet distribution – sign up for our instant booking platform here. Booking takes no more than 10 minutes, and approvals are usually within two working hours with live chat support.