Let down by pretty leaflets

Hi Cassandra,

Is there any way you can upload the artwork of your flyers (or email it too me).

Without seeing them I can only make general comments, but like it or not your are now in the reals of advertising / marketing, and this is an industry all by itself. I have the opposite problem, my full time job is in marketing and i'm struggling with manufacturing and sourcing products It's equally frustrating at times lol!

Firstly everthing has a website address on it.. Even the messages in fortune cookies! I would say an average person is probably exposed to in excess of 100 web adddresses a day. I guess you put the ad in a local rag and there was probably over 20 URL's in that, so the question is why should someone go to yours.

The trick with everything you do is to put yourself in the eyes of a consumer. The first thing i do when i get a magazine, paper or phone bill is shake out all the leaflets and they go straigh in the bin. I may cast a casual glance over them but they get about 1 second of my time. A full page advert in a paper gets about seconds of my time etc etc.

You have to identify your possible customers and then define how you will communicate with them most effectively. Say your target audience is women aged 30 - 50. Firstly do they all have access to the internet? Women are not generally big internet shoppers, especially in this age bracket. On the flip side of the equation is you are advertising, look at the demographic of the audience. the sort of people who read local newspapers are less likely to be internet shoppers and if they are, then the newspaper is read downstairs over a cup of tea, and the computer is upstairs - so the leaflet is a better idea than an ad in the paper.

Also how easy to remember and spell is your domain name. Quaint is what I would call an upper class word and slightly American. If someone saw your leaflet but threw it away, would they remember and be able to spell it. That's why some of the big named website are easy to remember and spell e.g. play.com amazon.com iwantoneofthose.com - I would argue that your's is a little specialist. Test it - tell a friend your website address who doesn’t know it, then ask them to go to the internet and look at the site - see if they remember and spell it correctly.

Finally look at how you sell your products traditionally. Women are touch shoppers - just watch yourself in a store, you will see a woman touches almost everything, men shop by looking. Do people touch and feel your items. Is it the textures and feel they go for, or just the looks. I've looked at your site (and it looks great!) but i have no idea what size anything is in perspective. You quote sizes but I’m lazy, you got about 10 seconds of my time for me to decide if i want it. Just watch QVC and see how they describe items. Maybe your descriptions should have more seductive info e.g. The soft cotton or luxury feel.

Selling clothing or impulse buys over the internet is a very hard thing to do. The big sellers are selling items people have already chosen to buy and are just looking for a delivery etc. I.e. i want to buy an ipod so I will look online. Yours is the opposite, no one really want a Nicole Kidman Knicker Bag, so your job in marketing is to create that demand. Sell the product, and then tell them how to get it. Please don't think I'm knocking your product at all - I'm just demonstrating that different products are purchased in different ways.

One final golden rule of marketing. If someone tries to sell you advertising don't buy it! Decide yourself what you want to do and the route to do down, and then go out and get it. It's back to the impulse buy again!

I could go on but you've probably switched off by now as i tend to waffle! Hope this makes a little sense!

Hope this makes sense and is a little help.

Andrew

www.funkypuffin.com

Hi Cassandra,

Leaflets are totally no good on their own, If you do them you need to combine it with other types of marketing or advertising. Leaflets have a 1% response rate, and that is if you're lucky!! Not only that, you wouldn't be hitting your target with around 50% (Males) of the leaflets that you put out so you'd probably be looking at 0.5% response rate. As Andrew said flyers out of the paper go straight in the bin. On top of this people need to see or hear the company name or advertising (If they're not looking for a product or service) around 4-8 times before they remember it

I did a leaflet drop of about 500 one day and got 2 calls from it which I didn't get work from, and personally i would have thought everyone who has a house would need an electrician (i was naive and thought i'd get 2-3%) , Maybe they kept the postcard though for the future.

Have you been to shops to try to sell through them? I mean small independent shops, i think that would be a great way for you to boost sales to start with. But again you have to do that right. You should 1st go in to shops with some products to show, then send them a brochure with a covering letter which you should post to them the same day so they get it the next day or the day after, then give them a phone call to see if they recieved the brochure a couple of days later.
You should do this even if they said they are not interested on the initial visit.
Visit them again a couple of weeks later.
It's all about repetition. this is what i'm going to do with estate & letting agents when i get five minuites spare.

Also how many products can you afford to give away?
I ask this because you can also go into the shops give them some stuff to sell for free so they can try it out and put it on the shelves, then get friends or family (give them the money though) to go in and buy them, technically you'll only loose the profit that the shop make on the product and you can resell the products again.
I heard that one about the guys who made (and i think it was this game) trivial pursuit.
Once they see that it's selling well they'll see pound signs and want more and then once it's in the shops if people like the product they'll buy it. The shop may even put some of their marketing budget towards it to push it?

Last one then!
Have you tried eBay to direct more traffic to your site.
I put an auction up on ebay on the front page with all the whistles and bells bold listing etc. and got just over 1500 hits to that auction!!!! Put your web site on that and you'll get hits, i'm sure.
Have you got an ebay shop too?
BTW I'm putting up some auctions some of it for womens stuff on ebay today (friday) I'll put your website on those if you want?

hope this helps

It's great you're thinking about your next product though. Did you get Edwina Curry's(MMM curry) number. It'd be great to get an endorsement. I'd love to get an endorsement (anyone know anyone famous)

take care

Paul

ELECTRICAL CONCEPTS
Design, Install, Maintenance.
Domestic & Commercial

www.electrical-concepts.co.uk

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