Designing a great flyer gives you a real sense of achievement. You’ve given people all the details of your event and now you can sit back and wait for them to turn up. Or can you? Designing the flyer is the first part, arranging for your flyers’ printing is the second part, but the crucial third part of the process is getting your flyers into the right hands.
Where should you hand out your flyers? Should you use delivery or the personal touch? Here are some ideas about the best ways to distribute your leaflets after printing.
Use local businesses
Many businesses in the community will be happy to help distribute your event flyers. It helps to have flyers on the table in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, for example, or at the hairdresser’s. Shops may also have a noticeboard where they promote events that are relevant to their clientele. Consider the audience for your event and target those local businesses that are also looking for the type of customers you are. This is a cheap and effective way of getting your event flyers into the right hands.
Try direct mail
Direct mail is more expensive since you must pay for someone to deliver the leaflets through people’s doors. But it can be effective, especially if you are addressing the mailings to specific people on a mailing list. It helps if you use a mailing service for this purpose since the mailings will probably be to a wide geographical area. Of course, you need to factor this into your marketing overall budget and also ensure that your mailing list is up to date so that you target the relevant people.
Do a door drop
You can also do a general mail drop of all the houses in a specific area, which is a good option for an event with a wide appeal where you want to attract local people. In this case you can do the mailing yourself. This also works if you are targeting a highly specific population such as students in halls of residence.
Hand out on the street
This is a good option for you when you are outgoing and have a team of people, or you are very energetic, and can hand out leaflets direct to your target audience. You need to be persistent, friendly, and approachable for this task. You must also have the proper permits or authority to hand out leaflets in a specific place.
It can be very time-consuming but it does allow you to effectively target people you want to attend your event, or a do a more general hand-out of leaflets to whoever walks past, thereby targeting local people who may be more likely to attend a local event.