We're going to do some Every Door Direct Mail with the post office. Drum up some fresh business and basically get our name out there in some parts of town that aren't familiar with us, i.e. blanketing the surrounding residential areas of our local competitors.

It's cheap as crap (14.5 cents per piece) and you can do up to a 12"x15" mailer. Whatever you think about direct mail, that is going to get some looks before going in the garbage. I want to hit them 3-4 times in a 60 day period, try and build some memory of our name.

Anyone used this method? 14.5 cents per house seems like nothing. You can fit A LOT of information on a 12x15 flat.

Any ideas to grab attention. Not really interested in TV hangs, so I'd like to avoid a TV hang special. We're Sonos dealers, so of course I'll be putting in something about that.

3-4 times in 60 days isnt going to net you much. Most studies I've seen on "Val-pac" type direct mail indicate 6-9 months before recognition/retention.

Ok, once a month over 6-9 months (I think I get valpak once a month). At 6 times, you're looking at 87 cents per home. We have some co-op advertising bucks to use. Seems like a no brainer to me, but I'm far from a marketing expert.

i saw this at the post office the other day. I thought about trying it out, i was also thinking about having relidy make me up some post cards. maybe im missing it but i dont see what you do about postage. Do you walk into the post office with the Zipcodes you want to target?

I don't look at any of that crap, goes straight in the trash.
If I need work done, I get referrals for it rather than look at the stuff I get in the mail.

ok, so i assume you dont do any advertising? if you do whats your trick on getting your name out

As for the OP.

I figured it out, except its not clear whether postage gets printed at the post office or they have to be printed on the post card. Any ideas?

also, you do have to take the post cards to the towns post office, this is how the postage is 14.5 cents

Only advertising I've done is on some local message boards and the yellow pages once. I also try and participate enough on one of the bigger local forums so that if someone posts looking for an A/V guy, I can now count on at least a few people throwing my name out. It's been a good mix of biz but a lot of it is TV hangs.
I'm fortunate enough to stay busy by word of mouth but would love to grow, not just my business, but the size and type of jobs I get. I really don't want anymore "can you hang my TV" business. LOL Which means simply not doing those types of jobs anymore and focusing on the type of installs that I want more of. People spending money usually try and get referrals whereas someone wanting their TV hung cheap call whoever is out in front of them. Not always but just seems to be the case most of the time from my perspective.

I'd focus more on my relationships with the people who can send me good leads, builders, interior decorators, other business owners, etc.

Postage isn't "printed". You have the endica that they show on their website printed on the card, showing it's bulk mail. Their website has a picture of it. You bundle them up in bundles of 50 (or 100, etc) and drop them off at the post office and pay at the counter 14.5 cents per piece.

Direct mail statistics prove that not everyone throws these things away. I bought my most recent granite counters from a direct mail piece ($2,750) and you'd be SHOCKED at the number of people who purchase new windows and roofs from a direct mail piece and those are in the $10k + range. Direct Mail works. It may not be for you, but it works.

I don't want just TV hangs either. I price mine at what they are worth ($350+). I show my prospects our work and copies of our licenses and insurance. If someone wants to pay less, fine, there's hacks out there hanging for $99 including the mount. I make it clear that if the customer is looking for that, then we aren't the company for them. We don't get most of the TV hang estimates I get calls for or go on. I'd say I maybe get 2 or 3 out of 10. However, I now have the type of customer I want and they know firsthand now the quality of our work. They will not hesitate to call us again when they want something else. We've established ourselves as a premium brand in their mind. Those $99 TV hang jobs will forget your company's name the second you finish and leave their house.

If I get a call for a TV hang, I usually can do most of the weeding out over the phone. Also, my direct mail pieces do not target TV hangs. It's listed on one of our services but it's last and never used as a call to action.

I get you. I've been doing T&M for TV installs but even that isn't really worth it (due to the time and limited billable hours for doing it)
I had some tears fixed in the seat of my truck and the guy said he gets tons of business from direct mail (he was referred to me by someone else but I had seen his name somewhere before too).
It just seems to me that certain types of business do better with direct mail than others and I'm not sure how much exposure you would have to have to start getting decent leads for our type of business.
But you don't know if you don't try so post back about your results!!

I'm assuming you're targeting neighborhoods that would be a good match for the types of services you offer...ie high/er end? That's the key, otherwise you're wasting your time.

Direct mail works great for things like painting, roofing, lawn services, windows, etc. I'm not sure how well it's received in our industry, but my guess is that you'll get some hits. You're bound to. One good hit can pay for the program in and of itself, not to mention turn itself into more business with referrals, etc.

You mentioned that it's not a killer on your marketing budget, so I don't see what it can hurt. Just make sure you come up with a good design. You want it to look professional, but at the same time, it has to get the point across right away. Clutter and too much wording will lose your audience instantly. You might provide a plethora of services to your clientele, but it's not necessary to list them all on a postcard.

Make it look nice and follow the K.I.S.S. method...

I did direct mail once. Mainly due to the time it took. I didn't just print cards up. I actually typed up an introduction letter that introduced me and my company, services we offer, some name brands and talked about we work to build relationships with our customers. I then opened up Zillow.com and did searches for recently sold houses within the last 3 and 6 months for each local town, first over a million dollar sale price, and then $700,000-$999,999. I hand wrote 1000 envelopes with To Our Friends At, and their address. Business was really slow at the time so I had some time to do this. I ended up getting about 10 calls out of the 1000 mailers which I thought was actually pretty good considering most people throw out mailers. I think the hand written envelopes is the main reason they read them. I only landed 5 of those jobs, the rest were not really worth the time to be honest. So you can get some return. If I only hit them once and got a small percentage of response, I would be willing to bet on a much larger scale that you can get some business. If you do it, let us know how it goes.