September might feel slightly odd to be saying the C word already. But Christmas will be peeping over the horizon pretty sharpish. And before you know it, Black Friday will be here, the festive rush will be well and truly underway and someone will be asking whether the Christmas door drops campaign is booked, sorted, done.
Which means it’s time to get your planning hat on. Not necessarily your designing hat. Or your “what exactly are we offering?” hat. Just the planning one.
Book now. Print later.
Here’s the important bit. You don’t need your Christmas leaflet finished to start planning your Christmas door drops. In fact, you don’t even need the final offer nailed down yet. You can plan your campaign, work out where you want it to go and get the distribution organised while you’re still working on the promotion itself.
Which, let’s face it, is useful. Because we know how these things work.
Offers change. Prices change. Dates move. Someone decides the headline needs another tweak. Then another one. And occasionally somebody has a brilliant new idea three days after everyone agreed there would definitely be no more brilliant new ideas.
That’s marketing. So give yourself some breathing space.
The important thing to get moving now is the distribution. Because you can perfect your offer and artwork later. But if the distribution period you really wanted is no longer available, a beautifully crafted leaflet sitting on your desk isn’t going to do much selling.
Christmas isn’t just Christmas.
There’s another good reason to think ahead. The festive season gives you more than one opportunity to get your message through people’s letterboxes. Depending on your business, you could be planning activity around:
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- Christmas offers and promotions
- Festive events
- Boxing Day promotions
- January sales
So rather than thinking about one big Christmas campaign, a bit of forward planning could give you a whole series of opportunities to talk to customers at different points. One audience. Different messages. Different reasons to act. And because door drops put something physical directly into people’s homes, they give you a useful way to cut through all the other festive marketing noise competing for attention.
Right message. Right doormat.
Of course, knowing when you want your leaflet to land is only half the job. You also need to know where. That’s where our DoorDrops4U online campaign and mapping tool comes in. You can map out your campaign and choose where you want your leaflets delivered, right down to individual postcode sectors. You can also refine your audience using household demographics such as family type, life stage and income.
Then, as you add or remove areas and adjust the campaign, you can see your print and distribution costs change too. Which means you can plan around your audience and your available marketing budget.
Want to concentrate everything around one shop, restaurant or venue? Great. Need a wider campaign covering several locations? No problem. Got a fixed budget and want to work out where it’ll have the most impact? You can do that too.
It’s about putting your money into the areas where the people you most want to reach actually live.
Easy when you want it. Human when you need it.
We’ve deliberately made DoorDrops4U as simple as possible. Choose your area, build your campaign, see your costs, arrange the print, arrange the distribution. Easy peasy.
But we also know that sometimes you just want to talk something through with an actual human being. And there are plenty of those here too. DoorDrops4U is part of KNP, our family-run print business with more than 30 years’ experience behind it. So while the technology makes planning quicker and easier, you’ve still got real people here to answer questions, offer advice and help you get your campaign right.
Technology where it makes life easier. People where people make the difference.
Seems a pretty sensible combination to us.
So, do you need your Christmas leaflet ready now?
No. Because frankly, for plenty of businesses we know that’s just not realistic. Your offer might not be final. Your prices might still be changing. The creative might currently amount to a note somewhere saying “Christmas leaflet”.
And that’s fine. But if you already know you want to get something landing on doormats during the festive period, your advantage is in getting the campaign moving. Sort the where and when now. Then you’ve got more time to concentrate on getting the offer, message and creative absolutely bang on.
Plan the drop now. Perfect the offer later.
Sound good? If you’ve got any questions and you want to speak to someone, give us a shout. We’re here to answer them. And we’re here to get things moving fro you, safe in the knowledge you’ve got the dates and distribution locked in.
