What is Door Hanger Advertising?

If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably heard of the phrase “door hanger advertising”, but you might not know what it is. Door hangers are simply flyers that are designed to hang onto a doorknob. They are usually vertical in height and have a hook at the top which can easily be placed on doors or fences.

Door hanger advertising has been used by all kinds of businesses with great success. It is a traditional way of advertising and it is also tried and true. There are a few reasons why you should consider this type of advertising over others like digital marketing or radio/newspaper advertising. We’ll get into these in this guide as well as some tips and tricks you can use to maximize your flyering campaigns.

Do Door Hangers Work?

When it comes to any advertising campaign, there’s a simple question. Does it work? The point of advertising is to increase awareness of your product/service with the hopes of ultimately bringing in sales and customers. It’s not only necessary to have a stellar product or service nowadays, but it’s equally important to have a quality advertising campaign set up.

Door hangers have been known to work much better than regular flyers. Generally, regular flyers have a 1% conversion rate, which means for every 100 that we pass out, we should theoretically get 1 new customer. On the other hand, door hangers have up to 5% conversion rates. This jump in conversion definitely justifies the increase in price for printing.

Door hanger advertising works because you get exclusivity when it comes to awareness. The reason is that you don’t have to compete with your competitors for people to view your ad. This is the case in newspaper ads, radio ads, and digital advertising. When someone looks up “plumber NY, they’ll see a list of all of the plumbers advertising for that phrase. If you’re one of those advertisers, there’s a good chance the customer is going to get a quote from all of the ones that pop up.

One Front Door

There’s only one front door and pretty much everyone has one. When someone walks into their home, they have no choice but to remove the door hanger from the doorknob. Then, 9 times out of 10 they’ll be compelled to take a look at the flyer/offer. They will either act on the offer, save the flyer for later, or throw it out.

It really is a numbers game and the more flyers you put out, the more customers you can expect to get. The best part is your door hanger isn’t competing with any other ad piece. It isn’t in the mailbox stuck between more important mail like bills and other ad postcards. It is truly the best method for reaching the customers closest to your business.

The Pros

No Competition

Door hanger advertising works because there’s no struggle to grab attention. People see your flyer and your flyer ONLY attached to their front door.

Tangible Advertising

The door hanger is a tangible piece of advertising since you can save it for later. It is generally regarded as having more value than a digital advertisement since it is most costly to produce.

Locally Targeted

Door hanger advertising targets the homes closest to your business. This is especially important for anyone trying to gain exposure for a grand opening or to expand the business.

Cost Effective

If you’re distributing the flyers yourself, they are pretty cost effective considering you’ll be paying less than 12 cents for each one. Compare this to Google Adwords where you’d have to bid at least 1$ for a click to your website.

High Conversion

Door hangers have been known to have high conversion rates throughout all advertising channels. It’s not often you hear about 5-10% conversions, but history has shown that this tried and true method for getting customers is effective. The reason it is effective is because of the amount of attention that door hangers get.

The Cons

Distribution

Door hangers are no good if they aren’t being distributed properly and it is very time-consuming to do so. Generally, 100 door hangers usually take about an hour or so to distribute. Now, let’s say you plan on putting out 10k flyers, you might be looking at 100 man hours to distribute these.

Total Cost

The printing will cost more than regular flyers or postcards and can be a considerable expense if you’re just starting out your business. Not only that, the distribution will be costly if you’re hiring it out. All of these costs can eat into the profitability of your campaign once you happen to get customers.

The Offer

Usually, to get a good response you have to give something to the customer. This might be in the form of a coupon or a free gift. As you can imagine, giving something away for free on top of the above costs would mean you might have a losing campaign in the short-term.

Long Term Results

This might be seen as a positive but for the people who are looking for quick results, this might not be the right advertising method for you. Often times people will hold onto these flyers before they decide to make a purchase. Not only that, the time it takes for distribution will also influence how quickly you can convert the flyers.

Is Door Hanger Advertising Good For My Business?

This is important to note since not every business is right for door hanger advertising. The simple fact is that it might be too costly for most start-ups. We’d recommend that if people walk into your business physically, then it is definitely something worth pursuing. It is just too good of an advertising avenue to pass up on targeting those living closest to you.

These customers will be the most loyal and more importantly, the more frequent. The lifetime value of a customer far outweighs the cost of getting one. In the longterm gain, you’ll win with door hanger advertising. However, in the short term be prepared to suffer a loss on the overall campaign.

Now that you’re in it for the long run, you have to be in it consistently. It is a known fact that awareness brings sales. One flyer isn’t going to cut it and so you should regularly flood the neighborhood with your materials. This will increase the likelihood that someone will remember your brand the next time they need something that you offer.

How to advertise with door hangers

The strategy behind flyer distribution changes with every business. We’re not talking about location here since that’s the obvious part. On the other hand, the frequency of your distributions can have a larger impact on your return on investment.

The problem with flyer advertising is that you’ll pass them out to people who just aren’t ready to buy your services or products. They might’ve just heard about you and still want to learn more. You’ll find that this happens the majority of the time.

The best way around this is to constantly drop flyers in the same exact neighborhoods. What this does is allow people to begin to associate your service with your company. So if you’re a plumber and a leak suddenly occurs in their homes, they’ll think of you since you’ve been sending them a flyer every month for the last year.

This is the true impact of flyer distribution. One-off drops will bring some results but if you’re looking for overall ROI, you’ll have to dedicate at least 3-4 months of distributions.

Conclusion

Door hanger advertising isn’t some sort of rocket science. Of course, the design of the flyer is probably the most important factor of whether or not it’ll convert. The design is, of course, a strategic purpose rather than an aesthetic one. This is an incredibly important distinction and should be emphasized.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that door hanger advertising works, but you have to keep in mind it’s not for every business. If profitability is your concern, then you have to understand what the value of one customer is to your business. To learn more about flyer advertising and get ideas about design and strategy, please visit our flyer design guide here.