WRITTEN ON March 11th, 2009 BY kate AND STORED IN Leaflet Distribution, Targeting

Tags: door drop marketing, door-to-door marketing, Facebook, Leaflet Distribution, Mosaic

My attention was drawn to this post yesterday, mainly because it referred to social media - and in particular Facebook’s new Fan pages - as the “new door-to-door marketing”.

For those who don’t know, Facebook is about to make some pretty significant changes. First of all, it’s about to redesign the home page we’ve all become so familiar with. Secondly, through the newly designed Fan pages, or what the company itself calls “enhanced public profiles”, it is allowing brands to co-exist alongside people. Gone are the days when companies had to occupy a special corner of Facebook, looking on while everyone else interacted and generally had a good old time. Now brands can participate as members of the community, presenting a fascinating opportunity to engage customers.

So what’s this got to do with leaflet distribution, door drop and LinkDirect, I hear you ask? Aren’t we talking about two very different things here - traditional, face-to-face marketing and new-fangled, revolutionary social media?

Well, as suggested by the blogger above, there are I think some pretty clear similarities between the two, similarities that make it perfectly reasonable to refer to social media as simply an updated version of the door-to-door marketing we do here at LinkDirect House on a daily basis.

It all comes down, basically, to demographics. Marketers who use Facebook to engage and target their customers are, in a way, no different to advertisers who seek to engage and target customers through a leaflet distribution campaign.

It’s all about working out who your intended audience is, how you’re going to target them properly, and how you’re going to avoid targeting people who aren’t in your target demographic. It’s about catching customers’ eyes with head-turning content, whether that be a viral video or the more established means of a special offer on the creative leaflet that drops on to the doormat.

Let’s say you’re a local art gallery looking to promote your business through Facebook. You’ll probably start by location, but then within that demographic you’ll try and engage in communities that you’d guess would have an interest in art, such as local film or theatre groups or the fans of a particularly fine restaurant in the town. Depending on the particular exhibition you were looking to publicise, you could end up in all sorts of places.

We don’t take a too dissimilar approach with a leaflet distribution. Say we were putting together a campaign for a garden centre. Our Mosaic tool is brilliant at splitting people up into all sorts of demographics, from age and income to what newspapers they read and what holidays they do on. In other words, not too far from the targeting demographics you’d use with Facebook. We’d start by running a Mosaic report based on the garden centre’s requirements, which would then identify the best post code sectors for their target market. With that kind of information, you can conduct an unbelievably targeted leaflet distribution campaign, getting your product in front of people with no less of the accuracy of the Facebook crowd.

OK, I’m starting to talk shop a bit now! But I think there’s a good point to be made - whether through new, social media or older, more traditional media, the fundamentals are the same. Both need, ultimately, to find a way of converting people to prospects to customers. Now, back to Facebook!