WRITTEN ON May 4th, 2011 BY chris AND STORED IN General, Leaflet Distribution, Targeting

Tags: demographic, door drop, government, SMART-Drop, SMEs, uk

Door drop marketing perfect growth tool for small businesses

The Government is ploughing enormous effort into encouraging small businesses. The recent launch of the Start Up Britain campaign saw the Prime Minister herald ‘the decade of enterprise’. Behind the lofty rhetoric the Government is keenly aware that it needs a dynamic small business sector to drive the country out of recession creating jobs and wealth. Growth is no longer going to come from an expanding public sector or financial services sector or from a housing bubble the three factors which drove growth in the last decade. In total a third of the UK workforce, 12m people, are employed by the UK’s 4.7m smaller firms and the Government knows the sector must grow especially with so many jobs being lost in the public sector.

Here at Link Direct we work across the public and private sector and many of our clients are large PLCs. However, small businesses remain our biggest client group. In essence our services are an ideal growth and sales tool for small to medium sized firms (SMEs). We are a door drop marketing firm. Our industry is often derided as ‘junk mail’. But, look a little closer and the statistics tell a powerful and compelling story. Recent figures published in Marketing Week show that unaddressed mail marketing is actually growing – and fast. In 2010 the top ten biggest unaddressed advertisers spent £38.8m, up from £27.2m in 2009. The 43% increase compares with the 7% uplift widely forecast for the entire advertising market in 2010. The prime reason for this – and we saw it in the recession in the 1990s – is that unaddressed mail is one of the most affordable and effective forms of marketing available – especially to SMEs. We see ourselves as a key element of the marketing mix for smaller firms helping them win business and inform their target audiences about who they are and what they do.

Moreover huge investment has been gone into the technology behind door drop leaflets which can really help SMEs. Better data modeling and postcode targeting tools have boosted marketers’ ability to plan and execute unaddressed campaigns to clearly defined target audiences. We have our own software called SMART-Drop and believe it is a giant leap forward for our industry. By using this technology firms slash down on the number of leaflets they need making it immediately more green and cost effective. And critically SMEs know they are hitting the right target customers. And unless you are selling a universal product, that everyone buys, this is very important advance.

 As one example an SME client a motor dealership recently used SMART- Drop to target households within the same area by income. This way it could market its executive, mid range and coupe cars to the right households by defined demographic criteria.

If you are a small business wanting to target consumers by demographic anywhere in the UK why not give us a call for an informal discussion?

For further information contact Chris Roxburgh Email: croxburgh@linkdirect.co.uk Tel: 0151 647 5535