Direct-to-Door Advertising

Consumers are flooded with advertising messages. It is estimated that the average American sees over 3,000 advertising messages a day.

These messages come in all forms: e-mail, newspaper, direct mail, web advertising, radio, TV, and others. Increasingly these traditional advertising methods are loosing effectiveness.

Yet, direct-to-door advertising seems to be increasing in effectiveness when marketing to consumer households. It may be as simple as the fact that you only have one front door to your house. Flyers, brochures, and door hangers delivered to the front door have high open rates (theoretically 100% since they arrive “opened”) and are easily distributed with minimum wage direct labor.

Door hangers may be the most interesting direct-to-door option since they must be handled by the consumer and have a high likelihood of being read.  As for the hard costs of door hanger printing and delivery, a modest four-color, glossy finish door hanger might cost $1.00 a piece. The average “carrier” can deliver about 700 pieces in a typical neighborhood in an eight hour shift (including travel time and breaks.)  With minimum wage at $8.00 per hour in most states, total hard costs would be $764.00 per day, plus transportation expense for the carriers.

The door hanger must quickly communicate a message with a clear call to action. Color is critical to help get the attention of the reader. A typical call to action is to call a phone number, but increasingly door hangers are used to drive traffic to websites.

Direct-to-door advertising has a retro feel that is tolerated by most home owners and welcomed by others. One more point, carriers are not allowed to leave advertising in mailboxes; doing this would be a federal offense.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2010