Do Passing Out Door Hangers Still Work?

I con­tin­ue to get asked this ques­tion, ​“Is it worth it to pass out door hang­ers while we are work­ing in a neighborhood?”  After look­ing at a num­ber of cus­tomer reports I gath­ered from their CRM pro­grams, here is my conclusion. In gen­er­al, fly­er­ing a neigh­bor­hood with door hang­ers while you are work­ing in a neigh­bor­hood does not work very well. You will most like­ly get a few leads, but the cost of those leads are nor­mal­ly high. Nor­mal­ly when you send a mail­er or a door hang­er while work­ing in that area just once does not do much of any­thing. Door hang­ers, like direct mail, can work, but it requires con­sis­ten­cy and a lot of work. I also think home­own­ers just don’t like door hang­ers. They are an incon­ve­nience.

When To Con­sid­er a Door Hang­er Campaign

If it were up to me, I would not put much effort into door hang­ers any­more, even if you want­ed to hit the same neigh­bor­hoods over and over. It is a less per­son­al way to intro­duce your com­pa­ny to neigh­bors. You are bet­ter off invest­ing in a good list and mail­ing com­mu­ni­ties on a sched­ule. I do have some clients that walk neigh­bor­hoods fair­ly con­sis­tent­ly with door hang­ers: over and over. Yet as I look at the leads and sales that come in, the price per lead and sale are very expen­sive. So I would def­i­nite­ly put that mon­ey into some­thing else. If you are new in busi­ness and don’t mind walk­ing neigh­bor­hoods your­self, this might be the only time I’d advise door hang­ers. The results still will be small with­out a good ​“spe­cial offer” and rea­son to call.

What Would You Do Instead of Door Hangers

I would make sure your trucks and yard signs are clean and present on every sin­gle job site. That is a no brain­er, but often times, con­trac­tors for­get one or both of these items. I think it is a good idea to mar­ket to the neigh­bors direct­ly next door and across the street to let them know what you’ll be doing. Per­haps you can stop by and drop them off a spe­cial inex­pen­sive gift (Star­bucks card and ​“excuse our dust” note). It is mar­ket­ing to less peo­ple, but it would real­ly make your com­pa­ny stand out as being proac­tive, con­sid­er­ate and pro­fes­sion­al! Final­ly, I’d make sure you are com­mit­ted to the neigh­bor­hoods you want to work in: neigh­bor­hood dom­i­na­tion! How can you get more involved in help­ing that com­mu­ni­ty? This involves a lot of time and effort on your part: lit­tle league spon­sor­ships, silent auc­tions, his­tor­i­cal soci­ety spon­sor­ships, races, fundrais­ers and so forth. Put your mon­ey and time in build­ing up your brand in a com­mu­ni­ty where peo­ple respect and know you are there to stay. You then will not need door hang­ers at all!