Handbill Still the Way to Go

Handbills still work. 

Here are two postcards used by mini storage businesses to keep their buildings full. 

Got any empty space?

Have CPC or USPS deliver these postcards to businesses and residents living near your mini storage yard in late winter (ie, just before spring cleanup) and then again late summer (just before fall put-away) then run back to your place and wait for the phone to ring and people to show up with their trailers loaded down with stuff. 

Marketing is about being persistent and consistent.

You’ve got to be able to connect cost effectively with clients or your operation is dead. 

You have to find an MMB, magic marketing button.

For mini storage, that’s old-fashioned handbills…

@ profbruce

postscript: how much does this cost?

We paid 30 cents per postcard at Blue Heron Storage corporation, and we ordered a minimum of 2,500 at a time. Then it cost another 30 cents or so to have CPC deliver them to selected neighborhoods.

So it cost about 60 cents per household, which works out to a quite expensive $600 per thousand households. This is about 10 times more than most google or facebook ads, but if we rent a 10′ x 10′ shed for $140 a month and the average stay is 6 months, we only need to rent 1.8 units to recover our marketing cost. 

But we usually did much better than that, viz:

-2,500 postcards printed and delivered for $1,500

-typical response rate 1.25%

-31 calls/visits

-9 sheds rented

ROI = $7560/$1500 = 504%

Not bad…