CBF Group's blog

Here is an actual email that I have just sent back to a potential customer. This is a great case study to show the type of questions we get asked and how willing we are to make sure our customers have all the knowledge possible before going to print.

Email to customer..

First of all here is a link to our blog http://blog.cbfnet.co.uk/category/business-printing . This will have all kinds of useful information on there for you.

I especially recommend you read the ‘Print Jargon Explained’ entry, that will have lots of helpful information in there for you.

Here are some of the basic rules for a stress free print production.

My first tip and I think the most important, get clear times lines and deadlines scheduled in and make sure everyone works to them.

A printed material does not start with us (the printer).

1. Make sure all images and/or editorial are assembled (depending on the scale of the job this can take days to weeks).
2. Yet again all based on the scale of the job the graphic designers will need anything from 24 hours to 10 working days to create and set the artwork (speak to your designers about timeslines).
3. Once the artwork is set from you end then the printers design team to set up the artwork so it is in a printable format. This process only takes a couple of hours but the designs can be working on as many as 10+ a day. So your job may take 1 or 2 days to even be looked at. 2-3 working days is the recommended timeline for this stage, known as PROOFING.
4. Once proofed the artwork is sent back to you the customer for APPROVING. This is your last chance to make sure no images or editorial have dropped off or moved. These are usually sent over as digital lo res PDF files or via memory stick/CD. Once you have finally approved the artwork we are then ok to print.
5. Much like the PROOFING stage the actual time taken to print and complete any print finishing may actually only take a day or so, but presses are not just waiting around for jobs to jump on to them. Your materials maybe in a que for a day or so before it goes to press, this is why most printers will always ask for 5-7 working days to complete print is at all possible.
6. Finally you then have the delivery. This obviously has many factors depending on the delivery location but we offer everything from Free local delivery to same day/next day carrier delivery.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Once any artwork is approved by the customer if any mistakes are found once printed the printer is not liable for these mistakes and the work will still have to be paid for.

From our point of view so we can go through the Proofing > > > Approving > > > Printing > > > Delivery process for the scale of job that you have requested we would ideally be asking for a 10-12 working day turn around. This said we do have two sites and we known not everything goes 100% right all the time so we are flexible enough to push things through quicker if ever needed.

If you can get used to working to those kind of times lines it will make all the jobs much smoother and stress free, at the end of the day this is what everybody involved wants J

Artwork:

For a high quality print artwork always needs to be supplied as a Hi Resolution PDF file, set to at least 300dpi (dots per inch). The artwork will also need to be supplied with crop and bleed marks, we recommend a 3mm bleed all around the artwork. Don’t worry this will all make sense to you designers.

NOTE: If any artwork is taken off the internet (especially directly from websites) will nearly always been set to around 72dpi. This is nowhere near good enough resolution for print use. Any branding logo’s etc needed are best created for any printable use and not just taken off the internet.

I hope you find these simple tips useful. Anything else then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Here are my top three tips for producing the most effective flyer.

There has been a stigma around flyers for a long time that they don’t work and all they do is clutter peoples door steps.

If you look into industry statistics you will soon see that this is not true at all. Behind TV and Radio ads flyers are seen to be one of the most effective ways to advertise a business or event.

The longer term effects of flyering need to be looked at, not just the immediate reaction.

Marketing research that has been carried out shows that it takes less than three seconds for a potential customer to digest the vital information off a flyer. This includes branding, company/event name and location.

So you may think your flyer is being thrown straight into the bin but without the potential customer realising it they have already been indoctrinated into your branding. Now add other marketing materials that you may be using such as, word of mouth and other forms of marketing this all rolls into one and helps people decide who they contact when they need a service.

Best best examples for this are take away companies. The likes of Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Pizza Go Go. You will most likely have one of these if not all three putting a take away menu through your door every 6-8 weeks. You may occasionally keep one and stuff it in a draw somewhere but most of the time their menus will go straight in the bin with the other flyers.

That said when you go to ring a pizza delivery or go to one of the take away outlets who do you tend to go to? I bet one of them are at the top of your list. This is not becuase their Pizza’s are any better than some of the local independant pizza take away’s, it is being you are so indoctrinated into their branding that they almost make the desicion for you.

Here are my TOP THREE TIPS to getting your flyer noticed.

1. K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) Dont try and tell the customer everything single service you have and every offer or deal that you have on. Keep it simple, make sure your business name or event name is clear, branding is clear, what it is you actually do and ONE incentive for them to contact you. Maybe this could be a offer or a new product that is coming out.

2. Branding: Think about your flyer carefully, don’t just throw some text and images together. Make sure the image matches your company branding from you business cards, uniforms, company vans and anything else that you potential customers may see. Your average person takes in so much visual information in their day to day life, if your branding is confusing and conflicting it will be forgotten.

3. Target Market: Take time to think carefully about who you are targeting your flyers at. This will influence what colour scheme you use, font type and size, even down to where the flyers will be distributed. For example, there is no point advertising a high end service/product in low income areas, you will not recieve the positive feedback you are looking for.

If you would like to learn more about these kind of topics then please do not hesitate to contact myself or any of them team at CBF.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

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This all depends on the size of the job.  We currently have teams working around various areas in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bristol.  Each door to door distributor can drop approximatly 800-1000 leaflets per day or 4-600 magazines depending on the weight.

If you do have a deadline to get your print items out then drop us a line we can always pull in more temporary staff to help out.

As we now are the largest distributor of leaflets magazines and marketing materials in the area we thought it would be good for you to know where to start and what to think about.

Now I’m sure you know who the best person is to buy your products and services are.  What you may not think about is that although they all work in the local area your trying to
target they will more often than not live within a 3-5 mile radius of their workplace. Read the rest of this entry »

CBF is now Gloucestershire largest Door to Door distributors covering all major towns including Cheltenham, Gloucester, Stroud and Cirencester we can cover all the surrounding areas.

How to plan a door to door leaflet drop
We are constantly delivering around the larger areas we work in sequence working in specific areas at a time so if you are looking to deliver to a specific target audience it would be would looking at the areas that house the demographic you are trying to attract or talk to. 

Once you have established where you would like your materials to be dropped to you need to know how many units you need to cover.  Let’s take Cheltenham as an example there are around  50,000 residences if you were looking to drop in every door to cover the whole town you should look at 0.1-0.5% as a response guide so up to around 250 potential enquiries.  Now I’m sure if you are giving away £10.00 notes your response will be a lot better but for the average trades person and local service provider the aim of the game is ‘Chinese water torture’ you must be realistic with you drop a good proportion will be but in the bin and a lot will be read and lost or not found when needed so the most successful campaigns are followed up with further drops to re-enforce 1. Your branding 2. Your offers and establishment. 

What to look out for?
The biggest trick pulled by many smaller distributors is the batching amount of leaflets put through a door at the same time.  This only benefits one party – the distributor! How many times have you gone home to find a pile of leaflets put through your letterbox that you have just picked up and put in the bin as they are all folded together.

At CBF we are proud of the fact that we will not deliver any more than 3-4 leaflets at anyone time and each drop is considered with who they are being dropped with so 2 plumbers will never be dropped together.  All that taken into consideration we do take into consideration how the leaflets ‘land’ on the other side of the letterboxes we drop through, we make every effort to maximise the response you will get.

As a note each leaflet distributor will drop 800-1000 leaflets per day and 500-700 magazines depending on the area. 

To summarise  door to door distribution is one of the cheapest ways of marketing locally to a wide varied audience and it can be targeted if dropped correctly.  The options generally come in two catagories, a standard door to door drop, so your materials dropped with other materials and a solus drop the more expensive single leaflet through the door at one time.

So if you require and help planning or costing a door drop please give us a call.

Following a weekend of getting leaflets out to our distribution team in Bristol, we have been trying to meet our customer’s expectations but as the service is so grey and there are no ‘industry standards’ I thought this article would be poignant to highlight things to think about and what to watch out for.

Timelines
Have a realistic expectation of when your flyers need to go out by, this sounds like common sense but the planning involved in producing and getting the flyers to the door require some logistical juggling so work with your leaflet distributor to plan backwards so your special offer, sale or event is not missed. 

One golden rule to consider is: Pay attention to the Season.  This is critical as 1. You do not want your leaflets to arrive through the door all soggy and damaged as no-one is going to look at it but also if the weather is bad the distributors will not go out into the wilds.

Costs
Door to door distribution is one of the cheapest ways of getting your name out to the public but if you operate in various areas be aware that some areas will cost more to distribute to than others.  This is purely down to logistics and management.  For example to distribute your leaflets in Cheltenham will cost you between £30-35 per 1000 flyers (cheap huh!) but you travel 25 mins down the M5 to Bristol and you will look to pay £45-50 per 1000.  Rest assured that the biggest players in the market the Royal Mail charge £50 per thousand but they will need your flyers at their depot up to 5 weeks in advance and on the day they get distributed they will only go to door that have post that day.

Capability
Often not though about but does your leaflet distributor have the capacity to get your leaflets out in time and do they have the staff to be able to do the job on time and within budget?  Don’t forget the weather again, if there is just one guy walking around then one his productivity will be slower if the weather is bad and is he distributing your flyers with loads of others?  We have found that we cannot deliver any more than 4 leaflets at a time or the customer does not see a response and they will not come back.  Bear in mind that each distributor on a good day will distribute 800-1000 flyers per day and 5-600 magazines per day.

Areas
So you want to blanket an area with a specific demographic, you must take into account the higher class the area the longer the dives generally so your leaflets will go out slower.  You may have to take into account the location of small areas for your leaflets to be delivered to i.e. the villages or outskirts this will have to be planned in correctly as they generally require more logistics to get the distributors to the locations so they will be last and the slowest out.

Results
No one can guarantee results to your flyer/leaflet going through doors but you can give your materials a better chance by researching your distribution areas correctly and getting the right volumes to cover an area in total. So unless you are giving away free money do not expect to get many results from 500 flyers going out.  We have seen from our own customers and our own flyers going out that the results range from 0.5% to 2% as a good guide.

Reacting to failure
Don’t be disheartened with your flyer going out, it is trial and error.  You may be trying to establish yourself as a new name in the area or competing against a national trusted name.  It will just take more time, so make sure you plan a number of drops in various areas to test your market and do not be afraid to change your offer and try the same people again you can’t please everyone!

If you do need any help or advice on planning a rollout, we would love to help.  You may have the luxury of planning way ahead or running the same flyer nationwide, we can store the materials and get them ready for distribution wherever you need them; this will also give you the bulk buying benefits.  Check out http://www.cbfnet.co.uk/storage_and_distribution/ or Drop us a line to find out more.

We have a number of clients with consistent leaflets/flyers and promotional materials being delivered door-to-door throughout Bristol these (if being truthful) have been a product of a requirement of a number of clients looking to branch out into the area and using the successful models they have tried and tested in other towns. 

But today is different! We have actually done some market testing with the competition and whilst we were aware of the Royal Mails charges we do not consider them true competition as they do not gain market penetration like a reliable leaflet door to door drop does simply because the postmen and women only drop to places that they deliver to with mail.  This leaves obvious holes in the coverage but also with wastage as you will never get the balance of your flyers back they just get swallowed!

Now the true competition that offer the same service as we do in the area we feel, do not have the man power we have. But we have mystery shopped the ones we could find online and found that we are upto 25% cheaper in some cases and at least 10% in all others.  So if you are looking to drop leaflets in Bristol or throughout Gloucestershire. Drop us a line.

I look forward to hearing from you….

Did you know CBF have been delivering leaflet, flyers and brochures door to door across the UK for a while now, we have an established team of in house distributors and partners to to help you get to your target audience.

We have just launched an extended team in Bristol to help cover all areas residential and business. 

So if your looking to target a postcode area, specific area in town then leaflet dropping is the way to do it.  Using CBF to door drop your flyers, magazines and brochures not only is the most efficient way of getting to the right audience is works out cheaper than any Royal Mail door dropping service. 

We have a number of packages to help all size of business so dont think that if you are a small business its out of your reach.  Our distributors on average drop 800 pieces per day (area dependant).  We can even schedule your flyers to drop when you need them to, so if your launching a new offer, product or service we can work on getting the information to the right people at the right time.

What are the minimum door drops recommendation?
Well up to you but remember you should work on an average of 0.5% take up but we have seen up to 5% on.  We would reccommend dropping no less than 5000 flyers to see some return on the production and distribtion costs.

So if you want any help or advice on door to door distribution drop us a line.

Hope to speak to you soon…