This video is about door hangers, so take a look at my screen and tell me which door hanger jumps out at you.
The point I’m about to make is how I started in the business and why things didn’t work for me.
If you look at this, doesn’t every door hanger on here sort of look the same? I don’t know what jumps out to you, but for me there’s really one exception on this page and that exception is right here on the right. It’s this white one with a lot of text.
Otherwise, for the most part just about every other door hanger on here looks just about the same. They’re very comparable. They’re all basically green with maybe a little bit of yellow. They don’t have many words and they’ve got some picture related to lawn mowing, probably a dog or maybe a baby.
I’m not knocking any of that stuff. I’m not saying a dog or a baby or green and yellow or whatever is bad, because I think I’ve pretty much used all those things. My point is that everybody looks exactly the same. That’s the big problem.
As you create your door hangers, direct mail pieces, and your marketing pieces, the thing that you need to be really aware of is how do you stand out.
For example, the typical homeowner doesn’t receive all of these door hangers in their mailbox at one time, where flipping through them you just totally blend in. But, if you think about what’s going onto the door if you’re putting out door hangers, or if you think about what’s arriving in the mailbox, how do you stand out? How do you get noticed in a stack of mail? How do you get noticed when there’s four other door hangers on the door?
Then, deeper than that, when there’s a lawn care door hanger or a business card on the door every three days, how is it that your piece happens to grab their attention? That it happens to stand out?
I would encourage you that as you’re designing your door hanger, as you’re thinking about door hangers, go out to Google and do a search on door hangers and look at the images. You might already do this to get ideas. The problem is that with that approach, which does not work, is you’re copying other ideas that don’t work. This is kind of what got me into marketing in a big way back in 2005, 2006.
When I started my business, I looked at all the door hangers I was getting on my door and I looked all over for ideas on putting together door hangers. I then had a designer create me something that looked really nice. Then, I sent out a lot of door hangers and postcards and it didn’t really work that great. I got business, but it wasn’t that great. I didn’t get a great result. It was going to cost a lot of money to build the business that way.
I started researching marketing because I had experience selling and growing the business through sales, but not really through marketing. So I started to study and learn marketing and got really interested in it. The point there is that it’s really key that we don’t just, look at these door hangers and copy what somebody else did because most of this stuff does not work. A lot of this stuff is produced by companies that sell door hangers. More importantly, sell printing.
Have they tested it? Does it really work? Yeah, it might work a little bit, but does it work as good as it can? This stuff can work really, really well if done right. Copying what everybody else is doing won’t work. The take away on this video is, how do you look different? How do you stand out? This is a world that we have to stand out.
I think it’s a combination of words, selling and telling the client exactly what the value is that they’ll get, what the problem is and what their fears and frustrations are that you will solve. Give them a compelling offer, why they need to do business with you right now. Create risk reversal so that they don’t have risk in doing business with you. There’s a bunch of other component parts to that. You have to have all of that wording. You have to have the right message. You have to tell the right story. You have to convey all of that.
Then you also use imagery. If you think about Pinterest and Facebook, that stuff is heavily driven off of imagery. So, there’s an imagery element to this as well. Whatever piece it is that you put together, think strongly about your imagery.
Interestingly here, look, this house right here and that house right there. They’re so close it could be that house right there. They are very similar.
Then, there’s a lawnmower that’s used, it’s like a red push mower that everybody uses. There’s all these images that everybody’s using over and over. Therefore, the results are less effective, less exciting.
I wanted to make the point that if you look around and pay close attention to what everybody else is doing, what is coming in the mailbox, and how to make yourself stand out, that’s the key to making this stuff work.
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