Hello everyone!
I'm a newbie to this forum... and online forums in general... so, if I'm breaking any rules or doing something that's otherwise not cool or acceptable, PLEASE let me know. I'm not out to cause trouble. I've just been out of the "business world" for the last decade, most of which was spent as a full-time caregiver for my aging parents. So I'm not totally up to speed on how to behave in online forums.
But now I'm wanting to get back "in the game" and I've been searching for an online community to start getting involved in and add value to. So here I am! :-)
I've got a question... for anyone who might have some experience to share with me.
First though, a tiny bit of background...
During the 1990's, I made my living as a small biz consultant. My area of expertise was marketing, especially in the area of print advertising and direct mail. I used to do a lot of fun stuff for my clients with paper and ink. In addition to very well targeted direct-mail, we'd make extensive use of flyers, brochures and special reports. (If anyone's interested, I can go into detail on some of the things we did.)
(I left that field in 2000 to get into the world of online lead generation. Spent 9 years in that sandbox until I walked away from business completely to become a full-time caregiver for my parents, who both passed away in the summer of 2015. After they both were gone, my family and I took a year off to just re-establish what "normal" is in our lives after having taken care of my parents 24/7 for 6 years.)
A couple years ago, through a very interesting set of circumstances, I became the proud owner of a small warehouse filled with the kind of stuff that you'd find at a FedEx Office or Staples Copy & Print. Dozens of color laser/inkjet printers... pallets of supplies (toner/ink) for those printers... and somewhere around 5,000,000 sheets of paper. (Most of it is plain ol' letter-sized, 20-lb., white copy paper... but there's also a lot of colored cardstock and colored paper mixed in there.) There's also laminating machines/supplies... and coil binding machines/supplies, too. Plus tons of #10/#9 envelopes... and probably 25,000 USPS forever postage stamps.
I got this stuff for pennies on the dollar... and, in all honesty, I could sell the postage stamps alone and recover most of my investment. :-)
Anyway, I put the word out to some friends that I had all this stuff and started doing flyer printing for a few local businesses. (I charge $0.05 for a full-color, single-sided, letter-sized copy. People tell me that I could charge more... but I still make a very nice profit at a nickel a sheet. No sense being greedy) One of my best customers is a Thrift Store that consistently outperforms all of their competitors in their geographic area. Their secret? They have lots of printed materials that they stuff in the bags of all of their shoppers.
Coupons... sale calendars... etc. They swear by the effectiveness of using simple, paper-and-ink traditional marketing materials to drive customer loyalty and bring in new business. And their bottom line proves it. In an industry where all of their competitors put everything online... they print everything out and hand it to every customer.
So... at least in this one industry, with this one customer... I'm seeing that old-fashioned, paper-and-ink marketing materials DO work. And work extremely well.
My question is this...
Are there any other examples out there of small, brick-and-mortar businesses that are still using things like flyers successfully? Or is my customer an anomaly? A dinosaur in a completely digital world who, for some reason, just happens to be lucky? I'm really curious.
If there IS a place for old-fashioned printed flyers in today's business climate, I'd be interested in seeing if I could capitalize on that, since I've got this warehouse full of stuff that could easily be turned into millions of flyers. :-)
To do that, though, I'd like to find out if there are other people who are having success with flyers. Any insight would really be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
--Jon
I'm a newbie to this forum... and online forums in general... so, if I'm breaking any rules or doing something that's otherwise not cool or acceptable, PLEASE let me know. I'm not out to cause trouble. I've just been out of the "business world" for the last decade, most of which was spent as a full-time caregiver for my aging parents. So I'm not totally up to speed on how to behave in online forums.
But now I'm wanting to get back "in the game" and I've been searching for an online community to start getting involved in and add value to. So here I am! :-)
I've got a question... for anyone who might have some experience to share with me.
First though, a tiny bit of background...
During the 1990's, I made my living as a small biz consultant. My area of expertise was marketing, especially in the area of print advertising and direct mail. I used to do a lot of fun stuff for my clients with paper and ink. In addition to very well targeted direct-mail, we'd make extensive use of flyers, brochures and special reports. (If anyone's interested, I can go into detail on some of the things we did.)
(I left that field in 2000 to get into the world of online lead generation. Spent 9 years in that sandbox until I walked away from business completely to become a full-time caregiver for my parents, who both passed away in the summer of 2015. After they both were gone, my family and I took a year off to just re-establish what "normal" is in our lives after having taken care of my parents 24/7 for 6 years.)
A couple years ago, through a very interesting set of circumstances, I became the proud owner of a small warehouse filled with the kind of stuff that you'd find at a FedEx Office or Staples Copy & Print. Dozens of color laser/inkjet printers... pallets of supplies (toner/ink) for those printers... and somewhere around 5,000,000 sheets of paper. (Most of it is plain ol' letter-sized, 20-lb., white copy paper... but there's also a lot of colored cardstock and colored paper mixed in there.) There's also laminating machines/supplies... and coil binding machines/supplies, too. Plus tons of #10/#9 envelopes... and probably 25,000 USPS forever postage stamps.
I got this stuff for pennies on the dollar... and, in all honesty, I could sell the postage stamps alone and recover most of my investment. :-)
Anyway, I put the word out to some friends that I had all this stuff and started doing flyer printing for a few local businesses. (I charge $0.05 for a full-color, single-sided, letter-sized copy. People tell me that I could charge more... but I still make a very nice profit at a nickel a sheet. No sense being greedy) One of my best customers is a Thrift Store that consistently outperforms all of their competitors in their geographic area. Their secret? They have lots of printed materials that they stuff in the bags of all of their shoppers.
Coupons... sale calendars... etc. They swear by the effectiveness of using simple, paper-and-ink traditional marketing materials to drive customer loyalty and bring in new business. And their bottom line proves it. In an industry where all of their competitors put everything online... they print everything out and hand it to every customer.
So... at least in this one industry, with this one customer... I'm seeing that old-fashioned, paper-and-ink marketing materials DO work. And work extremely well.
My question is this...
Are there any other examples out there of small, brick-and-mortar businesses that are still using things like flyers successfully? Or is my customer an anomaly? A dinosaur in a completely digital world who, for some reason, just happens to be lucky? I'm really curious.
If there IS a place for old-fashioned printed flyers in today's business climate, I'd be interested in seeing if I could capitalize on that, since I've got this warehouse full of stuff that could easily be turned into millions of flyers. :-)
To do that, though, I'd like to find out if there are other people who are having success with flyers. Any insight would really be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
--Jon
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