Leaflets Through Doors

Using press and magazine advertising, brochures, mailings - old hat or still cost-effective?
HoneypotCottages
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Location: Chipping Campden, Cotswolds

Post by HoneypotCottages »

From a cottage owners point of view, I can't see that advertising your holiday cottage by flyering would reach your desired audience like advertising in a town / village magazine would...?

Perhaps it's different for us in that we have our own holiday cottage that we rent out and we take bookings on a few other cottages in the area too, as well as offering a cleaning and management option (we also offer a cleaning & management service to second home owners).

We are thinking that flyering locally and advertising a holiday cottage(s), would not be as effective as using the towns monthly publication (unless we targeted specific cottages that we know are second homes). I am not sure that this would get to our desired audience unless we count guests who are already holidaying in the cottages, hoping they would keep the flyer for their next holiday or remember our name. I could see this upsetting a few local cottage owners who do their own advertising!

I like the idea of advertising in the local shop with tear off details and would consider flyering a large local company.

We flyered houses in nearby villages a couple of years ago and got 1 job out of it for our afternoons work. It was to clean & manage a nearby holiday cottage.

The most frustrating thing however, was that somebody we'd (obviously) flyered to, copied our advert word for word, (they used a different cottage logo) and they were advertising holiday cottage cleaning and management in many of the places we were but called themselves something different and had their own phone number of course! So whilst we received work from it, we also gave someone else an idea :roll: :lol:
Andy Smith
Riverside
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Post by Riverside »

For me it simply comes down to cost and whether or not you are willing to put in the leg work. I have had a HUGE return on the £100 odd I spent initially on the flyers and the countless afternoons spent leafleting areas where we guessed our market lived. I looked at the cost of advertising in the local Town magazines and to be perfectly honest I thought the cost was astronomical and just not worth it.

We also flyered the area around the Cottage itself and have had many enquiries from that route as well. People who have been having a family 'do' in the village and couldn't sleep all their guests, people visiting family in the area etc. We have given a big pile of flyers to absolutely everyone we know and they've been giving them out left, right and centre.
Wendy@NorthIdaho
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Post by Wendy@NorthIdaho »

Riverside, how far are you from your rental cottage? We are 3 hours drive from ours and am wondering if giving them out here would work for us... we live in a very science, technical area so many are very up on the internet, etc... but I love having the retired and the "elderly persuasion" folks as guests! and I could see the flyers being a hit with them. Sounds like this has been a good return on your money.

Any more hints on what has been your most sucessful use of the flyers?

Thank you,
Wendy
New Vacation Rental called DayStar Lodge! (Sold Narrows Cottage now have a rental management company called A-List Rental Management)
Riverside
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Post by Riverside »

Wendy@NarrowsCottage wrote:Riverside, how far are you from your rental cottage? We are 3 hours drive from ours and am wondering if giving them out here would work for us... we live in a very science, technical area so many are very up on the internet, etc... but I love having the retired and the "elderly persuasion" folks as guests! and I could see the flyers being a hit with them. Sounds like this has been a good return on your money.

Any more hints on what has been your most sucessful use of the flyers?

Thank you,
Wendy
Hi Wendy

We also live about 3 hours from our property, which I guess is a good range for people wanting a holiday away... far enough to feel like a holiday, but not too far to put people off. My other half is a Lettings Manager so he knows the property market in our area really well. We have targeted places where we guess our market might live (50+ couples), so nice areas with a large percentage of bungalows, smaller villages etc. We've also put up a few flyers on village notice boards which have generated some interest.

A lot of people have commented that they rang because the flyer looked 'professional' so I guess it's worth making it look as good as you can.
Wendy@NorthIdaho
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Post by Wendy@NorthIdaho »

Thank you, will definitely keep this in mind and will make sure they look good / professional if we decide to try it.

Happy it's worked so well for you!

Wendy
New Vacation Rental called DayStar Lodge! (Sold Narrows Cottage now have a rental management company called A-List Rental Management)
HoneypotCottages
Posts: 157
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:29 pm
Location: Chipping Campden, Cotswolds

Post by HoneypotCottages »

Riverside wrote:For me it simply comes down to cost and whether or not you are willing to put in the leg work. I have had a HUGE return on the £100 odd I spent initially on the flyers and the countless afternoons spent leafleting areas where we guessed our market lived. I looked at the cost of advertising in the local Town magazines and to be perfectly honest I thought the cost was astronomical and just not worth it.

We also flyered the area around the Cottage itself and have had many enquiries from that route as well. People who have been having a family 'do' in the village and couldn't sleep all their guests, people visiting family in the area etc. We have given a big pile of flyers to absolutely everyone we know and they've been giving them out left, right and centre.
Good points. A bit more to think about for sure. Thanks.
Andy Smith
HoneypotCottages
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Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:29 pm
Location: Chipping Campden, Cotswolds

Post by HoneypotCottages »

What quality paper / card did you use Riverside or do you think the reason was only* down to how professional it looked?

* not only only of course :P
Andy Smith
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Alex Chapman
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Post by Alex Chapman »

We print up postcards for our vacation properties. We've had limited success with them generating new business, but haven't tried leafleting areas - since most of our business is out of state. We do find them useful for other reasons, including keeping in touch with previous guests.

I have a picture of our postcard on this post I wrote about creating postcards for your vacation rental.

Alex
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