A neighbour of mine is a videographer. They recently paid for a leaflet drop where they paid a company to put a paper leaflet through 2,500 local homes.

The cost of the leaflet drop was £77 (including VAT), and they had to pay for the design and printing themselves.

This type of advertising model is the absolute opposite of Internet advertising as follows.

Internet Advertising

• Targeted on demographics, geography and keywords (i.e. what people are already looking for – either proactively in Google, or passively on Facebook)

• Variable cost (Pay Per Click)

Leaflet drop

• Untargeted (except for geography)

• Fixed cost per 2,500 leaflets

Of course, these differences apply to sites such as Google or Facebook (which for a wedding videographer is a huge opportunity, where they can target a specific geography, timing, and be pretty smart about finding those newly-engaged couples).

The end result for the leaflet drop was even worse though, because they didn’t receive a single lead. Not ‘sale’ or ‘conversion’ – but LEAD! Not one phone call! So that £77 plus printing cost was an expensive untargeted gamble which they won’t be repeating again.