No offence taken, Daxo! Simply put, although they are 15 they're the most reliable option we've found. They're quite the entrepreneurial kids and have a good track record of seeing jobs through from start to finish and not cutting corners. They're also after summer jobs with us, so they're keen to make a good impression. Despite that, we'll be calling random customers that we know well along the route to ask if they've received a flyer. The boys know this, so they're unlikely to dump the lot in a bin. We have specific streets that we want to deliver to and we'll expect them to report back on which they've covered. We're also weighing up buying trackers, if this is going to be a regular marketing method for us.
In contrast, we called several professional companies in our area to compare costs. They were either vastly overpriced for solus distribution, didn't get back to us, couldn't promise to deliver to the specific streets that we wanted, had out of date household data or flat out told us a pack of lies. Frankly, the level of professionalism was worse than that of the 15 year olds. I got the impression that going the 'professional' route meant a greater risk of having the flyers delivered to the wrong types of properties or the whole lot chucked off a cliff.
And in response to Stretchy, we're electricians in a town with a wide population mix. We want to advertise our services towards the 35+ home improvers and the affluent retirees but avoid drops to streets with a high rental demographic, since the residents don't do property improvements or pay the repair bills themselves.
We were thinking of paying £150 to the 15 year olds for 4000 flyers. Based on the 120 flyers per hour that we've heard from several sources, this works out to about £4.50 per hour. The streets that we're focusing on are likely to have driveways, so I don't think the average per hour will be much higher than that. Does that sound like a fair price or would people expect to pay more/less to kids of that age?
