How effective is placing flyers/business cards on cars?

[mspecperformance]

For starters my shop is in a very busy metro area. There are cars everywhere, over 100,000's of people within 5 sq miles. I have a German specialty shop so my target market is a bit limited comparatively speaking. There are a lot of nice German cars around the neighborhood and the surrounding area. I have always toyed with the idea of placing flyers on cars or my business card. I feel awkward going up to someone's vehicle and snooping around it, possibly putting my hands on it to leave a flyer. Most people in my area can be hostile towards strangers so this has always put me off a bit. Also it seems most people don't like things being left on their cars.

 

What would you u guys do? How would you approach this? From the sheer volume of potential customers, I think its worth it to find a way to make this work. Thoughts?

[Exclusive Auto Care]

That is one of the marketing strategies I used a couple of weeks ago. I made some fliers and went to stores like Walmart and even the local college. Well I got kicked out of the college because I was not authorize to touch peoples cars. So that was a done deal there. At Walmart I did almost half of the parking lot when I would watch people getting to their cars and wouldn't even read the flyer they would just throw it on the ground. That really did it for me. I had spent my money on making copies and let me mention that it was as hot as it could be on that day for them to just throw them in the ground. I decided instead of placing the fliers in their cars I would hand them to them in person. So I did. That seem a little more effective to me.

 

Good luck with your marketing!

Zulma

[xrac]

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[mspecperformance]

This is something I definitely would not do. Most places like Walmart will not allow this type of activity and some jurisdictions consider it to be littering because they wind up on the parking lot. A better strategy is to strike up alliances with neighboring business and get them to distribute them for you to their customers. We have done that with neighboring business. A Sonic Drive in is next door to us and we have had them place our flyers in every customers food bag and we did the same distributing their coupons. Also better is to call on businesses and pass out flyers there with maybe a special offer to employees.

 

If I were a German shop I would try to buy a mail list for owners of those cars and then I would religious work that list.

 

I've tried direct mail through mudlick mail that had failed miserably, Out of 5,000 mailers I got a response of 3 with only 1 person claiming the special. I will give them that the mailer did go out during Hurricane Sandy week which I guess had to been the worst luck of mine!

 

Does anyone have any recommendations on where to get my own mailing list? What methods has worked with mailers without going through a direct mail company.

[nmikmik]

imo, you must have a huge budget to use direct mail and be very targeted with it to get any meaningful response. I have used Cole and Haines

http://www.coleinformation.com/

http://www.haines.com/

They both have their benefits and shortcomings.

Not sure if you are able to pull the data based on the car they own, but know for sure you could do it by the household income bracket with Haines.

Edited September 10, 2013 by nmikmik