Door Hanging services. Suggestions?

hi again pizza makers…

All of your replies on my last post truly ignited our focus on marketing. Thank you!

We’re thinking of using a third party to do our Door Hanging as it will be on a consistent basis. Do you guys know of such companies that provide this kind of service? How much would it cost for about 300-500 homes a week? We currently use one of our trusted employees who we know door hangs for the 2-3 hours that we send her out but we need to do it more and not have to worry about scheduling, etc.

If you have other successful methods in door hanging would greatly appreciate it!

Also we’ve tried our local newspaper/ Red Plum inserts for a couple months and get dismal results. We run an 8x11 Color Double sided insert. I’m thinking of maybe doing the oversize 11x just like the big pizza chains to stand out. Will it make a difference?

Keep your 1 employee involved, but recruit some high school kids - teach them - use a map system - you can then oversee the students and spot check them…I had a crew of of six or so several yrs ago - paid 'em cash daily and my drivers oversaw…

There are third party companies that will do the job. Typically the charges around here are 5000 flyers distributed for approx. $400. However, in our past experiences of using them you have to find out exactly what day they are doorhanging and drive the neighborhoods and follow up to see that they did it. In the past we’ve had problems with them consistently hanging the areas we instructed them to and have also had people call us and tell us they found stacks of our flyers in the garbage can. We finally just started doing it ourselves with some employees since the doorhanging companies were too unreliable.

Movvid how many homes in your market?..I have no idea if 300 to 500 homes a week is too many or too little…

In my experience I have found that if you hit each home every 5 weeks it has the most impact…Now if there is lots of competition in your market then you may have to increase this frequency…If there is little competition you may be able to decrease the frequency…To get the frequency right, it will take some testing…After testing you will likely end up with a frequency between every 3 weeks to every 7 weeks…

As far as hiring a door hanging company, we always had our best results when we used school or church groups doing fund raising…They were more reliable and cheaper than commercial entities…

Good luck…

Craigslist.

For example, last Thursday morning I put an ad under General Labor saying I needed people to doorhang for the next 3 days - paid daily - must be in great shape, etc. $7/hr.

Within 30 minutes I had over 20 replies. An hour later I had 5 people out doorhanging.

I do this all the time. Have never had an issue.

I was also gonna suggest craigslist…My heading would be Stay at home moms…need some cash?

I also like the youth group, fundraiser idea.

But the best idea yet is our own staff. Between 2-4 they can hit quite a few homes. They enjoy doing it. Usually each year around this time they all get together after/before work and walk/run at the track so last year I posted a sheet that said “Get paid to work out” almost every employee signed up. A group of about 6 go we track our hanging on a map. We hit neighborhoods in the same area weekly so if we get slammed on delivery they are all in the same area.

They keep each other accountable that they are actually getting hung and not just messing around. Not to mention we tell them how THEY benefit from doing it. More business…more tips.

Kris

My experience with Craigslist is really a sad commentary on the state of our economy and jobs in general. I don’t typically have stay-at-home moms or losers reply to my posting - it’s usually college kids - and more than you’d think laid-off professionals. One of my current managers replied to my door hanging ad a few months ago.

I acutally dread opening the replies, because they are usually filled with sad stories of being willing to do anything, anytime in order to support a family, etc. Other times I’d blow those stories off as BS, but having actually talked to these people in person - I know they are mostly true.

Nothing like going from a banker to hanging ads on doors to bring you to reality…

I would suggest youth groups or service organizations. I know the service organization I volunteer with can always use quick and easy fundraisers to sponsor our youth programs and scholarships.

thanks guys for all the great suggestions. I never thought of approaching organizations for fundraiser. What a great idea!!!

The current quotes from the third party companies we’re looking at are 5,000 @ $135.00 per thousand = $675.00 &
10,000 @ $79.50 per thousand = $795.00. From having done door hanging myself…I can hang about 100 door hangers in an hour so that would be about .08 per house (if we pay $8 per hour) compare to the .14 per house from the third parties. So it turns out I’m actually saving more if we do it on our own. UNFORTUNATELY there’s only one employee that we trust to door hang unsupervised. I might take a couple and I’ll supervise.

If you use an organization to do it, I would suggest using either a differnt door hanger or differnt special so you can see how many come back, compared to other hangers.

When you use an organization like that and people know you used them you might get more response. You can also add a special where you donate a certain % to the organization when they use the coupon.

Check with your local newspaper, and post office. Somtimes the paper will have deals on flyers that you can have incerted in the paper. We have also used postal walks. Where you the post office delivers to your zip with there other mail. We have used both and still use flyers in the newspaper. It’s very cost effective and we always get a big response. The other thing we use is kids from the high school to drop off door to door in our neighborhood and plazza parking lots