10 Front Door Marketing Tools that Guarantee Visibility

Leverage these front door tools to attract and retain an ever-growing market share

The front porch is quickly becoming the only place left in our overcrowded media ecosystem where you can command full and uncluttered attention.

It’s getting harder to keep loyal customers and win new ones. Even finding your target audience and getting their attention long enough to follow up has become much more difficult. And none of this is happening because of your service, online reviews, prices, products, or even your competition.

Yes, those things all matter — a lot. But they have always been difficult to execute consistently. What’s changed? There’s something else businesses too often overlook:

Your customers and leads just forget about you.

They don’t see most of your marketing. And if they do, they don’t spend enough time interacting with it to advance from the awareness stage to the consideration stage of the customer journey. There are too many distractions, making it much harder to keep your business on top of mind. 

If you want to grow, your marketing has two jobs:

1. Make sure your existing customers remember you
2. Make sure potential customers keep trying you out

You’ve got to give them a reason why they must keep coming back, and price alone is not enough.

If you want to get attention, it’s time to try a new approach, and front door marketing will make all the difference. We’re going to show you an array of front door marketing strategies and tools that companies of any size can use to win business and gain market share.

Why use front door marketing

There are tons of marketing channels, and all of them have their various pros and cons. But marketing to people on their front porch is in a category of its own. Let’s look at some reasons why.

Exclusivity

You can do things on the front porch that you simply can’t do anywhere else. Whether you’re using door-to-door marketing strategies with human brand reps or one of the door hanger marketing examples we’ll be showing you in a moment, these strategies can’t easily be replicated anywhere else.

Longevity

When people find something on their front porch, they give it their full attention. Whereas most advertising is fortunate to get just a few seconds of consideration time, anything found on the front porch will get far more.

The recipient has to pick it up, carry it inside, and then do something with it. During that time, they will look at it. You’re guaranteed nearly 100% impressions when you use door hanger marketing.

And, because it’s physical media, the recipient can keep it and re-consider it for hours, days, or even weeks afterward. It has shelf life. They don’t have to give up valuable time the instant they see your marketing materials. They can come back to it later. You can’t do that with most forms of digital marketing, traditional media marketing, or even out of home marketing like billboards.

Builds trust

Consumers have become suspicious of many media channels, especially digital marketing. You don’t always know who is behind some of those ads. That’s not to say online marketing shouldn’t be used. In fact, multichannel marketing that integrates door hangers with various digital channels is often even more effective than using any one method on its own.

But there’s something inherently trustworthy about marketing materials delivered to the front porch.

A real person had to put this here. Not an algorithm. It took human effort and resources to create this door hanger and deliver it. Potential customers feel this, even if they may not express it that way. It’s real.

Real is trustworthy.

And if you use door-to-door media to its fullest potential, you can enhance trust even more using strategies we’ll look at in a bit.

Free from distractions

The front door is distraction-free, possibly the last place in civilization that can make that claim. Think about this:

People read articles — online or in magazines or the few remaining newspapers — for all kinds of reasons other than to look at your ads. You have to compete with the articles, opinions, and bad news, as well as other ads — just to be seen. Plus, lots of people don’t read full articles at all anymore. 

But they do get mail. So you might send them direct mail. But now you’re competing against other mailers! And you have about three seconds to get their attention before they toss your mailer away.

TV and radio — changing the channel takes less effort than blinking. And they’re much more expensive. And today, many people pay money for the sole purpose of avoiding ALL ads on these media channels. So how do you reach those people? Online?

There isn’t a place on earth with more distractions than the Internet. Getting in front of your target audience with digital marketing is tricky, time-consuming, and usually pretty costly.

So what’s left?

Coupon books? These can be great, but again, you’re competing for attention with all the other businesses in the same book. How many people take the time to look through the whole book?

The front porch is a special place. It’s the entry into the home. Anything sitting or hanging there feels more like a gift than advertising. Front door marketing is far more likely to be looked at, talked about, and acted on than any other form of advertising. This is true for big national corporations as well as local and brick-and-mortar businesses. That’s why it works so well to beat the marketing competition.

Door-to-door marketing enables you to connect with 100% of the households in your targeted area.

Impossible to ignore

Door hangers are unique in the marketing industry because they are impossible to ignore. Very few people will just leave your door hangers hanging there forever. They will pick them up and take them inside. They’re also effective tools because they are visible and tactile, not digital or virtual.

10 ways to say “Hello” as your target audience walks in THEIR doors

Here are ten front door marketing strategies — including several varieties and sizes of door hangers — that you can use to welcome people home, make a positive impression, and stay front and center in their minds.

1. The most efficient — 17 x 5.5 in. door hanger

This is the standard door hanger size for a reason. It works! It gets attention and gets looked at for more than two seconds. And unlike most direct mail, your marketing message is immediately visible.

Just about any marketing message you could cram into an envelope or postcard or feature in a 30-second TV or radio spot, you can also fit onto a standard 17 x 5.5 inch door hanger. Door hangers from Power Direct have impressive historical response data, far better than direct mail. It’s like a targeted mini-billboard.

A well-designed door hanger can prompt homeowners to take action, such as remembering to schedule a service or make a purchase they’ve been planning on.

2. The ‘Catalog-On-A-Door’ — 4-panel door hanger

This special edition of the standard 17 x 5.5 inch door hanger is perfect for companies wanting to feature more than one product, or a mall that wants to feature multiple stores. It’s kind of like a marketing rep doing door-to-door sales making four distinct offers or giving four ways to respond. Here are a few strategies for how various industries could use the 4-panels:

• Telecom companies could present four different monthly plans for different target markets
• Ecommerce brands could present four different product categories
• Real estate marketers could present four available homes in various price ranges
• Lead generation campaigns could hit on four different pain points
• Restaurants or other local businesses could tell new customers about four different deals, or four menu items

The 4-panel hanger is exceptional for appealing to a broader audience, because just making one offer excludes consumers who aren’t interested in that one. This is like a mini-catalog hanging on their door.

3. The ‘Wow-Factor’ door hanger — unique shapes

A ‘Wow-Factor’ door hanger is the kind no one can throw away without looking at it. They’re true die cuts — custom-made shapes only for your business. This is where you can have fun and get extra creative and knock the socks off some potential customers.

The great thing is, die cuts don’t cost much more than standard door hangers. There’s just a one-time added fee to pay for the customized cutting. It’s not a per-unit higher cost.

For previous clients, we’ve cut specialized door hanger shaped like surfboards, remote controls, pancakes, and even toilets!

Other unique door-to-door marketing objects

Some ‘Wow-Factor’ front-door marketing tools aren’t even door hangers. We’ve been asked to create and distribute home-plate-shaped doormats to promote the grand opening of a new baseball stadium! Who’s going to just throw away a home plate doormat? (Okay, maybe it depends how bad the team is doing…)

‘Wow-Factors’ are guaranteed attention getters, and your marketing message will be seen by a far greater percentage of recipients than would see it in direct mail, a coupon book, a digital campaign, or another print ad.

4. Scratch offs

Gamification engages the senses and appeals to the desire to win something. It’s way more fun than “shopping.” You can use door hangers to employ numerous gamification strategies.

One of the most popular and time-tested strategies is the scratch-off.

Everyone instantly gets the point — I scratch this off, and I might win something. It’s simple, fast, and fun. The simplest use of this tactic is to put coupons underneath the scratch off. But you can do much better:

Put free samples they must come into your store to claim. Very few people will come in and only take the free item. They’ll also buy other items, all of which becomes ROI for you — and just from that initial purchase.

Or, for online or national marketing efforts, give special coupon codes, or secret passwords they can say when calling your sales team, filling out an online form, or texting a shortcode.

You could also use scratch-offs to reveal QR codes for different rewards, or to allow prospects to instantly visit a landing page, schedule a service, or sign up for a newsletter. When prospective customers scan the one they want, your sales team will collect their information using an online form and will be able to follow up with emails, texts, calls, or other methods of engaging new leads.

5. Scratch and sniffs, rub and smells

For products where the scent is part of the marketing, such as perfumes and lotions, scratch and sniff promotions get potential customers interacting with your product.

And there’s some untapped creativity here that you might want to exploit. For instance, could a restaurant create a scratch and sniff smell for a burrito, a new sauce, or a burger? What about bacon? Could a car company develop an odor to represent the ‘new car smell’?

Can you think of a marketing promotion for your business where you can incorporate smell into the messaging? It’s the least utilized of the five senses in marketing, but arguably the most powerful.

What does a campaign cost?

Get a custom-built sample campaign with real targeting data, ad creative, cost estimates, and distribution plans.

Use the Project Estimator

6. Overnight package look-a-like — a guaranteed open

If you want a guaranteed opening of your marketing materials, make it look like a package delivery. Yes, the costs are higher here, so it’s not appropriate for every business or door-to-door campaign. But when getting attention of prospective customers is the essential element of the sales pitch, nothing beats a package.

This also depends on the size of your target audience. Maybe you’re just mailing to repeat customers who spent over $2000 at your store the past year. Investing a bit more to keep them coming back is worth the attention-getting expense of a real package.

7. Greeting card look-a-like

This type of door-to-door marketing is placed against the door on the floor. It has the feel of being left there by a neighbor or friend. No postage, no return address — it’s like a birthday or greeting card, but it’s from your business.

Again, this is nearly guaranteed to get opened, and thus will earn a far greater ROI than a typical direct mail campaign.

8. Impossible to turn down samples

One of our most effective projects to date was for a major municipal power department. They sent out two LED light bulbs to thousands of customers, along with marketing materials and other energy-saving resources. The campaign was enormously successful, because most houses have 1-2 dozen light bulb sockets. So once people saw the quality and benefits of the LED bulbs, they were much more likely to buy them up for the rest of their home. It provided a noticeable reduction in energy usage.

Free samples on your doorstep are impossible to turn down.

There is a greater expense in this type of campaign too, of course. That’s why some businesses make the free sample available only to customers who visit the store. You can use that strategy with a scratch-off game, typical door hangers, and ‘wow factor’ die cuts.

But samples aren’t limited only to physical products.

Your sample can be a catalog, or the same free standing insert (FSI) many businesses put in newspapers. Remember, a lot of people don’t get the newspaper. So your FSI campaigns miss them entirely.

You can send FSIs via regular mail too, but then you’re still competing with everyone else who’s doing that. By putting your FSI in a bag hanging from the door, it raises the perceived value of your marketing materials and earns your business a moment of exclusive attention.

9. Yard signs

Do people get upset if you put a yard sign on their yard without asking?

Then ask! We’ve had political campaigns hang yard signs on doors with directions for how to unfold it and put it in their yard. Some homeowners won’t do it, of course, but some will. And ALL of them will see your message, which is the goal, right?

And not all yard signs have to be political. Businesses can use this strategy too, especially for evergreen offers and brand visibility.

For instance, you can make yard signs in the form of July 4^th flags. We’ve also created fun signs shaped like various animals and plants. These have creative and decorative value, in addition to being good ways to get your message out.

And remember, even if only a handful of people actually put the signs up, almost all of them will read them. So your brand authority gets renewed and enhanced, one of the strongest benefits of out of home advertising.

10. Brand ambassadors — in-person door-to-door marketing

Door-to-door marketing can refer to numerous approaches. The goal for all of them is to engage potential customers by either selling on the spot or earning the right to follow up, build trust, and address pain points.

Sometimes, the best way to do this is with a live sales rep right at the door.

This is why, in addition to door hangers, Power Direct also offers brand ambassador services. With brand ambassadors, you’re leveraging the power of human, face-to-face interactions to initiate a relationship with consumers, be memorable, and promote your products and services.

No one will forget meeting a real person at their door the way they do with traditional advertising. Brand ambassadors give you unique and personal access to your target audience. You can use this door-to-door marketing strategy for all sorts of goals, such as

• Asking open-ended questions to gain insights into prospect perspectives
• Gauging interest in your products and services
• Soft selling
• Surveying or polling about relevant topics
• Offering free customer service for in-home equipment
• Passing out free samples, brochures, or other marketing materials
• Running contests
• Door to door sales

Why brand ambassadors are better

Brand ambassadors are often better than a door-to-door sales team because they’re more cost-effective. Companies only hire them for the duration of the campaign, and then you’re done. No long-term employment costs or benefits required.

Power Direct is connected with staffing firms around the country, and we will staff, train, supervise, and monitor the progress of your teams, ensuring they know your marketing message and represent your brand values every time they knock on a door. We train them to listen and adapt their approach based on the unique needs and responses of each prospect.

You can also supercharge a door-to-door sales campaign by equipping your brand ambassador team with door hangers of all the varieties presented in this article.

If they meet a customer at their door, they can pass out these marketing materials to supplement their message and encourage future action for residents not yet ready to make a decision. And, for anyone not home, the team can distribute the door hangers. That way, every residence in your target audience hears your message.

It’s the most powerful combination in the world of print and door-to-door marketing.

Tips on effective use of door-to-door marketing

As you can see, there are numerous strategies for marketing your message and distributing physical media to the doors of potential leads. Here are a few additional ways to maximize conversion rates from your front door campaign.

Used advanced coupon strategies

Take great care in creating your door hanger campaign. Think about effective coupon strategies you can use to entice consumers to try out your products and services. Door hangers are great tools for offering special deals, scratch-off coupons, and coupon cutouts

You can also utilize multi-tiered coupons. A multi-tiered coupon is a series of time-released offers that are only valid for certain dates. It’s like offering four different deals, each redeemable for one week over a four-week period.

Multi-tiered coupons encourage repeat buying. For any product or service where your sales goal is loyal customers and repeat purchases, this strategy works great because it helps them get in the habit of buying and using your product.

The 4-panel door hanger is perfect for this coupon strategy.

In addition to coupons, door hangers can be customized with materials like magnets, and you can do this without increasing the cost to distribute them.

Merge door hangers with online marketing

Even for consumers who buy on the spot, you want to retain the ability to send follow-up emails so you can keep selling to them. The key to this is getting everyone to visit your website.

The best front door sales campaigns include a way for customers to connect with businesses online. And that doesn’t mean just printing your website in 4-point font at the bottom. It means creating a dedicated landing page so your CRM can log every door knock, track leads, and automate follow-up marketing for your sales team.

By blending door hangers with online marketing, you’re turning a one-time door-to-door sales interaction into a long-term customer relationship.

Distribute to the right audience

How do you decide which residences or homeowners should receive your door-to-door marketing campaign materials?

Power Direct excels at helping companies identify specific households who are likely to be within their target market. Targeting a front door campaign involves much more than just drawing a radius around your store locations or entering a zip code Larger brands will often distribute to what we call block groups, areas of cities and counties chosen for their commonalities around certain demographic features or other common data points.

We have customer data broken down into over 4,000 variables — geographic, demographic, and psychographic attributes from numerous sources including census data, consumer buying power data, and your own valuable customer data.

You can identify neighborhoods with families, or pet owners, or homeowners getting ready for seasonal home maintenance and upkeep. You can break these down further by educational attainment, languages spoken, employment categories, transportation usage, value of home, marital status, and countless other categories.

Once your targeted areas have been selected, you can narrow them down to specific households within those boundaries, with the goal that very little of your marketing materials get wasted by being distributed to people who will not be interested.

Use all the tactics of effective direct marketing

Don’t hold back. Put effort into your copy, offer, call to action language, and graphic design. Write powerful headlines and subheadings. Choose effective testimonials and visuals like photos and diagrams. Don’t limit yourself only to brand colors. Sometimes clashing colors get more attention.

And be sure to use methods that enable tracking your results, including coupon codes, dedicated landing pages, and trackable phone numbers.

Which front door marketing tools are right for you?

Do you see the common thread among all ten of these front door marketing tools?

They all get seen.

Effective prospecting means ad expense translates to revenue, one way or another. And that depends on getting noticed. All the creative content and messaging put out by even the biggest businesses in the country means nothing if no one reads it, sees it, or hears it.

With these ten tools, your message will get noticed, read, and seen by far greater percentages of consumers than respond to any of the other channels of marketing.

Get a free ad targeting report

Want to plan a door-to-door marketing campaign for your next big project?

Build a project quote and see what’s possible. And when you do, you’ll also receive a free ad targeting report identifying exact locations of some of your best potential customers. Again, understanding your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points is crucial for successful door-to-door marketing campaigns.

The great news is, even if you don’t use Power Direct, you still get to keep and use the report. You win either way!