7 Door Hanger Marketing Secrets to Eye-Popping ROI

We all want marketing that works. Good promotions motivate customers and leads to take action that benefits them and produces revenue for you. Door hanger marketing is one of the most effective ways to do this because it bypasses so many of the usual barriers.

Why door hangers work

What barriers do door hangers overcome?

No competition on the door handle

There’s no competition for eyeballs on the front porch. No other ads, no popups, no endless scroll of social posts, no cascade of emails, and no other envelopes. There are no visual distractions. 

Front door marketing earns nearly 100% of promised impressions, because pretty much everyone who finds something on their porch will look at it.

More consideration time

People who find things at their front door will look at them for at least a few seconds, most often more. You don’t get that much consideration time in most other advertising channels.

With this in mind, let’s see what tactics you can employ to take something that already works well and turn it into something exceptional.

How to launch a door hanger marketing campaign

Here is your seven-step blueprint to creating a top-performing door hanger marketing campaign.

1. Don’t be like everyone else

Even in the door hanger channel, there are ruts and routines that nearly everyone uses. Be different.

Increase the size

One simple way to do this is with the size of the door hanger. Look up almost any door hanger designers or print services and you’ll see them using the same size media — 3.5 x 8.5 inch. One of the worst marketing impulses is to assume that what everyone else is doing must be the “way to do it.”

No. 

What that does is create blinders in the eyes and minds of your prospects: This looks familiar. I’ve seen this before. Another flyer. 

It’s why people barely see certain forms of outdoor advertising like billboards. Marketers refer to this as “ad blindness.”

Be different, and you break through ad blindness. And being bigger is a great way to be different.

Power Direct’s standard size door hanger is much larger — 5.5 x 17 inches — more like mini-billboards. You can’t miss them. And they’re sturdy enough to not fly away so easily.

Use custom door hangers

Door hangers don’t have to be rectangular. They can be squares. Circles. Why not trapezoids? Even better, you can create customized shapes that help tell the unique story of your brand, product, or services. 

Power Direct has created all sorts of custom door hangers such as pancakes, dog bones, and even toilets. If you want to attract attention, customized shapes are a terrific strategy.

Pair it up with door to door marketing

Door hangers alone work great. Door hangers as part of a brand ambassador or experiential marketing campaign work even better. Hardly anyone does this because it’s different. But door hangers merging with street teams results in more ways to reach people and engage with potential customers.

Think of it this way:

You want to get attention. But you also want to be successful in engaging with specific neighborhoods and offering relevant solutions to meet the needs of customers. Relationships are powerful, and door to door marketing does it better than printed materials alone.

The good news is, Power Direct offers both these services because our focus is on physical, tangible marketing assets and strategies. Door hangers and brand ambassadors go hand in hand.

2. Personalize your campaign

So many promotions attempt to be all things to all people. They’re vague. They’re generic. And it’s hard to know how well they worked.

The best door hanger marketing campaigns are built around one specific objective that’s relevant and personal to your target audience.

For example, you might want to:

• Attract new customers
• Promote new products or services
• Sign up more monthly subscribers
• Generate in-store leads
• Increase revenue from existing customers

Align the message with your objective

Here’s a discussion of ten door hanger campaign ideas that are each built around a specific marketing objective. 

For example, wanting new customers is an objective, but there are many ways to pursue them. One idea is a “bring a friend” campaign. The purpose is to get new customers. But if you’re using that specific strategy, your door hanger copy and design will be built around motivating your current customers to bring a friend into one of your locations.

Identify your target audience

With door hanger marketing, you can use exceptional targeting capabilities, especially when you work with Power Direct. We offer hundreds — yes, thousands — of demographic and other types of targeting variables, including advanced, direct marketing targeting methods that direct mail can’t touch.

Want to target Spanish-speaking families with kids and two cars living within a particular city? You can do that. Or how about retirees in 55-and-up communities who have two cars and no mortgage?

Your targeting depends on your objective. This will affect the copy and design on your custom door hangers. Any images or graphics should reflect the type of person your campaign is pursuing. 

And of course, your target audience also affects your distribution plan including the specific area you’ll focus on, delivery times and days, and which houses you’ll select. Effective door hanger distribution doesn’t just blanket whole neighborhoods with flyers, or hang them on the door handles of hotel rooms.

And in some cases, targeting can take you so much farther than just demographics. With Power Direct, you can also use descriptive modeling if you already have good customer data. Learn more about targeting analytics for direct marketing.

3. Plan your creative — copy, design, and cut

At the core, a good door hanger marketing piece accomplishes three things:

• Grabs attention
• Makes a specific call to action
• Gives clear directions

Yes, you need to manage technical details like brand colors, graphic design, the location and size of the hole so it hangs securely, and where you’ll put your logo. But the heart of your plan is to promote the offer or message that will achieve the goals of your campaign.

Let’s see how to accomplish the three primary goals of your door hanger campaign:

Grab attention

Your door hangers can get attention in a number of ways. 

A great headline can attract attention by provoking curiosity, wonder, or fear of missing out among your target audience. Personalized headlines are even more effective.

You can also grab attention through images, graphic design elements and even high-quality door hanger printing. 

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

With door hangers, another attention-getting strategy is to use custom door hangers, as mentioned earlier.

Make a clear and specific offer and call to action

• Save 20% on your first order
• Bring a friend and get a free meal
• Write a review and get entered to win a prize
• Start your free trial within the next 30 days and get a second month free

All these offers are clear and specific. If it resonates, they won’t hesitate to act. There’s no confusion. The rest of your copy and door hanger design must be built around this sort of offer and language.

Give clear directions

Especially with print advertising where they can’t return to the email or bookmark the page for later, you need to make sure that anyone who wants to act on your offer knows exactly what to do. Do not assume!

Give a step-by-step procedure that is easy to understand. For example:

• Step 1: Visit our website at this URL
• Step 2: Fill out the form and click the “Sign Me Up” button
• Step 3: Check your email and claim your reward for signing up
• Step 4: Visit our online store and use your reward

When you leave room for confusion, you’re going to cause it. And don’t forget to include contact info in multiple forms. Not everyone wants to access your website or use a screen to claim a discount.

Sidenote: A word about door hanger printing and design

Before we get to the fourth secret, let’s clarify a few details related to this unique subchannel for print advertising.

Custom or templates?

Just like with postcards and other non-envelope mailers, you can print customized door hangers with your own design to suit whatever message your campaign is intended to promote. Or, you can use a door hanger template as a starting point for a more efficient process. Power Direct is happy to accommodate either approach for your business.

Print and content mix

Next, you can print door hangers in numerous styles, from full color to black and white, with a matte style or a glossy finish. You can use all text, all images, or a mix of both. 

Paper and sustainability

You can also use different types of paper materials to print your message and deliver it to potential customers. 

Power Direct usessustainable printing practices, including the use of recycled paper and vegetable-based inks. We offer a variety of services for printing that will align with whatever environmental values your business upholds.

4. Plan your distribution strategy

Door hanger distribution can be driven by several possible factors such as:

• Deadlines on your offer
• Dates such as grand openings or specific events in the community
• New product or service roll-outs
• Coordination with promotional campaigns in other media channels like online ads
• Holidays
• Inventory — quantities in-stock online or in-store

In some situations, you might want to distribute custom door hangers area by area, around each store location. In other situations, your door hanger distribution plan could prioritize fast delivery and volume — get it done as fast as possible in the shortest amount of time. You could also do city by city if it’s a national campaign.

Consider a test campaign first

Another possibility is that you first print a “test” campaign with, say, 20,000 addresses, with future plans to send out a larger campaign to several hundred thousand more. The test campaign might run 2-4 different versions of your door hanger advertising message. Once you have the results, you could then distribute the rest.

But where you choose to send that test campaign matters. The test audience has to be representative of the larger audience you intend to use later. Otherwise the testing data wouldn’t be valid.

Distribution can be accomplished in a few days for smaller campaigns, and sometimes over weeks for larger ones. You’ll also want to learn a bit about the details that impact door hanger distribution costs.

Learn more about door hanger and flyer distribution.

5. Audit your distribution as it happens

Planning your door hanger distribution is one thing. But how are you going to know if your plan is actually being followed? You’re relying on a team of delivery specialists to go one address at a time with your door hangers, flyers, yard signs, or other personalized outdoor advertising.

Unlike plastering whole zip codes with flimsy flyer distributions that flap in the breeze, you are targeting specific households and block groups for specific reasons. And with Power Direct, you’re placing sturdy, large, high quality door hangers that are more like mini-billboards than what most people think of as flyers and door hangers.

So you need an auditing plan to make sure the delivery specialists are placing your door hangers at the correct addresses — every time.

You don’t want 80%, 90%, or even 95% delivery. You want as close to 100% correct delivery as possible.

Our service includes multiple levels of door hanger delivery auditing, and that comes with a digital tracking portal that all of our clients can use to monitor their door hanger distribution as it happens. This goes way beyond mere GPS.

The more door hangers that get delivered to the correct addresses, the more money your campaign can bring in. That’s why auditing matters.

6. Track your door hanger marketing results

If you’ve set up your campaign well, you’ll be able to track how many recipients take action. You can use most of the techniques that you’re probably familiar with in the digital business world:

• Unique coupon codes
• Trackable QR codes
• Unique landing pages
• Unique opt-in form pages
• Trackable phone numbers

Just about all the tracking tools available in digital marketing can be used with door hangers too. This is why door hanger advertising doesn’t exist in isolation.

On the contrary, door hangers will make your digital marketing efforts that much more productive. You’ll have more site visitors and more conversions because you’ll have way more impressions from your ideal audience. And those impressions will actually see the details of your offer, rather than a passing social media ad that’s gone before you can blink.

Track your results so you can build on this campaign with future marketing efforts, and so you’ll know how well this one has worked.

7. Follow up with your new leads and customers

Lastly, whatever the goals of your door hanger campaign, it doesn’t stop there. Your business just acquired a new batch of customers or leads. Or, you re-connected with some existing customers.

Whoever responded to your door hanger advertisements, follow up with them using appropriate methods of communication. That could be email, text, direct mail, or another door hanger campaign. And for the people who didn’t respond to the door hangers, perhaps you can design another direct marketing campaign to go after them in a different way.

Follow up, and you will increase the lifetime customer value of the people who respond to your door hanger campaign.

Get a quote for a door hanger marketing campaign

Ready to supercharge impressions for your target audience? Reach out for a sample campaign that includes budget, advanced targeting data (yours to keep), ideas for ad creative, and more. 

Get a Door Hanger Project Estimate