This is what you pay your Marketing Team for …

This is having your fingers on the pulse and showing that you’re listening.

A fan posted about the game Tiger Woods 08, and how you can manipulate Tiger to walk on water – dubbed the Jesus Shot. EA responded with this. Fantastic.

Why you should hand out leaflets

even though they are unlikely to convert into new sign ups. I’m talking online here for clarification, obviously if done right you should be able to get reasonable conversions if you have a shop close by. Check out Jim Hopkinson’s thoughts if you do have a shop. Definitely worth a read.

It’s a test of faith. In your business, your offer, you.

You can’t passively offer leaflets to passer-bys, you have to thrust them into very wary people who have so much else on their minds (just like you and me). You make eye contact, try and talk to them and push a leaflet you’ve just created into their hands. You get to witness first hand, appalling delivery rates and later on equally disappointing conversion rates.

Which one would you like?

You’ll experience the Void that mysteriously opens up around you. No one deliberately avoids you but they  will subconsciously create a large space around you within minutes.

So why put yourself through it?

As demoralising as it is, it’s a great test.

It’ll test your presentation skills. You don’t have time for an elevator pitch. This is the 10 sec ‘Why should I care’ pitch. After a few of these your subsequent business pitches should be very crisp.

It’ll test your idea and offer. We wanted to avoid spamming people as much as possible so created several leaflets, each targeting a different segment of shoppers. Women, men, families. We ended up with eight different designs. It all seemed fine in the comfort of the office but out on the streets is the acid test. Apart from the logistical nightmare of not having eight arms it quickly became apparent that some of the raffles were just not good enough.

But we got to speak to people, people that may not have registered yet, but may just be reminded that we are real people next time they see a mention of Raffle.it somewhere (they call this branding right?) We got compliments on our targeting and got to talk to lots of people.

Once over the initial mental hurdle of getting in people’s ways it’s great fun. It’s easy to make excuses for not getting out there (that’s why it’s taken us so long), but I urge you to knock up an offer, run a competition (we can host it for you) and just hit the streets.

And next time you see someone handing out leaflets, take one with a smile – it will mean the world to them.