Each time one of your ads ends up in the trash your hard-earned marketing dollars are being wasted.

Here at Security Dealer Marketing we’re out-of-the-box thinkers — purple cow theorists. So it’s not surprising to us when our clients demand new ideas when it comes to their marketing. Recently one of our clients asked, “How do I get my door hangers to not end up on the street or in the trash?” To which we chuckled and said, “Don’t print boring ads.” Then, there was an awkward silence.

Therein lies the challenge: how do we create door hangers that will gain the interest of the person holding it? If all your ads have the same message as your competitors about number of years in business and stellar customer support, then you have not distinguished yourself at all.

After meeting in our war room with lots of creative juice (typically some double barreled IPAs out of our in-house dual kegerator), we started to throw ideas up on our whiteboards. Two great ideas had some legs, so we ran with them.

The first idea we came up with is to design a normal looking flyer with a juicy offer that should hopefully whet the potential customers’ appetite enough that they’d pick up the phone to purchase. It had something you’ve probably never seen on another security dealer’s collateral. What, you ask?

We decided to include a bright message on the bottom of the door hanger that says, “Hey! If you’re not interested in our offer, at least look in the back for our yummy recipe!” We are currently testing three to five quick dessert recipes to see which ones entice potentials over others. The hope is that the door hangers will be hung on fridges, left on counters, or, at the very least, used for the actual recipe. We dedicated a landing page of the other recipes they can download.

Our next idea grew giraffe legs, so we decided to run with this one also. Again, the question we asked ourselves is if the person receiving this door hanger is not interested in the offer at a first glance, how can we get that person to hold on to the printed piece itself? We do this in hopes they eventually decide they are interested in the offer, or at the very least we instill the company’s brand.

For our second idea we researched online to see if there was some different type of paper, maybe something silky smooth, but there wasn’t. However, what we did find was a company that made paper not only out of recycled paper, but a paper that actually had wild flower plant seeds right in it. (You can also find this paper on Amazon should you decide to plagiarize this idea. Go ahead; it’s a free one!)

So what do you do with paper that has wild flower seeds on it? Of course — you plant it! That’s right, we kid you not, this paper can actually be taken into any garden, buried and will grow a group of beautiful wild flowers. Slick little idea, huh? It can also act as an identifier for your canvassing team when they’re out and about in a neighborhood: see some wild flowers in the front of that yard? Well, don’t waste your time; they buried our ad. Or is it a door opener? Maybe it is a conversation piece for your canvassing team to knock on the door and say, “Hey, we see you made use of our door hanger; how about making use of our security systems?”

Think these ideas won’t work? Maybe, but at least we’re trying to make our clients stand out from the competition.

At a young age I decided to put a lemonade stand in front of my house, and it just so happened Shawn, the neighbor across the street, for some strange reason decided on that hot day he was going to sell lemonade too. When I angrily told my father Shawn was stealing my business, he told me, “Son, you both have practically the same sign, the same lemonade and the same price. Be different; make yourself unique so potential customers see your stand and decide to come to your stand rather than to Shawn’s.” Powerful words, but I decided to go across the street and beat up Shawn and take down his lemonade stand instead, getting myself grounded.

But it’s still a powerful message. Until next time!