Does Door Hanger Advertising Work? Everything You Need to Know

What are door hanger advertisements?

Door hangers are printed advertisements that look exactly as it sounds—a card with a hook or hole that fits around a door handle. They can be made of paper or plastic and feature information about your business, products and services.

Door hanger advertising templates come in different shapes and sizes:

• Standard door hangers: These are the most common. They are rectangular in shape with a hole or cut at the top to fit around a door handle.
• Die-cut door hangers: These are cut in a variety of shapes as a more creative option. 
• Custom door hangers: These do not follow any specific rules and are more customized to business needs. They can have different sizes, shapes, and styles.

What are the pros and cons of door hanger advertising?

Pros:

• Cost-effective: It costs pennies to print door hangers if you order them in bulk. They’re also cheaper than postcards or direct mail because you save on envelopes and postage.
• Hard to ignore: Door hangers are hard to ignore because anyone who enters the house has to turn the doorknob.
• Flexible sizes: There are no size limitations. With direct mail, for example, you are limited by the size of the envelopes available. as is the case when choosing an envelope for a direct mailer.
• Multiple exposures: More than one person is likely to see a door hanger—whether it’s strangers walking past a house or family and friends visiting.
• Local reach: Door hangers are a superb marketing strategy for reaching a local audience, such as residents in your neighborhood.
• Personal touch: Door hangers are personal because they are hand-delivered, which shows potential customers you care about them.
• Unique customization: The shape and style of your door hanger ad, as well as products, services and seasonal offers are unique to your business.

Cons:

• Limited reach and labor intensive: Door hangers are great for hyper-local marketing, but they can’t reach a broader market because distribution becomes more time-consuming and expensive.
• Perceived as invasive: Door hangers can damage your brand reputation. Some homeowners see door hangers as invasive, polluting, or junk, and may discard them altogether.
• Tracking ROI: Tracking ROI can be difficult—especially as you have to hang each hanger individually by hand or even pay someone else to do it.
• Competition for attention: There are many other door hangers and marketing materials (e.g., flyers and postcards) competing for your customers’ attention, which makes it difficult for your hangers to stand out and get read.
• Weather: Door hangers are exposed to the elements and can be ruined or even removed from doorknobs due to wind and rain.
• Legal restrictions: Certain neighborhoods have laws or regulations that limit door hanger distribution.

Best practices to get started with door hanger marketing

Here are five door hanger advertising tips to help you get started with your first campaign:

• Start small by focusing on a small radius in your local area so you can deliver the hangers yourself to save on costs. Then, based on the results, decide if you want to invest more money—maybe you want to pay someone to do the canvassing for you—to reach a broader audience.
• Choose the right audience for your door hanger marketing campaign. The success of any campaign will depend on sending door hangers to potential customers who are more likely to purchase your services. To determine who you should deliver door hangers to, try:
  • Researching your ideal customer by looking at things like income level, age, gender, and even buying behaviors. 
  • If you already have a customer list, divide that list by postal codes, then look at the average price of those postal codes. This will let you determine which neighborhoods are associated with which price ranges, and deliver your door hangers accordingly.

• Include a promo code or custom URL to measure the success of your door hanger marketing campaigns. For example, you can include a unique link that customers have to visit when booking your services. Take advantage of link shortening services like Bitly or Ow.ly to shorten your links so your customers can quickly type them.

Which businesses use door hanger marketing?

Business door hangers are ideal for any home service business: lawn care, landscaping, house cleaning, HVAC, plumbing, tree care, etc.

Door hanger advertising is especially effective for services that happen regularly (house cleaning, plumbing) or seasonally (HVAC, landscaping), because you can time their delivery for when the client is most likely to need you. They are less effective for one-off services, such as roofing or general contracting .

The most important thing is to know your target regions and understand your potential customer, so the right people get the right message. For example, you wouldn’t want to deliver high-end house cleaning door hangers to a student neighborhood.

How much does door hanger advertising cost?

The actual cost of door hanger advertising depends on:

• The size and number of door hangers
• The complexity of the design. Printing on both sides, for example, will cost you more
• How you plan to distribute the door hangers—yourself or through a vendor
• Your choice of vendor for writing the copy, designing, and printing. Costs will differ by vendor

According to MarketAnywhere, you can expect to pay roughly $2,200 for the printing and delivery of 5,000 double-sided door hangers or 0.44c per hanger. This cost is broken down as follows:

• $344.46 for printing or 0.15c per hanger
• $1850 for distribution or 0.37c per hanger

These costs don’t include design services or demographic research. Those costs vary depending on the company you use to provide design and research services.

You can save money by designing the door hanger yourself. You can also see if your local printing office will offer a discount if you order business cards, door hangers, and flyers all together.

When it comes to distribution fees, don’t skimp. Only hire a vendor that has a good reputation and whom you can trust to do the work. If you need a starting point, MarketAnywhere offers design, printing and distribution of door hangers.

Is door hanger advertising legal?

Some customers consider the use of business door hangers as invasive and even illegal, but merely placing them on a customer’s door without engaging in conversation is known as canvassing.

Canvassing is generally legal because you’re not directly selling a product or service (solicitation).

That being said, you should always check with your local city office to make sure you’re not violating any bylaws.

A quick phone call today can save you thousands of dollars in printing, deliveries, and legal fees later on.

Should you do door hanger advertising?

Deciding if door hanger advertising is the right marketing strategy for your business depends on your overall goals, budget, and service area. 

They are a great tool if you work in specific neighborhoods and offer recurring services like lawn care or house cleaning. Door hangers are also very affordable and give you a chance to stand out with a more personal approach to your customers.

However, if you need to reach customers across a larger service area, including online, you might want to try other ways to market your business, like email marketing, postcards, or Google’s Local Services Ads. 

Think about what your business needs, how much you can spend, and try out a few strategies to see what works best.

Originally published in October 2022. Last updated on June 14, 2024.