So how do we price jobs fairly? how do we provide a premium service that allows our clients to make a strong return whilst making sure that we make enough profit to run a successful and sustainable business?
The real strength of our business is in our people. Are they reliable? are they diligent? will they work at a consistent pace without cutting corners? As a business we know approximately how long it takes to deliver to any given area. For example a new build housing estate with 1000 homes could be delivered to in 5 hours with a single leaflet. A low density village spread across a wide area and you could be looking at 12 hours + to deliver 500 leaflets!
So lets go back to the new build estate and look at the numbers. We pay our delivery team above market rate at £9.00 per hour because we want a committed and enthusiastic workforce. Therefore our labour cost alone is £45.00 per 1000 homes (on our lowest cost round). Now lets consider that we are a business so we pay tax, rates, rent, fuel, tracking systems, administration and of course our ongoing marketing costs - then you can safely assume we are getting on for the equivalent cost for us of £70 for every 1000 homes we deliver to.
A word of warning - if a company is offering to deliver your leaflet on its own for less than £70,00 per 1000 homes then questions need to be asked about the type of labour they are using and how they can achieve this!
Of course, to make a profit we need to add our own margin. When we are providing a quote we will look at the demographic differences between the areas we are delivering to and work out an appropriate overall rate that is fair for both us and our clients.
We understand that not every business needs or has the budget to run campaigns in which their leaflet is delivered on its own. This is why we run shared delivery rounds where our clients leaflets are matched up with other non competing businesses and are delivered together. This reduces the total campaign costs considerably with rates per 1000 homes starting at £40.00. The trade off is the delivery area and timings are less flexible and your leaflet will not hit doormats on its own.
We want to help our clients in the long term and whilst at times it may mean our upfront cost could be higher than others it also means our clients get more value from their projects and the net result being a far higher return on investment. It also means that because we are operating in a sustainable, profitable way we will be able to keep making our clients these strong returns long into the future.