Marketing Lesson From a Chinese Flyer By Akin Alabi

I don’t like flyers.

I don’t like using it for marketing and I don’t like receiving them. I’m always annoyed when I see that fliers have been stuck under my wiper while I was away from my car.

Most of the time, fliers do not work. Printing thousands of copies of your fliers and paying some boys to go distribute it is often a futile exercise. Most times, your fliers end up in the bin. Sometimes they end up in the hands of…

Those That Will Never Buy From You.

A flier itself is not the problem. It is the way it is being used by most people that makes it a weak marketing strategy.

Do you use fliers or plan to use them? Then read this. You should learn something very important.

I was in China recently for business. I was in Shenzhen which has a little black population and very few people speak English.

I was walking on a busy road to meet up with a business meeting when this young Chinese dude handed me a flier. In my mind, I said to myself that the dude was silly. I am obviously black and I am surely a visitor.

Why in the whole world does he think his effort makes sense. Considering I have a bias against fliers, I convinced myself that this is another reason why I have always said handing out fliers is a poor marketing method.

I tried to be polite so I did not trash the flier immediately. When I got into the elevator, I took another look at the flier. To my pleasant surprise, the flier was written in English. More importantly, the message on the flier says…

Learn To Speak Chinese in 2 Weeks.

My smile broadened.

This is one smart marketer. Target marketing at its best. I bet he was looking out for those that are obvious foreigners to hand the fliers to. His product was useless to Chinese. He did not go around town handing it to anybody and everybody. He didn’t stick it on cars.

He knew who his target market is.

And he is going after them.

I stayed for only 4 days in China. If I was staying for months, I sure would have called up the number on the flier.

So did you learn anything?

Source: Akin Alabi

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