Rock Bag Marketing

In this episode, we dig into the grassroots world of "rock bag marketing." Yes, literally dropping a rock and a business card in a plastic bag on someone's driveway. Peter unpacks the bold, low-budget tactic and explores whether its shock value outweighs the brand risks.

But the story doesn't stop there. Tune in for a smarter, classier alternative: door hanger marketing. Learn how high-quality, hyperlocal, and trackable print pieces, combined with branded vehicles and boots-on-the-ground hustle, can drive real results without the littering or the side-eye from your HOA. If you’re a local business looking to grow, this one's for you.

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Stories of people doing business and life well. We explore what it means and what it takes to do business and life well.

I’m your host, Peter Wilson. If you’re like me, you’re intrigued by stories of common people who have achieved uncommon success in business and life. Join me as I interview fascinating people about how they got started, their successes and failures, their habits and routines, and what inspires them.

Peter: 00:00

Have you heard about rock bag marketing? If not, stick around. A few days ago, I found this on my driveway out by the street. It's a small plastic bag with a business card for a landscaping company and a small rock. What I gather is somebody was driving around my neighborhood and they were dropping these rock bags on driveways, hoping to drum up some business for their landscaping company.

Peter: 00:26

I was intrigued, thought, wow, what a brilliant concept, driving around, just tossing little bags of rocks with a business card in it on people's driveways. I looked it up and apparently this is a real marketing tactic. It's called driveway marketing, also known as driveway drops. Now this involves basically what I explained here, putting promotional material, usually a small business card in a bag, weighted down with a rock. Obviously there's some benefits to this.

Peter: 01:00

It's very grassroots, low cost guerrilla marketing, and it's aimed at really targeted campaigns. So the upsides of this are extremely low cost. I mean, I don't know how much they spent on this, but I mean, they've probably got a dime invested in this at the most, right? A little bit of labor. It's quick, high volume distribution, you know, as they just need to slow down.

Peter: 01:24

They don't even need to stop. They can just, be tossing things out as they run by. Obviously they can't violate the speed limits in an area, so they do have to slow down for that. But it definitely has low cost, pretty high volume distribution, and it also has guaranteed visibility. I mean, if I see this, I did see this on my driveway and I keep my driveway clean.

Peter: 01:46

So, one little thing on my driveway, it's gonna stick out like a sore thumb and it's impossible to miss, right? As long as it lands on the driveway, most people are gonna see it. The other advantage of it is it's hyper local. So, I mean, it's literally like in, it's right there. It's focused on the streets and the neighborhoods where that business was looking to get more business.

Peter: 02:10

So rather than putting out a radio ad that goes out all over the place, they're just dropping these in the specific neighborhoods and homes even that they want to attract new business from. It's also kind of disruptive and unexpected. I saw this and because I'm in marketing and I kind of had to laugh. I mean, a lot of people are probably just annoyed by this, but it is something new. The other thing is with respect to the benefit for the advertiser, at least, it bypasses the mailbox and the postage costs.

Peter: 02:44

There's no mailbox involved. It's also kind of scalable if you have local crew out there with downtime between their jobs, they could be doing this. And according to the research I did, apparently it does work well for certain services like lawn care, this one happens to be for landscaper, roofing, painting, pressure washing, some of those types of things. Now it can work. I personally don't recommend it.

Peter: 03:12

I've got an alternative I wanna talk about. But some of the downsides of this rock in a bag marketing is A, it's litter and junk, it's trash, and people are going to immediately associate your brand with trash if you're throwing this out and putting it in their driveway. And also it could hurt your brand reputation. Just undermine your brand if you have a brand. There's also legal implications if there's an HOA restriction or if anybody complains to the police that you're throwing trash in their driveway, that's a risk you're going to take.

Peter: 03:48

You're probably not necessarily going to be welcomed back in that neighborhood. The other thing is there's no real targeting or personalization. You're not really interacting with anybody's needs necessarily. You're just kind of dropping these off. And there's really no performance tracking number.

Peter: 04:08

This has a phone number on it. Now, if you wanted to performance track it, you could put a call tracking number on there. And another thing is it's just an environmental concern, right? It uses plastic. You're throwing plastic out there and it's obviously going to irritate the more eco conscious homeowners out there, depending on the weather.

Peter: 04:29

It's in a bag, but if the weather's bad, it's snowing or rainy or windy, it just might not end up where you want it to end up. And last but not least, it could be mistaken for some suspicious activity as well. Like you're out there throwing these around and people might just look out the window, hey, what's this guy doing? All in all, I don't recommend this approach for marketing, but I do have an alternative for this. Now, is not going to be quite as fast, but based on the research that I've done and people that I've talked to, businesses that have actually used it, it's very effective, and that is door hanger marketing.

Peter: 05:10

This is a sample that I got from a print vendor that we work with. This is a door hanger, high quality door hanger. It's got a little slit here. It's color on both sides. This sample, they even have a little QR code on this sample that's kind of printed small.

Peter: 05:27

But door hangers are probably about the closest thing I can think of to this tactic. But the nice thing about this is if you have a business that does work at people's homes, you can have a salesperson visit homes nearby while your crew is working at that one home. And this can be especially effective if you have a branded vehicle parked somewhere. So people may see the brand, see that you're working at their neighbor's house, and may wonder what's happening. It's a great opportunity to go around just to the surrounding homes.

Peter: 06:06

Let's say pick 20 or 30 homes around where you're doing the work and just knock on the door. And if nobody's home, leave this hanging on the door. And these are highly printed. It definitely will give a better look at your brand. Your brand will be thought more highly of with this.

Peter: 06:28

The nice thing about this is they're geo targeted, again, kind of like the rock in a bag, it's geo targeted. You know exactly which homes you're gonna deliver the message to. It's guaranteed visibility because if it's hanging on the door handle on their front door, somebody's eventually gonna see that. It's also cost effective. So I just looked up with our print vendor that we work with, Got Print is our, who we work with.

Peter: 06:57

Have another group that we work with within them, but they quoted me for a thousand of these on this really nice quality paper, color on both sides, less than $200 for a thousand, and that includes shipping. That's pretty good. So they're cost effective, and they're also customizable by neighborhood. And you could even print these and then have a spot for your person that's walking around the neighborhood to actually put a personalized note on there. Like if they have a Sharpie, they can put a personalized note on there.

Peter: 07:33

Sorry, we miss you. We're working over on this street if you want to see our work. If you would like a quote or interested in learning more, please see us. And so that's a big advantage of this. And then last thing is, again, is no postage or mailing permit required.

Peter: 07:51

You're not involving the post office. You're just kind of bypassing all of that. Now, obviously there's a few downsides to this. It's labor intensive, but if you've got crews that are out performing services in a neighborhood, you could even have your salesperson, like I mentioned earlier, go out to that same neighborhood and walk around and hand these out. Or if your crew, let's say you've got a crew working on something, you've got a manager who's kind of managing what's happening, maybe they have an extra thirty minutes to just survey the neighborhood and walk around to put these out.

Peter: 08:27

Another thing is, obviously this is sort of weather dependent. If it's, you've got a foot of snow on the ground, you're not going to walk around and hand these out. If it's windy and rainy, they could get wet, they could get blown off the door. Obviously that's not good. There's also local regulations that you have to check into.

Peter: 08:45

Now, one thing I would highly recommend if you do decide to do this is to use a call tracking number on the door hanger. So if somebody calls that number, you can see which calls were generated from the door hanger. I would also consider putting a trackable QR code on here, not just a regular QR code, but one that actually has tracking built into it where you can actually write on their door hanger, and then maybe the design that you use, this could be like Spring2025, something like that. And then when they hit the QR code and came to your website, you would be able to see which door hanger they scanned. And then last thing, obviously some homeowners may perceive this as junk.

Peter: 09:34

Now, one of the things that I would do if I was doing door hanger marketing, people I've spoken to did this, they parked their vehicle in the neighborhood. It was a branded route vehicle. So obviously, they got a lot of high visibility. It gave them a certain amount of brand authority. People knew that they weren't just some random people walking around knocking on doors in their neighborhood.

Peter: 09:56

They could see the van in the neighborhood. And they also wore branded apparel. And if I was walking around handing this out, I'd definitely wear some branded gear, like a polo with your logo on it or a jacket with your logo. That's just gonna give you added authority and trust. If you're thinking about this to get localized marketing, I'd start with this door here.

Peter: 10:22

So that's our short marketing lesson for the day. If you have any other ideas with respect to localized marketing like this, I'd love to hear about it. Just shoot us an email, podcastbizmarketing dot com. Thanks, until next time.