How much does leaflet distribution cost?

A 5,000-home leaflet drop in Carlisle cost us £700: £200 to print 5,000 leaflets and £500 to have them delivered. That is 14p a home, before design. The Cumbrian Card reaches the same 5,000 Carlisle homes for £299.99, or 6p a home, with design and a QR code included.

Those leaflet figures are not an industry average. They are what we paid for a solo drop we ran ourselves, so you can treat them as a real Carlisle price rather than a brochure number. This page breaks down where the money goes, what the shared-card alternative costs, and where the trade-off sits.

What you're paying for

A leaflet drop is three bills, and most people only budget for one of them.

Print

Our 5,000 leaflets cost £200. What you pay depends on size, paper weight and whether it is single or double sided, so get a quote for your exact spec before you plan a budget around a figure you saw online.

Distribution

Getting 5,000 leaflets through 5,000 letterboxes cost us £500. That is the bigger bill by some way, and it is the one that repeats in full every time you go out again. If you deliver them yourself the cash cost drops to nothing, but a day's walking covers a few hundred doors, so 5,000 homes is roughly two weeks of your time.

Design

If you do the artwork yourself, nothing. If you don't, it is on top of the £700. Somebody has to make the thing look like it came from a business you would trust with your boiler, and a leaflet that looks home-made tends to go in the recycling with the pizza menus.

The repeat

One drop rarely pays for itself. Most businesses that use leaflets go out several times a year, and every run carries the full print and distribution cost again. Ten runs of 5,000 homes at our price is £7,000.

The cheaper option

The Cumbrian Card is a printed mailer shared between local businesses. You take one slot on a 300gsm card that goes to Carlisle homes across CA1 to CA4, we design your ad, you get your own QR code, and you are the only business in your trade on that card.

Over a year the gap widens, because the card price does not have a print bill hiding behind it.

The 10-run line is ten separate runs of 5,000 homes, not a claim that one card covers 50,000 homes. It never goes to the same home twice within a run, so ten runs is ten fresh sets of doors.

The trade-off, stated honestly

You get a shared card, not a solo leaflet. Your ad sits alongside other local businesses rather than having the whole piece to itself. Here is why that still works.

• It gets kept. 300gsm card is fridge-door weight. A 130gsm flyer is bin weight. A card with a plumber, an electrician and a takeaway on it is a useful thing to keep; a single flyer for one trade is not.
• You can see what it did. Every advertiser has their own QR code, so you know how many people scanned yours, which a leaflet cannot tell you.
• One advertiser per trade. The other businesses on the card are not your competitors. If you are the plumber, there is no other plumber.
• Design is in the price. There is no separate artwork bill and no print bill.

If your message needs a full A5 to itself, or you want to hit a specific ten streets rather than a postcode area, a solo drop is the right tool and you should budget the £700. For most local trades wanting regular visibility across Carlisle, it is not.

Who it suits

Local trades and services whose customers are Carlisle households in CA1 to CA4: plumbers, electricians, roofers, gardeners, cleaners, decorators, takeaways, salons, garages, tutors. If a homeowner might one day pull your number off the fridge, you are the kind of business the card is built for.

It suits less well if you sell to businesses rather than homes, or if your catchment is a single village outside the CA1 to CA4 runs. See the Carlisle page for the current run areas, or the honest maths on whether leaflets are still worth it if you are weighing both.

FAQ

How much does leaflet distribution cost per 1,000?

Our own drop worked out at £100 per 1,000 homes for delivery alone (£500 for 5,000), plus £40 per 1,000 for print (£200 for 5,000). That is £140 per 1,000 all in, or 14p a home, before design.

How much does it cost to print 5,000 leaflets?

We paid £200 to print 5,000 leaflets. Prices vary with size, paper weight and whether it is single or double sided, so get a quote for your exact spec.

Is it cheaper to deliver leaflets yourself?

Cheaper in cash, but 5,000 doors is a lot of walking. A working day covers a few hundred homes, so a 5,000-home drop is roughly two weeks of your time, plus the print cost.

What is the cheapest way to advertise to Carlisle homes?

Sharing the card with other non-competing businesses. The Cumbrian Card reaches 5,000 Carlisle homes for £299.99, 6p a home, with design and a QR code included. Our own solo leaflet drop to the same number of homes cost £700.

Does a shared card work as well as a solo leaflet?

You share the card, but only with other trades, never a competitor. It is printed on 300gsm card that people keep rather than 130gsm flyer paper, each advertiser has their own QR code to track scans, and the card never goes to the same home twice.

Prices

Three slots. All include design, print, delivery and your own QR code, and all are one business per trade.