Print and distribution guides
Costs, materials, artwork and campaign planning, explained the way we explain them on the phone — covering print pricing, paper stocks, distribution methods, comparisons and sector playbooks.
All guides
A5 leaflet printing cost: what you actually pay per run
A5 is the workhorse size for door-to-door and counter-top flyers. Prices move with quantity far more than with anything else, so the first question to answer is not 'what does an A5 leaflet cost' but 'how many do I need before the per-unit price stops falling'.
Leaflet distribution cost per 1,000 households
Distribution is priced per thousand leaflets delivered, and the rate depends on how your leaflet travels: on its own, or alongside others. Understanding that one distinction explains most of the price differences you will see quoted.
Business card printing cost, finish by finish
Business cards are cheap enough that most people over-order the wrong version. The cost question is really a specification question: board weight and finish decide both the price and whether the card survives a wallet.
Takeaway menu printing cost and specification
A takeaway menu is a working document, not a leaflet. It gets folded, pinned to a fridge and read in a hurry, and the print specification should reflect that before you look at price.
Roller banner cost, and what makes one last
Two roller banners can look identical rolled out and behave completely differently after twenty events. The cost difference sits in the cassette mechanism and the film, not in the printing.
The print-ready PDF checklist we run on every file
Most delayed print jobs are not press problems, they are file problems found at the last moment. This is the same checklist our studio runs on incoming artwork, so you can run it first.
How to choose the right leaflet size for the job
Size is the first decision in a leaflet campaign and the one people spend the least time on. It sets how much you can say, how the leaflet behaves in a letterbox, and what the whole campaign costs.
Planning your first leaflet campaign, step by step
A first leaflet campaign should be designed to teach you something, not just to spend a budget. That means picking a small, readable test and building in a way to measure it before a single leaflet is printed.
How to measure leaflet response rates properly
Print gets accused of being unmeasurable, usually by people who never set up the measurement. With a few decisions made before the drop, a leaflet campaign can be tracked as tightly as a paid ad.
Writing leaflet copy that actually gets calls
A leaflet gets about five seconds between the letterbox and the recycling. Copy has to survive that gap, and almost every improvement comes from cutting rather than adding.
Paper weights for leaflets, explained in the hand
Gsm is grams per square metre - the weight of the paper, which is a decent proxy for thickness within the same family of stock. Here is how the common weights behave once printed, folded and posted.
Silk, gloss or matt: choosing a paper finish
Finish changes how ink sits on the sheet, how light bounces off it and how the piece feels after a week in a bag. Colour on screen is identical; colour in the hand is not.
Lamination and print finishes, and when they earn their cost
Finishing is where a print job gets its character - and where budgets quietly disappear. Each option does a specific job, and several of them actively work against certain uses.
Folded leaflet types and how to lay each one out
A fold turns a flat sheet into a sequence. Choose the wrong one and your reader meets your panels in the wrong order, which is why fold choice is a copy decision as much as a production one.
Brochure printing formats, binding and page counts
Brochures are the one print job where a small specification decision changes the whole cost structure. Page count and binding come first, and everything else follows from them.
Digital vs litho printing: which suits your run
Both methods produce excellent work. The choice is mostly economic: litho carries a setup cost that digital does not, and digital carries a higher per-sheet cost that litho does not.
Solus vs shared distribution: which should you book?
This single choice explains most of the price gap between distribution quotes. It is worth understanding properly before you compare suppliers on rate alone.
Leaflets vs social ads for a local business
This is not a case for print over digital. They fail and succeed in different places, and for most local businesses the useful question is which one to start with, not which one to believe in.
Delivering leaflets yourself vs using a distribution team
Self-delivery looks free because the labour is already on the payroll. Costing it honestly usually changes the answer, particularly once you include the hours it takes off other work.
Running a takeaway menu drop that fills the delivery diary
Menus are the highest-retention piece of print a local business can produce. The campaign question is not whether to drop them, but how often, where, and with what on the front.
Print marketing that wins instructions for estate agents
Estate agency is one of the few sectors where a leaflet arrives at exactly the right address at exactly the right moment. The craft is in choosing the streets and making the piece feel like local evidence rather than an advert.
Leaflet marketing for plumbers, electricians and builders
Trades have a structural advantage with print: the work is visible. A van outside a house and a leaflet through the neighbours' doors the same week is the most efficient local campaign in the sector.
Print campaigns that fill a gym's membership pipeline
Fitness businesses live and die by catchment. People join what they pass, so the leaflet campaign that works is the one that covers the streets within a realistic travel time and repeats at the moments people decide to join.
New business launch print checklist, in buying order
New businesses tend to order everything at once, or nothing until they need it in a hurry. The efficient path is a short day-one list, then a second wave once the brand has met real customers.
Planning promotional print for an independent retailer
Retail promotions fail on logistics more often than on creative. The materials arrive late, the window does not match the leaflet, and the staff find out about the offer from a customer.
Exhibition and event print checklist
Stand print has one job: start conversations and survive being carried home in a tote bag. Most exhibitors over-produce the brochure and under-produce the one thing people keep.
Your leaflet campaign got no response: how to find the actual cause
Short answer first: silence after a drop almost never means door-to-door does not work in your trade. It usually means one link in the chain broke, and until you identify which link, reprinting the same leaflet into the same streets simply repeats the result.
How many leaflets do you need for a drop to be worth doing?
There is no universal number, but there is a reliable way to reach yours: start from what one customer is worth to you, apply a deliberately pessimistic response assumption, and see whether the arithmetic still leaves you in profit. If it does not at a given quantity, that quantity is not a small test - it is a coin toss.
Why your printed leaflets came out blurry or too dark
The honest answer is that the press almost always reproduced the file it was given. Softness and heaviness on the finished sheet nearly always trace back to something in the artwork that looked acceptable on a bright screen and could not survive being fixed in ink on paper.
How to know your leaflets were actually delivered
The direct answer: you know because the round was recorded while it was walked and the record was handed to you afterwards. Anything reconstructed later - a tick on a job sheet, a verbal confirmation, a photograph of a street - proves that someone was somewhere, not that your leaflets went through the doors you paid for.
Do leaflets still work? An honest answer
Yes for some businesses and no for others, and anyone who answers without asking what you sell is selling you something. Printed leaflets have narrow but real advantages, and knowing where those advantages stop is what separates a channel that pays from a channel that quietly drains a marketing budget.