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Compete for clicks or letterboxes? Irish local marketing choice

Irish businesses can fight for expensive Google clicks or reach letterboxes in estates they already serve. Here is how to choose.

Author
flyerfly team
Published
Reading time
2 min read

Every month you can spend €400 on Google Ads for "plumber Dublin" or €400 on A5 leaflets to 2,000 homes in Walkinstown and Crumlin. Both might bring leads. Only one lets you pick the houses, avoid auction inflation, and leave something physical on the kitchen counter.

Clicks are rented. Letterboxes in your patch are a channel competitors often ignore.

When clicks make sense

  • Branded search when people already know you
  • Short urgent pushes (storm damage, seasonal surge)
  • Testing keywords before you commit SEO budget

When letterboxes win

  • You are unknown in nearby estates (trades, clinics, childcare)
  • You want measurable batches without CPC creep

Add a tracked QR so letterbox performance is not pure guesswork.

Run both as a split test

Same €800, four weeks: half to a tight geo ad set, half to two leaflet drops. Count cost per booked job, not cost per click. Winners vary by trade; data beats ideology.

A solicitor and a painter might see opposite results. The point is to run the experiment on your street, not copy a national "digital first" playbook.

See the UK version for parallel examples in pounds.

Do not fight the whole internet first

Childcare, vets, and opticians see the same click inflation as trades. Parents search from work phones across the city; your waiting list fills faster when nearby estates already know your name from a leaflet.

Pharmacies, florists, and hardware shops on parade streets should leaflet the catchment they already see walk past the window each day.

Log enquiry source for one month before you renew any ad contract. If "Google" rises after a leaflet drop, print probably introduced your name first. That is not proof that clicks alone did the work.

Renewals should require postcode performance, not slide decks. If clicks cannot show local jobs, reallocate before the next invoice.

Letterboxes are quiet competitors. Use them before you outbid another clinic on search.

Own streets you can serve tomorrow. Try flyerfly.ie when you need print-ready leaflets with scan counts per batch.

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