When should we do this instead of ads?

Not instead. After the demand already searching for you is captured. Direct mail earns its place when the buyer can be reached at an address and the response can be attributed: a board or a property manager deciding on a repair, or the neighbors of a job you just finished.

The order matters for the same reason it does with awareness ads. There are homeowners typing your service into Google today, and until search, maps and your site are winning your share of them, money spent creating new demand is working against a leak.

Direct mail differs from awareness spending in one way, and it is the reason it is on this list at all: the piece goes to an address you chose and the response comes back with a number. A homeowners association deciding on a sewer line will not type that decision into a search box, but the board has an address. The neighbors of a job you finished last week have the same soil and the same streets. The piece that reaches them carries its design’s tracking number, which ties the call back to the campaign, so the spend is managed like any other channel.