Started cleaning carpet commercially on Oct 1 1973 went to residential Oct 1 1981
Found getting new customers different I did two types of Flyers direct to homes and the other to realtors to their offices. The direct Flyers to homes work but a lot of work about 1 out 100 if your lucky. Still have a few of the direct Flyers customers but not many price shoppers mainly.
The flyers to realtors really worked for me still have many of the realtors and many of the customers referred by them. As an example I left a flyer at a very small office with two agents they started using me for the rentals they took care of and referred me to one of their clients she had just moved to the area and had a beautiful home with white carpet in the kitchen and dining area I cleaned it and she was happy and said "I want a standing appointment on the first Wednesday of every month" she just died and I had cleaned her carpet 240 times over the years and still clean many of her friends I would say that those two flyers amounted to over one thousand jobs over the years.

If I had to start over I would go with flyers to realtors offices.

My own experience has been that fliers or cards delivered individually to residences elicit a greater level of response than they do when delivered as part of a "pack" - mixed in with other commercial solicitations. As to working with real estate brokers, I think it's the one-to-one contact rather than any printed material left in brokers' offices that generates business. The initial contact can lead to doing business on a kind of relationship basis, which is much stronger than simply mailing out pieces to various offices, then waiting for a response.