Simple and easy pointers for everyone.
Flyers are an amazing marketing tool used by nearly every industry in one way or another to promote a product or service. It’s pretty much guaranteed that if you work in Marketing, Advertising, Promotions, are self-employed or run your own business, you will at one time or another (if not on a regular basis), have used flyers as a tool to get your message out to a large number of potential customers.
So, with a very crowded market place, how do you get heard above your competitors? Here’s out Top Tips for making your flyer design work harder for you:
1. Identify Your Objective(s)
What is your objective for this flyer design? Stick to that objective, don’t fall into the trap of making it too cluttered by adding lots of other things that aren’t aligned with this objective, A5 isn’t as big a space to fill as you think, and people will just not read it if it feels too cluttered.
2. Identify Your Key Messages
These are the key things you want the reader to INSTANTLY take away from your flyer design – your message has a split second to be seen before the potential customer decides if they want to know more – so make this information pop off the page.
3. Make it Legible
There’s no point trying to cram so much information onto your flyer design that it becomes unreadable. If the font size is too small, or if presented with a wall of words, people will not bother to read it.
Sometimes it is far more effective to include less information, coupled with a call to action such as ‘visit our website now to find out more, www.xyz’. We need to make it as easy as possible for the potential customer to understand what you are trying to say, as quickly as possible, so keep it streamlined.
4. ALWAYS Include a Call to Action
Tell your potential customer what you want them to do next, don’t leave it to them as they can all to easily forget all about you and move onto the next thing in their busy lives.
A call to action could be along the lines of ‘call now for xyz’ or ‘visit our website now to find out more, www.xyz’, this guides the potential customer to the next stage of their journey with you and gives you the opportunity to begin a relationship with them. And we all know people prefer to buy from people/brands they know and trust.
Your flyer has now become a tool to build an engaged audience, whom you have the opportunity to showcase yourself to. And they WANT you to showcase yourself as they want to know more, otherwise they would not have acted on your call to action! Your flyer has now become a platform to drive traffic to your website/social media pages, rather than just something people see once, then forget about you.
It’s all about adding value.
5. Brand Consistency
This is crucial to every business – large, small or one man bands.
The branding that makes you instantly identifiable as YOU needs to be consistent across EVERYTHING you do. From your workwear, to your van, to your website, facebook page and printed promotional material your branding is how customers instantly recognise you.
If it’s inconsistent, at best it looks a bit unprofessional, and at worse, people may not realise it’s actually you and not like/follow/visit/buy.
6. Images
Make sure your images are a good enough quality to use at the size you need. Anything too low-res will pixelate and compromise the professional look of your business. Your designer will be able to advice you on this and help you through the whole flyer design process.
7. Spelling & Grammar
Check, check and check again! Then spell check it. Then check it again. Then, finally, give it to a friend who hasn’t got a clue what it’s about, to check and most importantly, tell you what the flyer design was telling them.
If they don’t get it right, go back and tweak your design until they do. This is a great way to test your flyer design to see if it’s achieving what you set out to do. Use this rule across all your design work to make sure you’re instantly achieving your objectives.
8. Make it Social
If you’re on Facebook /Twitter / Google+ / Pinterest / Instagram etc or have a website, use this opportunity to tell your potential customers and encourage them to like/follow you.
You can then use your chosen platform to remind, reward and interact with them. Far more valuable than the flyer alone, it allows you to continue to promote yourself to them in the future, rather than just the one off opportunity of a flyer without this information would have.
And don’t forget to upload your flyer design to your website / social media platform / newsletter so that you reach all of your existing likers /followers on top of the number of people who have physically been handed a flyer…keep on adding value!
9. Keep it Legal!
If your flyer design is for an offer or promotion, you will need to include Terms and Conditions or you could end up in hot water later on. There’s lots of help online, you could look at Ts&Cs from similar offers as a starting point and some solicitors offer a free half hour of advice.
We’d always recommend you get Ts&Cs properly looked over by a professional, it may cost you a little in their time now, but could save you a fortune in the future had you got it wrong. Plus, you always have the framework for any future Ts&Cs you may need, so it will take less time (and cost less) for a professional to check over going forward.
10. Make Sure it’s Print Ready
Make sure your flyer design is supplied in the right format for your chosen commercial printer, has the correct bleed, and all the order details are supplied with it (ie qty to print, delivery date etc). Becoming familiar with the requirements of your printer will save you time and speed up the print process, meaning you get your flyers into the hands of your potential customers quicker.