Fundamentals of a Marketing Flyer

3 Very Important Points

1. The message – which is the primary focus of creating a flyer

2. The Audience or Reader – You need to know who is going to read your message in order to design it specifically for them

3. The Design – A good looking flyer will entice a person to read it thoroughly. And that is ultimately our goal, well our goal is for that person to take some action upon reading the flyer.

1. THE MESSAGE:

1. One clear, concise goal or purpose — What's your purpose in designing a flyer?

Try focusing on one aspect you want to promote whether it's to sell a certain product, invite customers to an event, or use a service.

2. A popping headline — Now that you have established your purpose for the flyer, you will need to create a popping headline. Why? Because it's what will most likely be the first thing read on your flyer, so make it interesting.

3. An overall motivating message — This is your call to action line. A call to action is a message that makes the reader want to act; otherwise, the flyer will be useless to the reader. Call to action words like "buy now", "call today", "contact us", "come in", and "enter to win", lets the reader know how to act on what they read.

4. Graphics or pictures — “A picture is worth a thousand words”
Design a flyer with vivid images related to the concept of the flyer and ones that are eye catching. Your logo is an important visual to place on the flyer as well.

5. Your contact information — DO NOT forget to add this to your flyer. How else will anyone contact you if they don't have a phone number or address? You may also want to consider adding info like your name, website, e-mail address, Facebook business page, or Twitter profile. 

For the message also keep these points in mind:

1. Keep It Brief

You have probably heard dismal statistics about America’s shrinking attention span. Take your message and edit it down to the crucial elements you need to convey. If the customer needs more information, you can direct them to your address, phone number and website.

2. Organize Your Info

Use bullet points, text boxes and infographics to organize the information into readable portions.

3. Proofread Your Writing

Not only should you proofread your flyer, but you should have one or two other people proofread it. A misspelled word or transposed telephone number could make your flyer worthless. This company actually misspelled their own name, as well as many other errors.

4. Make the Font Legible

What is the point of all this effort if the customer can’t read it? Choose a legible font and make sure it’s at a legible size, usually no smaller than 10-point size.

2. THE READER / THE AUDIENCE:

1. Put Yourself in Your Audience’s Shoes

To keep the language from being too over the top or too focused on sales, think about what you would want as a consumer. What would benefit you and how would you relate this information to a friend? Be straightforward and practical.

2. Use the Word ‘You’

Using the words ‘you’  or ‘your’ indicates you are speaking directly to the reader, not abstractly to some unknown ‘they’ or ‘them.’

3. Know Your Audience

Do some research to determine the demographics of your audience. Keep the message and tone in line with the kinds of customers you want to reach. This flyer is written for car enthusiasts only. No one else would understand half of the description, and that’s OK. Those who wouldn’t understand probably wouldn’t be interested in purchasing the car.

4. List the Benefits

Think of at least five benefits your company provides to customers and list them in a prominent way. It’s a quick way of telling the consumer why they should choose you.

5. Beat the Competition

Find ways to describe what you do that makes you a better choice than your competition. This flyer does exactly this in bold lettering in the center of the page.

6. Highlight Special Deals & Offers

If you have any specials or discounts, make that prominent in your flyer. It’s added incentive for the consumer to get in touch sooner rather than later.

7. Use Only Relevant Information

Make sure your customer knows where you are located, how to get in touch with you, what type of services you do or don’t provide and other pertinent information.

8. Include a Call to Action

Don’t allow the reader to be idle. Keep your words in the active voice, avoiding passive voice. Tell the reader to order now, call now or log on to the website. Make sure they know you want them to interact with you.

3. THE DESIGN:

1. Layout:
- The distributions of all the pieces should balance
- Headline and main image are the focus points
- Keep the information organized and easy to read

2. Colors:
- The colors to be used vary according to the audience, the industry, the product or service.

- Create Color Harmony

- Sample at least one color from an image that appears in on your flyer and try to add a bit of that color to each of the different images throughout the page. This will cause the viewer’s eye to move around the entire flyer rather than allow it to get stuck on a single image or area of your design.

High contrast to make it visible

3. Fonts:
This topic will take us hours to cover. So my simplest advice is “KIS”

No more than 3 fonts throughout the flyer

If you want your text to stand out, use a bold face, or change the color to differentiate it from the rest of the text

Tilted or on a path will give the flyer a fun look. It doesn’t always work. Be careful

4. Images / photos:
Original photographs are an excellent way to bring color and vibrancy to flyers, when appropriate. Watch out when “borrowing” other images from the web that may be copyright protected – you will put yourself at risk for legal trouble.

Places to find free stock photos:

Flickr Creative Commons, Stock.xchng, or Wiki Commons. (Make sure to give credit to the photographers.)

You can try your clip art from programs like Word, Photoshop, Paint, etc., or go online and search resources like clker.com for more royalty-free designs and art.

5. Resolution:  No less than 300dpi

Get your logo on a vector format or high resolutions PNG (with transparent background) so you can place it where ever you need.

6. Consistency: be consistent with the rest of your marketing pieces and branding, that is very important for your audience to remember you and to differentiate you from your competition.

7. Press-Ready: What we see on the screen is not always what comes out on the paper.

- Make sure your color settings are set to CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black) as oppose to RGB (Red, Green & Blue)

- Bleeds & cropmarks: If you want your flyer to bleed off the paper, you should give your printer cropmarks so they know where to cut it.

- Paper stock: depending on the paper stock to be used the colors will look more vibrant or dull.

Personal and Clean Content is All You Need!

Think of these tips while designing your marketing flyer and you should be set up for success.

Remember that the final product should be a harmonious combination of good content and striking design, creating a clear, concise and effective flyer to boost your business.

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Visit www.creativesolutionsmktg.com to learn more about all the tools we provide to grow your business. You can contact me at marcy@creativesolutionsmktg.com or 951-707-6338.