Flyer Leaflet Masterclass 8 Essential Tips
Flyer Creation For The Work At Home Business
A flyer or leaflet can be a a useful promotion tool when used locally for business, and particularly a work from home business, independent distributorship like Wikaniko. Where I live in the UK you can get 5000 A5 Premium Gloss, double sided leaflets of excellent quality this month for £99 and if you want them placed inside all the local publications pushed through peoples doors, another £100 so that’s £199 all in!
As someone who has pounded the pavements putting flyers through doors – I will take the latter!
What Is A Flyer?
According to Wikipedia a flyer (can also be also spelled ‘flier’), also called a circular, handbill, insert or leaflet) is a form of paper advertisement intended for wide distribution and typically posted or distributed in public places.
Usually a single, unfolded printed sheet that is used to draw attention to an event, service, product or idea, a flyer usually contains a very simple message that can be conveyed quickly.
They are commonly distributed by hand wherever customers or people may gather or pass by, such as at a trade show or other popular venue. Also, flyers can be folded and tabbed as a self-mailing piece (aka a “mailer”) or enclosed in an envelope. Flyers can be printed in any ink color, though full color printing is the most popular since the purpose of a flyer is to get noticed and read.
Like postcards, pamphlets and small posters, flyers are a low-cost form of mass marketing or communication. There are many different flyer formats. Some examples are:
* A4 (roughly letterhead size)
* A5 (roughly half letterhead size)
* DL (compslip size)
* A6 (postcard size)
A printed leaflet is more often regarded as a higher quality product, maybe heavier paper weight, mayber full colour, printed both sides. Many people regard a leaflet as a larger version of a flyer, with a flyer being maybe A6, and a leaflet being A4 or A5, in reality flyers and leaflets are often interchangeable terms in printing.
Flyers can be created in any size that is easy to handle. Also, the printing is most commonly on one side of the paper, though there is no law that says flyers can’t be printed on both sides.
A flyer usually has a relatively short lifespan when being used to announce a one-time event like a grand opening or special promotion and in this case it may not need heavy weight paper. However, a flyer can be printed on thicker paper to make it more durable if it contains information that will be referred to for some time.
Using Flyers To Promote Your Business or Event
I have tried making my own flyers (desktop and printer) and for small quantities this is fine, but by the time you have messed about with paper and expensive ink – bigger quantities are best done by a design/print house of your choice.
In recent years, the production of flyers through traditional printing services has been supplanted by Internet services where you can send designs and receive final products by mail. Using flyers to promote your business or event is a very cost effective form of advertising, but as with most forms of promotion, it costs money.
8 Essential Flyer Tips
Many things will affect the response you’ll get from your flyer or leaflet campaign. Work through these tips to keep your business flyer design costs down, maximise your return on investment and make your leaflets work harder for you!
1. Be ORGANISED!
Find out how long the flyer is likely to take to produce! Many people leave the creation of their flyer too late. This means that they often have to pay extra costs for a premium 48 hour print and courier delivery. By planning your promotion in advance and finding out the most cost-effective printing time from your design/printhouse, you can make sure that unforeseen costs are kept to a minimum!
2. Know Who Is Your TARGET MARKET!
Who are you trying to reach?
Are you selling to consumers or businesses?
Where do they live?
What industry are they in?
What age group?
What problem can you solve?
What need can you satisfy?
What’s your Unique Selling Point – your USP?
Why should they buy from you?
If you can’t answer these questions, you’ll find it a bit trickier to find the right way of targeting your market. You’re investing in marketing to win more sales for your business. Think about what makes you different or special.
3. DESIGN
The flyer’s purpose is to get the consumer to take action by purchasing something, visiting a website, or attending an event they might not have otherwise.
Designing the Flyer Layout.
Unless it is part of the package or you are attempting it yourself – it is recommended that you assign at least 30% of your budget on design. Design can mean the difference between success and failure. A badly designed leaflet may do more damage than you think. There’s no such thing as a second impression, so get it right first time.
What Will The Flyer Look Like?
4. Persuasion.
A common mistake made is to create a flyer that has too broad a purpose, causing it to lose the target audience’s focus. This results in the flyer giving less than optimal performance. When wording the flyer, the message should be presented in terms of “You” so that it is directed at the desired customer.
Sketch the flyer layout before moving to the creation phase. The design should have a visual focus – a high-quality image. When planning the flyer’s design, the picture or illustration should be in the flyer’s upper half.
When consumers view flyers or websites, their eyes are naturally drawn to the upper half of the page with emphasis on the left side for people from countries that read left to right. (If targeting a population that reads right to left, reverse the emphasis to match.)
Relevant contact information should be included on the flyer so the consumer has a means to follow up or take action. If the organization creating a flyer has a logo, it should be incorporated into the design near the flyer’s title to ensure proper branding.
Choose the primary reason for creating the flyer in order to give it focus. This can be promoting a specific event, product, or service.
Choose a persuasive title to get the reader to continue viewing the flyer! The words in the title should relate to the overall event, product, or service being advertised.
5. Choose cost-effective stock photographs or images.
Competitive flyers now incorporate digital photography and/or illustrations to get the consumer’s attention and get an organization’s message across more effectively.
Using a single, large image is proven to make a stronger impression on viewers than numerous small pictures. If using small pictures, they should be grouped together so that they are perceived to be a single group of images. A small image can also be juxtaposed with a larger one to give a contrasting appearance on the flyer. The end result should be to draw a viewer’s interest and keep it long enough to read the flyer’s “Call to Action” and supporting information.
If your home business flyer design requires images other than those sourced from the main business admin or product manufacturer, then using stock photographs from a photo library can be cheaper than commissioning a photographer. A standard stock image for a flyer should cost £5 – £10. If they are more expensive you may be able to find something less expensive yourself by searching popular stock photo or image libraries on the Internet.
The remainder of the verbiage on a flyer should be refined in order to properly target the desired consumer base. It should focus on convincing the consumer how the product or service will solve a problem they have. A maximum of two to three fonts should be used for the flyer’s text to prevent the layout from appearing to be too confusing. The supporting text should not exceed three sentences to prevent losing the reader’s interest.
Relevant contact information should be included on the flyer so the consumer has a means to follow up or take action. If the organization creating a flyer has a logo, it should be incorporated into the design near the flyer’s title to ensure proper branding.
Additionally, properly optimizing flyer verbiage will, even if the flyer will only be used for print distribution, enable the content to be used across the various media available to organizations without major re-work being required.
6. Choose the right product i.e. shape, size and thickness.
Flyers vary in both size and thickness so think carefully before making a selection. An A4 flyer will not only be more expensive to design and print, but will also be more expensive to send. Unusual shapes will also cost more than something more standard, so it may be better to rely on the design to create the impact rather than a novelty shape. Make sure you understand the thickness of paper or card your flyer will be printed on, especially when comparing quotes. Always ask your design/print house for the most cost-effective paper option, as this may not always be the thinnest.
7. Choose the size of your print run
Generally speaking, the more copies you get printed at one time, the cheaper it works out on a cost per copy basis. As most of the cost is in ‘setting up’ the print, sometimes there can be very little difference between the business flyer design cost of a 2000 print run and that of a 5000 print run.
When you ask for a quote always get quotes for at least two different quantities. That way you can compare the prices and decide whether it might actually be better to get more copies printed initially. Bear in mind that it is far better to pay a little extra initially for a more generous quantity, than to have to get more flyers printed later. Another print run at a later date will work out considerably more expensive.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?
8. Refining a Flyer’s Call to Action
Convince the consumer to take action by including a “call to action” on your leaftets and tell people what you want them to do next. The message should be clear regarding what the reader should do as a result of reading the flyer, whether it is to order a product, visit an organization’s website, or attend an event.
Tell them what you want them to do next.
Spell it out.
Make it easy for them to buy from you or contact you.
“Call now for a free sample”
“Bring this leaflet to…”
“Email us for a quotation”
“email for a free brochure”
“Phone Today”
Use extra incentives
The most effective leaflets use time-bound offers. Think really hard about offering an incentive – and the level of it. “5% off” may be enough to get some interest… but what would “25% off” do to the response?
“Half price this month”
“Free teddy with every quote”
“Free consultations during June.”
Getting the message out
There are many ways to get your message out. First or second class post is highly targeted, but quite pricey. Try inserts in a local free newspaper, or pay some local kids to do a leaflet drop. For a more targeted approach try and insert in a magazine read by your target market.
Bonus: How to Make a Flyer
A flyer uses both imagery and text to get its creator’s primary message across and can be used for email, print, and web distribution.
..and if you must try and save a bit of money….
How to Make a Flyer in Microsoft Word
* Microsoft Office Online Flyer Templates – Microsoft provides templates for all office products online to augment those that come with the purchase of the office suite that can be downloaded from within Word or directly from the Office website.
or…
Step 1 – Open a new document by selecting File->New-> Blank Word Document from the file menu in Word.
Step 2 – Create the flyer border by selecting the Border->Borders and Shading from the file menu. Depending on the version of Word, this menu choice’s location can vary on the File menu. Select the Page Border tab on the dialog box that appears in the application and choose the menu in the art box. Pick a border to put around the flyer being created and adjust the width and color to match the flyer design in the same tabbed options panel.
Step 3 – Insert the flyer image by selecting the “Insert->Image” option from Word’s file menu. To re-size the image, left click the image on the document and drag the corner of the image in or outwards to meet the desired size.
Step 4 – Insert a text box into the document by selecting the “Insert->Text Box” menu option. Left click the document on the left side of where the text box should be inserted and type the document’s title into the box. Highlight the text and choose the desired Font Format, style, and size from Word’s Font menu. After the title is finished, insert additional text boxes as needed.
Step 5 – Select “File->Print Preview” from the primary file menu and preview the flyer’s look and feel. Make changes as needed.
Step 6 – Save the Flyer in Word Document format in order to print the flyer. To create Web Versions of the flyer, select the “Save As Web File or .HTML” menu option in the “Save As” file menu option. PDF is another option for creating an Internet or email-safe version of the flyer. A PDF burning print driver must be purchased or downloaded in order to create the PDF.
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