Social media means that advertising will never be the same again. But that doesn’t mean that old methods of advertising don’t still have impact. Flyers, in particular, remain an incredibly effective way of reaching local audiences for minimal cost.
The trouble is, hiring a designer is expensive and can be difficult. You might be impressed by the examples in their portfolio, but find yourself disappointed by an amateurish finished product. That’s why so many business owners are turning to online templates and services where you can design your own flyers.
But if you don’t know the first thing about design, how can you make a flyer that both looks good and converts into sales? Read on to find out how you can design great-looking, effective flyers for your business today!
Our Step By Step Guide to Designing Flyers
By breaking the process down into steps, you can make flyer designing a lot more manageable. Let’s look at where you should start.
Step 1: Identify and Define Your Business Goals
If you want to run a successful business, you shouldn’t give people money for nothing. So, what do you want to achieve by designing and printing flyers? For example:
– Are you having a sale?
– Are you launching a new product that you want to tell customers about?
– Have you revamped a product or service to make it better?
– Are you celebrating an anniversary for the business?
It’s easy to get sidetracked when designing a flyer, and to want to include as much information as possible. But by diluting the message, you leave customers confused and lukewarm. A good way to identify a concise message is to imagine what you would tell a potential customer if you stopped to talk to them in the street. Build your flyer around that message.
Step 2: Decide Whether Designing Flyers is For You
At this stage, you have several options. You could design the flyer yourself; or you could hire a freelancer, talk to a design agency, or even not have flyers printed at all.
Designing a flyer isn’t for everyone. You may not have a creative mindset, or your valuable time might be better spent elsewhere. Consider whether:
– You enjoy doing things on the computer
– You have hours of time available to perfect your design
– You know how much it costs to have a flyer designed, and want to save that money
If you’re still interested, well… It’s time to start designing!
Step 3: Decide What Kind of Flyer You Need
Flyers come in different shapes and sizes. Smaller sizes are cheaper to print, so for your campaign to be cost effective, you have to decide how big a flyer you’ll need. At 123Print, we offer three sizes of flyer: DL, A5 and A4. Each is the same width across, the width of an A4 paper; A5 is half the height and DL is one third the height (like a regular envelope).
As a rule of thumb, the more specific the reason you’re sending out a flyer, the smaller a flyer you’ll need. If you want to send an entire menu to potential customers, for example, then a larger flyer with room for different sections and photographs of food would be best. But if you’re advertising a specific event, you might only need a smaller one.
Step 4: Pick a Background
The next step is to decide what your flyer is going to look like! Start by choosing what the background will look like. You can either have a flat colour, which is good for making big banner headlines stand out, or a large glossy picture to catch a potential customer’s eye.
If you do plan on having a photo background, make sure you pick a high quality picture. You don’t want one that’s blurred or low resolution, as this might look fine in the template maker, but would look less impressive when printed. If you’re unsure what it’s going to look like, open the picture on your computer or laptop and zoom in to see whether it looks blurred or unclear.
Step 5: Create a Layout
With your background in place, you can set out your content. There are several key things you’ll want to include that make flyers effective:
– A large, clear heading naming your business.
– Easy to find and read contact details.
– Clear text that details the offer or event your flyer is advertising.
– Small pictures to give the customer a better idea of what you’re selling or doing, e.g. a picture of staff at work or a picture of the food you sell.
You can lay these out in any format you like. A useful tip is to imagine drawing the customer’s eye from place to place on the flyer. For example, the customer’s attention is first drawn to the business name at the top of the flyer, before landing on a pair of pictures below, and the heading describing your offer. Capping off the page at the bottom are the contact details.
This layout makes logical sense compared to putting the contact details at the top as you want the customer to know who you are and what you offer before asking them to call you. You can play around with the layout as much as you like, but it will be most effective if it flows in a natural manner.
Step 6: How to Write Content That Converts
The next step is to write your content. Of course, what you write depends on the reason why you’re designing a flyer, so you’ll have to be a little creative here. But no matter what you’re writing about, there are useful guidelines you can stick to that will help your flyer perform.
– Keep the content of your flyer to the point. Don’t use long words and sentences where shorter ones will do. Give information in simple bitesize form, e.g. as headings and bullet points.
– Always include a call to action. Make it clear what you want the customer to do: buy now, call us, apply today!
– Reference several contact methods. Some people prefer calling over the phone, some prefer emailing. By only providing one form of contact, you alienate part of your audience.
Don’t feel the need to tell the customer your life story! Short and sweet will always be better, at least in terms of marketing.
Step 7: Finishing Touches
Have a read over what you’ve written to double check for spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. Also make sure to check each photo you use in the design, ensuring that a) you have the rights to use it and that b) that it’s of high quality.
Once you’ve finished the bulk of your design, it’s wise to take a step back and to take a break. Come back to it later on or the next day so that you can look at it with fresh eyes; if you’re still happy with it, that’s a good sign! Similarly, have a colleague look over the flyer to see what they think.
If you’re interested in designing your own flyer, head over to 123Print! Our custom flyer design service is simple for anyone to use. Not only that, but we specialise in printing, unlike our competitors, so you know you’ll be getting the best quality product on the market. Take a look today!
