Flyers and leaflets are as effective as they used to be, but the perception around them has changed.
With the dominance of digital marketing, marketers often leave print marketing as an afterthought.
That might be a serious mistake, considering the fact that 48% of consumers report responding to flyers right away.
Flyers have an edge over all other forms of marketing. They are cheap to produce, easy to distribute, and highly customizable. For small businesses particularly, flyers are a great way of engaging with customers and improving brand awareness.
However, not all flyers are effective.
It takes time, effort, and skill to create a flyer that converts. Coming up with great flyer ideas and designs remains the most important factor in flyer marketing.
5 Tips to include flyers in a marketing strategy
An effective flyer engages with the audience and catches their attention in a good way. The trick to great flyers lies in their design, content, and marketing.
Without wasting more time, let’s find out more about the five most important factors for success in flyer marketing.
Keep your content concise, brief, and readable
Most of us have come across flyers that raise more questions than answers. Your flyer should be able to communicate all the information your customers need in as few words as possible. However, leaving out important information in the pursuit of aesthetic value is also a mistake. The bottom line: make your flyers readable and understandable.
Content in flyers and leaflets is different from the content we see in social media and blog posts.
A flyer does not give you the scope of elaborating on your product and service.
While that may seem like a bad thing, you can make it work in your favor. Flyers give you a chance to pique the consumers’ interests and give them a glimpse of what you offer. When done correctly, customers will reach you out of curiosity.
Long-form content demands elaboration, which leaves no room for suspense or surprise.
Coming back to the all-important question, how do you make flyers concise and readable?
One simple approach is to divide your flyer into different sections and work on each separately.
For example, you can focus first on the main text of your flyer. Once that is taken care of, you can use the remaining space to supplement the main text. That way, you do not run the risk of cluttering your flyer with haphazard text alignment, size, and quantity.
Using bullet points and similar features also help in keeping your content crisp and brief. The goal is to convey all the necessary information while keeping each segment brief and readable.
Tell customers how to reach you
Unlike social media marketing, flyers do not give us the chance to interact with customers in real time. Customers, on the other hand, cannot find out more information with a single click. Given these challenges and restaurants, it is very important to add a call-to-action and necessary contact information in your flyers.
Adding call-to-action and contact information links to the previous point. This important information should be clearly visible in your flyer. Do not cramp them in a corner where viewers will have to examine the flyer closely to find them.
The call-to-action should also be crisp and concise, urging customers to take the next steps.
When it comes to contact information, what you add is up to your preference and convenience. Many people opt out of adding phone numbers, though they can be the simplest way for customers to reach you.
Similarly, adding email addresses does not make much sense if you are not regularly reviewing your emails. Adding your social media handles and website URL can be very useful since these avenues give your customers a better idea of what your brand is about.
If your customers do not know what to do after seeing your flyer, its great design and layout would be of no use. In many ways, contact information and call-to-action are the two most important components of flyers. Getting these right will ensure the long-term performance of your flyers.
Keep designs unified to create better brand awareness
Branding a service or product is very important in all marketing strategies. Flyer marketing is no exception.
When you maintain a thematic similarity in your flyer designs, people will associate them with your brands at the first sight and automatically.
We can see examples of this all around us. Many big brands maintain a thematic similarity in all their marketing channels. These similarities do not always pertain to visual elements like color combinations and fonts (though they are also very important).
Sometimes, the similarity lies in the tone of the message, the call-to-action, or other textual aspects. Try to keep both visual and textual aspects as unified as possible.
Adding your brand logo to the flyers is the simplest thing to do to create a unified brand image. Everyone now recognizes Nike from their iconic swoosh logo. Even if a flyer has nothing but that logo, people will still know it is from Nike. That’s one of the best examples of successful branding and brand awareness.
Apart from the logo, consider keeping the visual elements similar. For example, try to not use very different color combinations for each of your flyer campaigns.
A great case study would be of Coca-Cola, which sticks to its red background for almost all ad campaigns. When the color red and carbonated soda appear in the same place, our brains automatically relate it to Coca-Cola. It appears simple on the surface but is indeed very effective in cementing brand awareness.
Don’t compromise on the physical quality during flyer printing
Flyer marketing is inexpensive as it is. It does not require you to pay to social media platforms, influencers, or content marketers.
The biggest initial investment is in printing the flyers, and then on distributing them.
Unfortunately, many marketers would try to cut costs even in these aspects. That’s a mistake you should avoid.
Flyers are tangible objects. The quality of the material will have a subconscious impact on the customer. A high-quality flyer printed on premium paper gives off an impression of authority and credibility. It differentiates your flyer from the cheap leaflets thrown around without purpose or intent.
Another important feature of flyers is that people often pass them on. If your flyer cannot stand the wear and tear of time, it will not reach many potential customers. Instead of saving money, you will be losing out on big opportunities.
People also happen to keep flyers, both intentionally and unintentionally. Low-quality material prevents flyers from having a lasting impact.
Today, there are many good options for printing flyers. Simply click here to find flyer printing near you. Always choose a provider who gives you the most value for money and has satisfied clients.
While choosing material for your flyers, make sure you check its thickness, shine, ability to endure rough use, and similar features. Adding protective films can keep them intact even through bad weather. These small improvements will add up to make a huge difference.
Ensure you know your target customer base
Unlike social media marketing, you cannot use Google or Facebook analytics to identify your target demographic. That makes things a little tricky, but also very effective when done correctly.
For instance, social media targeting will be random to a great extent. With the physical distribution of flyers, you have control over exactly where to distribute and in what quantity.
The easiest trick in the book is to know where your target demographic is. Take for example a product developed for the elderly.
The effectiveness of distributing flyers for these products near colleges and universities will be very low.
On the contrary, distributing them in parks, clinics, and other places where the elderly frequent will be very effective.
The same principle applies to all products.
If you have a music-related service or product, target concerts in your area. For a fitness brand, stadiums, gyms, and sporting events are the best spots. The ability to target precisely makes flyers and print marketing so special.
Knowing your target audience has many aspects to it.
Not all products have a clearly defined target demographic. In those cases, you will have to do more research to find out where you can find people who’d be interested in what you offer.
Once you have done that, you have to also ensure that your flyers reach their destination at the right moment. In many ways, it follows the basic precepts of any form of marketing.
Conclusion
As you could see, making flyers work can be quite complicated. Following these five tips will help you get the fundamentals right. Once you have done that, the next steps will become easier.
To sum it up, ensure that your flyers are easy to read, improve brand awareness, and are at the right palace at the right time.
