Design and Print Leaflets Checklist
You’ve got a big event coming up or a new product or service. You’re excited and eager to spread the word around by handing out or posting leaflets to raise awareness. But hold on, before you create the design, ask yourself the question; what is a leaflet actually meant to include? From colouring and branding to choosing that all-important title, there’s plenty to think about if you want to maximise the effectiveness of your promotion.
Follow this checklist to ensure that your leaflet stands out
Your brand colours and logo
Colour needs careful consideration in order for the leaflet to achieve its purpose, which makes it vital to use colours people can associate with your company.
When people see your leaflet you want them to instantly recognise it’s you. Notice most of Virgin’s advertisements are red, and Sainsbury’s always include a splash of orange. Keeping branding consistent across all your marketing materials will make your business stick in people’s minds.
Make It Different to Other Leaflets
Although general colouring and fonts should stick to your brand, be wary of re-hashing old leaflet designs that you’ve used for previous events or offers, and merely changing the dates. Customers can easily become immune to identical images which they are exposed to day in day out, meaning your advertising becomes stagnant and ineffective.
Keeping within your brand, experiment with different leaflet layouts and wording to put a fresh spin on your promotions that keeps customers engaged. You can even try a variety of leaflet designs for the same event or offer to advertise different aspects, and make each customer think every time they see it.
Don’t forget the details
It may seem obvious, but it’s so easy to get carried away with an excellent graphic design that the purpose of the leaflet gets swept under the rug.
Think about what the leaflet is trying to achieve and use this as a basis to plan the information. Where do you want your readers to go next? Only including the location and time of your event is useless if you don’t say where to buy tickets. Do you want them to give you a call, visit your site or drop into your shop? This is direction to act is called a ‘Call to Action’, and is used in marketing to encourage customers to act upon your advertisements.
Your Target Audience
Whose hands do you want this leaflet to fall into? You need to fine-tune your tone of voice to attract potential customers. You can research similar companies with successful advertising to see what others in the market are doing, or simply put yourself in their shoes.
You want to keep text to a minimum, but choosing the right words is essential. Charity leaflets often use strong, emotive language to arouse a passionate response. Other leaflets limit the wording to exactly what they have to offer, for example “Coffee, Cakes, Chat” for a café.
Speak directly to your customers
To appeal directly to a customer regardless of their interests, age or gender, use the words ‘you’ or ‘your’ in the leaflet’s text.
Asking a question in your title that your business can answer will help start a visual conversation between you and potential customers. ‘Are you hungry?’, ‘Fancy something different?’, ‘Looking to get fit?’ are all simple and direct questions which will gage responses from customers and enlighten them to your business!
Spacing
The biggest crime in flyer design? Cramming too much onto the page. One striking image, big gaps between text, and blank spaces all collate to a show stopping leaflet with a dramatic edge. Following these rules will make your text easier to read, your images more defined and more memorable.
If you find a flat leaflet doesn’t hold all the information you need, spread out the content with a folded version.
Eye-catching imagery
Be bold and daring with your images. If you sell food, try showing a mouth-watering image of your best looking product close up. If you need something more abstract, experiment with bright, contrasting colours which draw in the eye.
There are agencies that you can purchase images from, but nothing beats having professional photos taken of your own products or service, take a look at our commercial photography services to have tailor made photographs taken for your business.
Choose a title that says it all
Leaflets have to get their message across in an instant. Marketing Week reported that only 4% of advertisements are looked at for longer than two seconds – which is just enough time to absorb the title. If your title is captivating, it will encourage readers to engage with the smaller text that tells them more.