5 Tips for Creating a Marketing Flyer that Sells

Marketing flyers are a tried and tested a way to market your small business. They are cost effective, easy to produce and a tangible way for customers to remember you. But most flyers are let down by either poor design or poor copywriting. More often than not, business owners try to come up with the copy themselves – and wonder why their flyers don’t get any response. Here are a few marketing tips to help improve your flyers and increase your response rate.

1.Grab attention with your headline.

Your headline should highlight the single most important benefit of your business. It should capture the customer’s attention and inspire them to want to find out more.

One way to do this is to talk to the customer in the second person, which means to use the word ‘you’ and not ‘we’. A fantastic way to grab attention is to ask a question. Show the customer you understand them by connecting with them through a question and motivate them to want to find out more.

You can also use the ‘rule of scarcity’ to your advantage in a headline. Use the words ‘limited time’ or ‘last days’ if you’re promoting a sale to get customers motivated to act.

2. Don’t use too much copy

Using too much copy will make your flyer difficult to read. You need to make sure you use plain and simple English, short sentences and use bullet points to help break up the text. Another trick to make it more visually appealing is to make sure there is adequate white space on the flyer. White space helps readers to know there are different pieces of information on the flyer and will help their eyes to navigate to the most important information.

3. Use good photography wherever possible.

Where possible, you should use high-quality photography of your actual business in flyers. A good example is flyers for a tradesman. A high-quality photo of the business owner or one of your tradesman in a branded uniform helps build trust. It shows customers that you are a legitimate, successful business. This will have more appeal than a stock photo of a tradesman that clearly doesn’t work for your business.

4. Use fonts and graphics consistently

One of the golden rules of branding is ‘consistency builds trust’. When designing your brochure, you should stick to a consistent visual theme and only limited fonts. Preferably these fonts should be those used in your other marketing collateral. When choosing fonts, make sure they are easy to read and ensure your graphics don’t distract your reader from the sales copy.

5. Don’t forget your call to action

A common mistake is not ‘asking for the sale’ in the flyer. You need to tell customers what you want them to do and how to do it – it’s your call to action. This can be to book an appointment by phone, visit a showroom or visit a website. Also, make sure your contact information is easy to find. I’ve seen marketing flyers before that have forgotten to include a phone number! Don’t let that be you. That is money down the drain.

The call to action should be placed at the bottom of the flyer under your well-written headline, and amazing sales copy that has given your customer a compelling reason to become a customer.

My final piece of advice is to make sure you use high-quality paper that brings your images and fonts to life. Choose from a higher quality gloss or matte stock as nothing says cheap like a poorly printed flyer on cheap stock. You can guarantee that won’t be the case with any flyers that are printed by Adpost.

Chris Dale is the Managing Director of Sydney based marketing consulting firm, MarketingHQ. He is a certified practicing marketer with over 20 years senior marketing experience. He helps small and medium sized businesses create marketing strategies and systems that generate leads and grow their business and has been a happy client of Adpost for over 7 years.