Handing out flyers – or “leafleting” as it is sometimes known – is an effective way of promoting an event, promotion, sale or other offer in a local area. But with potentially hundreds of other businesses doing the same thing, the way to stand out is through the design.

Before even starting the design itself consider who your target market is. This will help when it comes to choosing the layout and content. For example, if you have a sale on men’s jeans in your clothes store then your target market will be males aged 16-30 – therefore your leaflet design needs to appeal to that demographic.

Let’s use that as our example for general design rules to follow. You have a sale on and you’re targeting young men. You want your offer to appeal directly to them.

Put the offer right at the top, in large, bold, masculine lettering. It has to stand out so “30% OFF MEN’S JEANS” is concise and obvious and should lead the flyer off straight away. People are always interested in a bargain and will very likely read more if they see “30% OFF”.

The choice of a bold, big font will appeal to men as well, they’ll understand, on a subconscious level at least, that this is for them. Using such a font also makes the leaflet easy to read – this is vital as the people handing out your flyers only have a few seconds to get customers to take one, let alone read it.

Be careful with your choice of colours – and that includes the colour of the paper you choose to have your leaflets or flyers printed on – you don’t want them to clash. Good combinations are black on white, black on yellow and white on black.

If you plan to use an image, choose one that appeals to your target audience – a good looking man wearing jeans with a beautiful woman on his arm in this example would be ideal – and make sure it is very good quality. A poor image will give the impression your shop and your products are also poor quality.

Also add images of the actual jeans that are on offer, with prices against them, but don’t overdo it. You don’t want your leaflet to appear to cluttered as this will distract from the main message.

In a smaller but no less bold font as your main message, add in a unique selling point, a reason for acting ‘now’. Good examples are “While stocks last” or “This weekend only”. This will help capture those customers who thought the offer a good one, but weren’t quite ready to call in to your store and buy.

Finally, make sure your store location and contact details are on the leaflet. Near the bottom in a medium sized font is a good place for them. If there is room – and this will depend on how many images you’ve chosen to use, including a small map showing your location is a fantastic idea. If people can find you quickly and easily they will be far more likely to buy!

When creating your design always bear in mind the size of the paper you will be printing on. Typically A5 is the right size for a leaflet or flyer.

Speaking of printing, while you want the printing to be of good quality, this is one area you can save some money.

There are a wealth of companies offering cheap leaflet printing and cheap flyer printing these days and many of them give good service and excellent printing. Shop around before you commit to one printer as you could find yourself a real bargain.

Author Bio: Ian Grainger is writing on behalf of Edge Print, specialists in cheap leaflet printing and cheap flyer printing.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: leaflet design, flyer design, graphic design, leaflet printing