We always try to deliver value for money to our clients, and one aspect of this is advising on their copy when we get a new brief for a leaflet or flyer design.
Quite often clients overlook the need for the marketing piece to have a purpose – or what we like to say ‘a call to action’. Something that will initiate some sort of action from the recipient. This may be a phone call to you, a visit to your website or an email to enquire about your product or service.
So, looking at this simple aspect of the leaflets design we also look at other elements which are often overlooked. So here’s a few tips of what to look for when putting together your copy.
1. Call to action – as discussed above, something that will initiate a response. An example of this is “Call us today to receive your free information pack” – this will usually prompt a call to you. This is a ‘call to action’.
2. Contact details visible – it may sound obvious but you’ll be surprised at the number of briefs that don’t include vital contact info such as multiple phone numbers, email address and web addresses.
3. Social media links – if you’re looking to build your profile online don’t forget to supply your social media links for Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter even your YouTube profile (you do have one don’t you?).
4. Less is more – don’t try and cram in as much text as possible. Less is ALWAYS more in design. Give your leaflet room to breath and make it easy for your end user to read, digest and action your content. Too much and they’ll just skim read and miss the message altogether.
5. Pictures speak a thousand words – so true for many professions. A good sprinkling of images and a measured amount of text will always get a better response than a text only leaflet. Images break up the design and can be used as instant visual indicators instead of text. We have access to a huge (10′s of thousands) of images to use in your designs, many that won’t cost you a penny!
6. Measure your response rate with an offer – to do this you can include an offer code people can quote when they’re contacting you, usually linked to an offer of some sort. For example – ‘quote code FREE10 to get 10% off your order’ – you can then measure the response rate you’re getting from your campaign.
7. Don’t make your logo bigger! – there’s a good viral video that explains this crime much better than we can explain, have a watch of http://www.makemylogobiggercream.com/
8. Starbursts don’t work – you might think they’re cool, but they’re not! Just because you put a price in a fancy star and add a drop shadow won’t make people buy your products. They’re a relic of 90′s design, so instead how about using good quality pictures, well written copy and let the end user make their own mind up? Go on, you’ll be amazed at the result
9. Proof read your work - grammatical errors and speling mistakes are unforgiveable when you’re attempting to portray yourself as a professional company. So make sure you proof read your design before signing it off. (Yes, we know there’s a spelling mistake in this paragraph!)
10. You can’t nick images off websites to use in your design – we’ll say it again… You can’t just nick images off other people’s websites. Instead, let us use some high quality images in your design or if we don’t have an image in our own library that suits we’ll tell you to spend a few pounds and invest in some at www.istockphoto.com
So there you have it, a few words of wisdom to help you create a better leaflet, hopefully it will help you to think a little differently and understand design in a different way.