7 Simple Steps to Design a Flyer That Stands Out

Flyers are a timeless method for promoting your business to large groups of people easily. Whether you’re looking to communicate information about your upcoming events or showcase your latest offers, customers are used to receiving flyers, but how can you make sure that yours are impactful and remain memorable? We’ll answer this question in this blog, with our top 7 steps to help you design a flyer which stands out and gets customers engaged.

What Are the Benefits of Flyers?

Flyers have been a key marketing tool for many years and have remained popular despite various trends and advancements in technology. The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) carried out research which found that 89% of consumers remember receiving a mailer through their door, and 45% of people keep them on a pinboard or in their kitchen drawer, showcasing how powerful the humble flyer can be! 

Flyers also tend to be a highly cost effective way to promote your business, as you’ll be able to order large quantities which you can distribute to as many people as necessary, allowing you to expand your reach without breaking the budget. This can prove beneficial when you’re looking to target your marketing either within an event or through direct mail campaigns as you can buy as many flyers as you need, and not worry about accidentally overspending. 

With this in mind, it’s clear to see that flyers are a great tool to include in your marketing strategy to attract customers and keep costs low. They can go hand in hand with other forms of marketing, including PPC and social media, and by ensuring your message is consistent, you’ll increase the chances of success towards your objectives.

How to Design a Flyer

We know that creating a flyer that stands out is important to many businesses to reach their goals. The best flyers will -

• Be simple but informative - The reader should understand what you’re advertising and how to find out more
• Be visually appealing - Rather than packing too much information in, it’s important to consider having the right balance of imagery, text and white space
• Include compelling copy - Your flyer should speak directly to your target audience and be clear on what to do next. The benefits need to be clear to ensure that the reader stays engaged and feels ready to take action.

Whether you’re creating one for the first time, or looking to improve your designs, there are 7 key steps to follow to help ensure that your flyer designs stand out.

1. Decide What Your Flyers Are Going to Be Used For

The first step to designing a stand out flyer is taking the time to decide what it will be used for. It doesn’t need to be overcomplicated, but by having clear answers to the following questions, you’ll be able to make the design process more efficient and define what success looks like - 

• What are you looking to promote?
• What action is the customer going to take after consuming your content?
• How are you planning to distribute your flyers?
• Are you promoting a similar message through any other channels (e.g. social media or posters)?

We’d suggest that you write the answers to these questions down so you can refer back to them throughout the process as this will help you stay on track and ensure that your messaging is consistent. This will also help you decide what size flyers would be best for your content, for example, more concise information may suit an A5 flyer, whereas providing more material and imagery may lead you to design an A4 flyer.

2. Craft Your Copy

Once you know the message you’re looking to present, you can start crafting your copy. To achieve maximum success, it’s important to think about how you can ensure that you remain compelling and engaging throughout. Key elements of your copy include -

Headline
This should be attention grabbing so that as soon as the recipient sees your flyer, they’re curious and look to find out more. When writing your headline, you need to think about how you can draw people in. Great ways to do this include -

Asking questions - “Want to know how you can save on your xxxxx?”
Making the most of figures “Save up to XX%!”
Keeping it simple “Sale now on!”

Body copy
Throughout your flyer, you’ll likely provide key information to provide more context to your promotion. Strategically planning this will also help you add an extra layer of balance to your design, reducing the overwhelming feeling of too much text or imagery. When crafting your body copy, you might want to consider -

• Features and benefits - What are the key parts of your promotion that your customers should know that will impact them? To increase engagement, think about using language which will resonate with your target audience
• Social proof - If you’ve got any testimonials or reviews, you might want to add quotes from them to your flyer. People like to make decisions with the comfort that what they’re purchasing has been tried and tested, making social proof such a powerful tool
• Clear call to action - This part of the flyer will tell the reader exactly what they need to do next. To ensure that your flyer stands out and provides success, it could be worth spending time writing a call to action which your customer finds hard to resist. Your call to action could be anything from “buy now” to “visit our website” 

3. Consider Your Visuals

To make sure your flyers are as eye catching as possible, consider the visuals you use throughout. Every flyer has its own purpose, so the number and sizes of images will vary. If you’re promoting an event or a single product, you might want to use a large image at the top or in the middle of your flyer, or if you’re promoting multiple products, you might opt for several smaller images. You might also want to consider the colours and fonts you’re using, including your background as this will help build familiarity with your brand, along with being your customer's first impression when they see your flyer. To help decide on the visuals you use you might want to ask yourself -

• What represents the message you’re looking to convey?
• Should you use your own images or stock imagery?
• Is the image quality good enough for print, or do you need to get new photos?
• Will the imagery and text stand out?
• Does it maintain consistency with your branding?

4. Organise Your Page

Once you’ve got your copy and visuals ready, you should start looking at how you can incorporate all of the elements for your flyer in a way which is aesthetically pleasing and impactful. It’s easy to overthink this stage of the process, however, by taking constant breaks and reviewing your design with fresh eyes, you’ll be able to strike a balance which helps your flyer stand out. Key points to consider include -

• Utilising white space - By ensuring that there’s plenty of white space between each of the elements in your design, you can help your customers navigate through your flyer as intended, keeping them engaged. Think of white space as your friend and use it to your advantage to ensure that you’re not packing in too much information
• Visual hierarchy - Rather than implementing each element at random, taking the time to consider what is important to be seen will help you capture your customer's attention. A great way to think about this is by remembering the more prominent the design element, the more likely the eye will be drawn to it, so anything large and bold will be seen easier than small text tucked into a corner
• Contact information - Making it easy for the customer to get in touch with you is great for building the trustworthiness of your brand, but also increasing the chance of conversion from your flyer. Customers may want to find out more about your promotion or speak to someone for advice, so it’s worth considering how you can make your contact details easy to find

We know that it can seem really difficult to find the right balance and lay out your design in a way which seems organised, so to help this, our FREE Design Online Tool has a large bank of professionally created templates to help you promote your business with ease. 

5. Keep It Simple

With the number of elements involved, it can be easy to overcomplicate the design of your flyers, however, it’s important to take a step back and remember that less is more. Our advice would be to keep your flyers as simple and uncluttered as possible, making them easy to read. When you review your design you might want to put yourself in your customer's shoes and ask yourself -

• What information is this flyer telling me?
• What do I do to take action?
• Why is this/are these images used?
• Does this make me interested?

6. Ask a Trusted Colleague or Friend for Feedback

Once you feel like you’ve got your design ready and given everything a once over, you could consider asking someone that you trust for their feedback. This could be someone within your business, or even a family member or friend. Ideally, you want someone who will give you an unbiased point of view and may help you find areas of improvement to make sure your flyer makes the impact intended. If they’re not too sure what to look for you could ask them to answer questions like -

• What is this flyer promoting?
• How long did it take you to read?
• What did you think of the images used?
• Are there any changes you would make?
• What would you do with this flyer if it was handed to you?

7. Proofread Before Sending to Print

The final step you should consider is proofreading your flyer before sending it to print. Although you might have already scanned it a couple of times prior and had a third party look, by taking one last careful check, you’ll be able to ensure that it reads smoothly and confirm that there are no grammatical errors. We’d suggest that you use a mixture of spell checkers and online tools such as Grammarly to support you with this. 

BONUS TIP - Offer a Discount or Limited Time Offer

If you’re looking to increase the chances of your customers converting and generating more revenue for your business, it could be worth the addition of a discount code or limited time offer to your leaflets. This is a great way to encourage customers to take action and experience your offerings, especially if it’s the first time they’ve engaged with you. You could also make this offer unique to your flyer campaign which would help you measure its success, whether that be a unique code or link.

The discount codes you offer may vary depending on your promotion, great examples to consider include -

• Free delivery (no minimum spend)
• XX% off your next order
• Buy One Get One Free
• Free gifts with £X spend
• Free trials

Your discount code can be incorporated in various ways. You could make this part of your call to action in a block of text, or alternatively make this a QR code for your customers to scan, which directs them to your website. 

In Conclusion

Creating flyers which stand out can lead to fantastic exposure for your business, and ultimately achieve your goals. By taking the time to plan your flyer you’ll be able to implement a solid structure which makes the content creation quicker and easier, ultimately leading to you creating a flyer which your customers will remember and take action on.