Creating an attractive and effective leaflet design

When it comes to designing a leaflet, it may sound fairly simple at first but it can be a little tricky if you want to create an attractive and effective design. You should have the important information but not too much where the reader becomes overwhelmed. It needs to have an effective design and layout and the following tips can help you achieve that goal.

Keep it Short and Sweet

The purpose of a leaflet is to make readers take action; whether through direct contact or simply visiting your website. The information you provide should entice and appeal to the reader; not overwhelm or confuse them.
While you likely hope to pack a lot of information into a small space, you want to avoid this. You simply need the information that will get your point across; the website is where the loads of information should go. If the purpose of the leaflet is to offer customers a special deal or discount, focus on making it easy for customers to realise this.

Appealing Design

While your leaflet should have important, but basic information, it’s also important that it appeals to the reader; you want to catch their attention. Therefore, it’s important to keep this in mind when considering the layout of your leaflet.

Colour overload can also overwhelm readers. Don’t use colours that clash but rather a ‘set’ of colours that compliment each other very well. Avoid using any word or clip art and stick to professional images if you need to add graphics. Most people will view a leaflet with clip art or word art as unprofessional and likely won’t bother reading your leaflet.

Targeted Market

Sometimes it’s more beneficial to pick a particular market and stick to it. Even more so if you provide a variety of services. Be sure to detail the ‘main’ services you offer but try to include a specific service you offer and are an expert in; maybe one that needs more attention or light shed on it to bring in more buyers. If you try to appeal to everyone or too many people at once, you’ll likely miss out on appealing to the market that is ideal for your business.

Include an Offer

Finding new clients can be a little difficult sometimes and getting ‘repeat’ customers can be even more challenging. This is where a leaflet comes in handy. Consider offering a special deal for new customers and then a discount for their future purchases to entice them into coming back to you.

It doesn’t matter if your services are awesome and successful; you must still convince customers to the point they’re willing to give you a shot. Study your competition and see what they’re offering and try to match, if not beat, their own promotions. Try not to offer something that results in profit loss on your end, unless it can be earned back quickly in the near future. Above all else, your leaflet and your offers should catch the attention of readers.

Photo: Image courtesy of warrenski on Flickr

Why keeping your website fresh is important

There are more reasons than you may be aware of for making sure your website is constantly growing.

  • When you continue to create fresh content for your website, it shows your readers that you care about them and gives you a way to show your personality, as you engage with your customers
  • By having user focused content, you are able to engage with readers and customers that may not be in your usual off-line marketing channels
  • It is well-known, that an important factor to improving your search engine ranking for specific keywords, is by providing continual new website content

Having a print mentality in the web industry is outdated.

  • You no longer have to have everything ready as if it were a final print run. Changes can be made to your website after launch and as often as needed
  • It is understandable that you must meet deadlines, however with a website, you are able to grow gradually over time. Small changes can be made easily and quickly within your website, unlike in the print world, where everything is set in stone
  • In print, the colours you see are the colours you get. However the colours within your website may change slightly on different monitors or displays. It is important to understand the colours and tones on your website

Although a website may mean many things to different people, there is one philosophy that should remain central, that is, it must continue to improve, refine, extend, and adapt.

A new approach:

For instance, if you have been redesigning your website every three years, why not spend your budget in a slightly different way. Spread your budget out over time, instead of spending it all at one time. This will allow you to keep up with trends and not have an outdated website.

Benefits:

  • You will have better control of your budget by spreading it evenly over time
  • You will prevent your website from becoming stale, as it will be continually evolving
  • As new technologies become available, you can make changes to your website, thereby keeping your site on the cutting-edge
  • The needs of your customers and readers can quickly be adapted to
  • Your goals will be achieved far quicker than before because your web team will understand your business needs and objectives and have a greater understanding of how to proceed by adapting to a constantly evolving environment

In Summary:

Utilise your web teams talents and your online marketing team to enhance your business and capture new trends and technologies as they occur. There is no reason for you to be three years behind. Instead of hiring once every three years, spread your cost out over time and have a website that is constantly evolving.

Photo: Image courtesy of Seth Anderson on Flickr