In a world where most businesses advertise on social media, using a more traditional form of marketing, such as direct mail, can be a rather affordable and easy way to stand out among the competition. However, in order to have a successful direct mail marketing campaign, you need to prepare marketing materials that will make those who receive them intrigued enough to want to get to know your company more.
While there are many marketing materials you can choose to prepare, one of the most common and effective ones are fliers.
Still, there are some things that can make or break your flier, and therefore your ROI on the direct mail marketing campaign. Although initially it might not sound like that big of a deal, a bad flier design might leave a negative impression of your business, hurting the reputation that you have worked so hard to attain.
To prevent that, we prepared a list of the most common flier mistakes that you should avoid doing while designing your own. So, here are some things you should aim to never do when preparing your fliers.
1) Choosing a Poor Design or Theme
A good layout and an appealing theme is the most important factor when it comes to flier design - especially when you consider the fact that the whole point of a flier is to make the potential customer interested enough in your business and what you offer that they want to learn more about you.
Without an attractive layout/font choice, you risk grabbing the attention of your target in a negative manner, if any. Unfortunately, it’s not that uncommon for people to just throw away any marketing material that doesn’t intrigue them without reading it first, so choosing the right design or theme is crucial if you don’t want it to happen to your fliers.
If you aren’t sure what kind of design will best represent your brand and at the same time, catch the attention of the flier’s receiver, it might be a good idea to design 2 or 3 “sample” proofs. You can then start a very small direct mail campaign, for example limited to one neighborhood, to test out which of the designs works best and see which translates most effectively into sales with customers..
Or, if none of the fliers provide the desired results, you will get the chance to create another design without knowing you just spent thousands of dollars on an unsuccessful campaign.
2) Choosing Low-Quality Images
Fliers have limited space, which is why it’s important that you choose carefully the things that you put on it, including selecting the perfect images. Unfortunately, one of the most common mistakes made during the flier design process is choosing images, which, while relevant to the contents of the flier, are of very low quality, making the whole flier look unprofessional and discouraging the receivers from further discovering your business.
Another mistake is picking images that are simply too big for the flier, as while they might look great in higher resolution, once you start adjusting them so that they can fit on your flier they will probably lose their clarity and sharpness.
Remember that quality images or pictures will always make fliers more exciting and eye-catching, which ultimately will more than likely lead to a more effective campaign. Be sure to avoid pictures that are too big for the layout, as well as those with low resolution or of poor quality.
3) Keeping It TOO Simple
Yes, fliers need to be simple in order to not overwhelm the reader. However, it’s important to find the golden middle, meaning that at the same time, they cannot be too simple, to the point where it’s just one block of text, with no headings, no images, no distinction between the parts, etc.
When designing the layout, be sure to emphasize headlines and key ideas with simple, easy to read language. Use action words and descriptors to attract the reader's attention to specific points.
Avoid using more than 2 fonts, and steer clear of those that are hard to read or distracting. Choosing the right font for your marketing material is more important than you imagine and can actually influence how the reader perceives your flier’s content - especially when it comes to the colors you choose.
If there’s any information you want your readers to really pay attention to, make sure that it’s distinct. You don’t have to use a different font for that - you can use italics, bold, or even just a different color than the rest of the text.
Also, be sure to place your company's name somewhere in the middle of the flier to ensure that it attracts the reader’s attention. Remember that the purpose of the flier is to be informative and eye-catching.
4) Making the Flier Too Cramped
Remember - it is not necessary to fill out every square inch of the flier or have the text go all the way to the border. Not only does a busy flier look bad, but it will hurt your response rate if the reader has a hard time reading your message. Less is sometimes more and it will help the reader get to the main point without any distraction.
Do you fill every square inch of your walls at home with pictures or decorations? No…because it would be distracting and probably give you a headache – the same is true with flier design. Be creative with your design, and really focus on the product/service you are offering. Concentrate on themes or elements that your target audience will find most appealing.
5) Using Bad Written Content
The content of your flier is one of the most important elements of it, which is why it needs to be written really well, in a way that is engaging and intriguing, but at the same time unconsciously influences the reader to get to know your business more.
Due to its importance, it’s vital that if you don’t know how to write such a copy, you delegate the job to someone who does, and ideally who already has plenty of experience doing it.
A good idea would be to hire a freelance copywriter. While an additional person involved in the design process does mean higher upfront costs, in the long run it will pay off.
6) Not Including Contact Information
The whole purpose of a flier, or any marketing material actually, is to make the reader interested in your business enough to want to follow up and learn more about it - however, it can be hard to do if you don’t include crucial information such as your contact information. Adding things like your website, address or phone number is of utmost importance.
Another mistake that some companies make when it comes to flier design is that they do include contact information, but somewhere where you would need to really carefully look at the flier to even be able to see it.
A good idea would also be to include a QR code that will direct the reader to a page with all of your contact information listed, It’s a quick and easy way to give them a way to reach you, but it also helps you, as you can track how many of those who received the flier actually wanted to know more about you and visited the site. Killing two birds with one stone, as they say.
Bad Flier Examples
Here is a flier we designed for the purpose of showing you what a bad design looks like.
There are a few things wrong with this design:
- The images, while on theme and fitting with the rest of the design, are too big, covering most of the page.
- The colors of the fonts are too close to the images and the background, making it very hard to see what it’s written there.
- The address of the event is placed at the bottom of the page, making it very hard to see at first glance.
Here’s how it should look:
Do you notice the difference between them? The second one is clearer and easier to understand, don’t you think? Simple changes made a whole world of difference.
The Bottom Line
The design of your flier is crucial in direct mail marketing. How it looks can truly make or break your campaign, as if your flier looks unappealing, the chances of those who receive it wanting to visit your site and learn more about you drastically decrease.
Unfortunately, those who have no or little experience with design, tend to make some mistakes that affect how their flier (or just about any marketing material) is perceived.
Hopefully, after reading this article, you will know about the DON’Ts of creating a flier.
While the flier itself is of utmost importance, having the right team behind you during your EDDM campaign is also important. Learn more about EDDM and how Taradel can help you reach your full potential. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have some questions - we’ll be happy to help.