Introduction
There are millions of leaflets being delivered every week in London. Some of these are well designed and written while others are not.
Whether the investment into printing, storing and delivering of your flyers is going to have a potential to pay off, completely depends on how well your leaflets are written, designed and structured.
Making a flyer doesn’t have to be a complicated business. But in order to make an effective leaflet, you have to consider, that how you write and structure your leaflet is important.
Simply put, a badly structured leaflet can sink a whole campaign. And to write a good one, you need to spend some time and effort thinking about what actually makes a good leaflet work.
How to structure a leaflet
We tend to structure modern leaflets around only a few elements. A great quality, relevant image is probably the most important.
Whether you are a dentist, hair dresser or an estate agent, a great quality image on the front page of your leaflet is what you want.
This image can be a photograph or an illustration but it needs to be clear with not too many elements and the image needs to be as relevant to your business as possible.
If you are a real estate agent and your main focus is on properties in Notting Hill, you want your leaflet showing a beautiful Victorian town house in Notting Hill. Not a generic modern interior.
This example might seem trivial, however there are many more things to consider that are specific to your business and place in the market. You know your business best, so you need to be very closely involved in picking the image around which your flyer will be structured.
Strap-line
The next most important elements of your flyer is your strap-line. You want to clearly communicate what you are offering.
Are you a dentist that excels and specialises in braces? Feature this in your strap-line on the front side of your leaflet.
Together with a quality image of a smiling person with braces a strap-line like this delivers your message as clearly as possible.
If you use a generic image of a smiling person with good teeth and include a strap-line that simply says that you are a good dentist, you might get some enquiries but they will be more general and less specific to your services related to braces.
If you are offering a wider range of services, either focus on wider umbrella terms that cover what you do (cosmetic dentistry, emergency dentistry specialist, etc…) or use multiple leaflets focused on different parts of your business. You can have these delivered at different times of year or as a part of a multi-drop campaign.
To summarise. In most cases, the front side of your flyer should include a high quality image, a well constructed strap-line and your branding.
The back side of your leaflet can include more text. It can list secondary services your are offering, testimonials, more context for your company, awards you’ve won or accreditations you hold. It should also feature your contact details and address.
How to write a leaflet
When it comes to writing a commercial leaflet, what you should focus on is clarity. Getting too wildly creative and verbose doesn’t work.
You want to make sure that you communicate what is unique about your business in as few words as possible. Spending time on your strap-line and asking other people what they think when they see it, is the most important thing you can do when it comes to writing your leaflet.
After that, focus on narrowing down on what is truly important to communicate to your potential clients. You might care about elements of your business that clients simply don’t.
This sometimes comes out in the form of describing the history of your business, recent renovations of your premises, new website design or something similar that might hold great importance to you but ultimately is completely irrelevant to your clients.
Ultimately, every word on your flyer should be about explaining what the services or products you offer are, why you are better than your competition, how to apply a discount code if you have one and how to contact you.
These ideas apply to most commercial leaflets. If you are writing a political leaflet or an informational leaflet related to something relevant to a local community, a different set of rules will apply.
Which other elements should your leaflet include
QR Code
One of the new elements that has been making its way onto leaflets is a QR code. Having a QR code that helps people simply scan your flyer and have them be taken to a website has proved itself to be an effective tool to improve engagement.
If you use a different QR code for each area you are targeting, you can direct people to tailored landing pages or track the differences in engagement across all your target areas.
Phone number (really)
However basic the following idea is, it always bears repeating. Always include your phone number. Do this in a large font and in a prominent location on the leaflet.
Sometimes in the process of trying different ideas for your designs, rewriting, creating QR codes, setting up landing pages it’s easy to forget the most basic and important elements. Always include a phone number!
Testimonials
Having a good testimonial on your leaflet can help immensely. You can use bespoke testimonials from your clients or maybe check if you can use some of your google reviews.
The more relevant to the service you are advertising and descriptive the testimonial is, the better. Including a review saying “X is the best” is nice, but prominently featuring a review saying “X has been consistently giving me the best haircuts of my life” is simply better.
It’s not generic and is mentioning the service you are advertising directly.
We hope that this article about writing and structuring your leaflets has been helpful. If you have any questions or if you’d like to book a leaflet distribution campaign, please feel free to contact us below.
