I’ve been creating a promotional flyer for Dale Beaumont’s Business Blueprint conference that I’m attending this week in Sydney. Thought I’d share my line of thinking for how I’d created my flyer…
What’s My Objective?
Before I design anything I always what to know what I’m out to achieve. You need this to focus your attention and as a framework for making decisions along the way. For me, it was clear: Launch Book Rapper’s Client Leadership Program.
What’s the Context?
If I’m creating a promotional flyer, how is it going to be used? Is it going to be put on everyone’s seat at the conference? Is it being pinned up on a wall? Or, do I personally hand them out? This determines the design of the flyer and the content on it. If I’ve delivered a two-day workshop and handing out a flyer after that, then I don’t need to spend a lot of time telling people who I am. For this event, the flyers are going to sit on an unattended promotional table filled with 20-30 other flyers.
How do I get noticed?
In a competitive market, your first goal is always to get noticed. In this case, how am I going to stand out amongst the other promotional flyers sitting on some table in the corner of some room? Some ways you can do are based on:
- Size (big or small)
- Shape (most will be rectangular)
- Colour (contrast)
- Form (2D or 3D) or
- Image (photo, graphic or use of typography).
I chose to do this with a colourful image. So, I designed a postcard. On one side is an interesting illustration sourced from iStockphoto.com with a tagline. On the back is some info. Remember, my goal at this point is to simply be noticed, picked up and looked at. In baseball you can only run one base at a time and so should your promo flyer.
Then What?
They’ve picked me up because they like my image, then what happens? As a postcard, you want them to turn it over and read what’s on the back. Here you need a headline to capture attention, some body text to explain what you’re offering. And, finish with a clear specific action.
What Specific Action?
This is the whole reason for doing your promotional flyer. Your action needs to be simple, specific and desirable. For selling services, this typically will revolve around having a relevant and compelling reason to call a phone number or visit a website. Again, take it one base at a time. Depending upon what you’re selling, it’s when they call or they visit your website that you can crank up your sales pitch. Your goal here is to motivate them to take action.
Something Extra
I added one extra step. I wanted to personalise my offer to the event. I could have done this with the words on the postcard and I thought needed that space to explain my general offer. So, on a separate one-third of an A4 page I made a specific offer: Launch Price for Book Rapper Client Leadership Program with a discount of $300. (Ideally, dropping the price is not what you should do, add more value instead). This means I can reuse the postcards for a later event if they’re left over.
Off to the Printers
I use Impact Digital in Melbourne. They offer a great service, fast turnaround and they’re carbon neutral.
