How to make a leaflet
Introduction
There are three fundamental steps to creating a leaflet.
First, you need to make sure that you know exactly what you are trying to get out of your flyer campaign. Are you trying to create awareness in your local area about the fact that you’ve moved location or are you trying to get customers through the door during a particularly difficult part of the year?
Your flyer should look different for either of these campaigns.
Second step is design. Who designs your flyer? Which images are you going to use? Do you want to create a design you can easily tweak for future drops or are you looking for a one-off effort?
And the last step is printing. A number of logistical challenges come with into play here. Transport, collection and storage, delivery to your flyer distribution company of choice and more…
Let’s have a look at a short guide on how to make a leaflet according to The Private Postman.
What’s the campaign?
If you are going to be creating your leaflet, you need to make sure that you know it’s exact purpose. You could be looking to get a wide variety of results from your campaigns. Maybe you’ve opened a new location and you are trying to inform everyone in the local area of this fact.
You might be looking to get as many new clients through the door as possible, even if you have to send out some leaflets with discount codes for people to come redeem.
Alternatively, you might be running a routine drop for an established business, reactivating your local area a few times a year with a mixture of online ads and repeated leaflet drops.
Your flyer needs to be carefully tailored to the goals of your campaign. Try to specify this goal as much as possible. Discuss your campaign with your leaflet distributor and ask for their advice on how a leaflet for your kind of campaign should look.
You also want to consider the location you are going to be targeting with your pamphlet drops and the demographics you are after.
Larger homes in North London get a lot of leaflets through their door every day. Depending on the type of business you are advertising, this might make you consider using an unusual format, thicker paper or even a folded leaflet.
Knowing exactly what you are looking to get from your campaign and who you are targeting will have a big impact on how your leaflet is created. You can have a look at some examples of different types of leaflet distribution campaigns here.
Creating the leaflet design
You can have a look at a more in-depth article on leaflet design here. However we can walk you through some of the basic ideas on creating your design now.
We always recommend that you work with a professional designer where possible. Simply investing a few hundred pounds into this process will take away a large amount of stress and technical tinkering. More importantly, it will allow you to focus on getting the content of your flyer right and on the planning of your campaign.
Many leaflet distribution companies have their own in-house designer. If you trust your distributor, having their team also work on your design might be a good idea. A team like this will bring years of experience with this medium to the table. You also drastically eliminate the number of people you will be communicating with.
This can make a big difference for a busy manager or a small business owner. Having to deal with your designer, asking people on your team for their feedback, then cross checking with your distributor, passing on the distributor’s tweaks back to the designer and restarting the process again can be a big energy and time sink.
Especially when small issues or errors arise (as they often do). If your distribution company is able to handle the design for you, the amount of email and back and forth you will have to take part in can be cut to a minimum.
By working with a professional, you can also create a sort of a template for your flyers which you can always come back to for your future drops. If you are planning to run deliveries of your leaflets a couple times a year, having a leaflet that works and that can be tweaked will be very helpful and cost effective.
A few things to keep in mind when it comes to leaflet design
– Images are important and will make up a large part of your flyer. Use your own, if you’ve commissioned a photographer at some point and have great photographs or look at one of the large stock image sites online.
– Discount codes work. Don’t be afraid to use them, if it makes sense to your campaign.
– Keep the amount of information on your flyer to a minimum.
– Read our guide on how to structure a leaflet
Print your leaflets
Most leaflet distributors you will be dealing with should have a preferred printing house they can recommend to you. Ideally they might even be able to handle your print order for you and get you a better price compared to what you would be able to get as an individual.
Given the logistics that follow the printing of your flyers, this can be of great help. Storing 50,000 freshly printed flyers and arranging for their delivery to your distributor can be a whole new kind of headache. Especially if you run a small business or if you are based in London where space comes at a premium.
Leaving all of this to your distributor is preferable. Just make sure to have the distributor mail you an example of your printed leaflet, so you can check on the quality of print and paper used.
Some of the technical elements you should understand when it comes to flyer printing are
GSM – GSM tells you the weight of paper you are printing on. This is relevant as heavier paper is thicker, can be more robust and can have a more premium feel. In general anything between 200-300gsm is recommended for flyers.
Paper Stock/Finish – You will mostly be offered a Matte or Gloss finish for your flyers. We tend to recommend Matte finish in almost all cases.
Size/Format – Single page A5 leaflet will be your choice of format 90% of the time. These flyers are the ideal size to make their way through the letterbox undamaged. They are big enough to make an impression but are not so big that they are difficult to handle. A6 and DL size leaflets are also commonly used.
Folded leaflets and unusual formats are worth considering but only after consulting with your leaflet distribution company.
We hope that this short article has given you some insight on how to make a leaflet. If you have any questions or if you are looking to start a leafleting campaign please contact us below.