What’s the Most Important Part of the Flyer?

When designing a flyer – especially one that is trying to sell something, most business owners and designers make a critical failure. It’s easy to think that the most important part of the flyer is the image or the brand (logo) or the business name – but these things are NOT that important at all.

The most important part of the flyer is (tada) THE CUSTOMER. Most flyers are designed from the seller’s perspective. And that is why they are not very effective!   When people design a flyer we tend to ask questions like “How do we build our brand?” “What are the features of our product?” “How do we tell them EVERYTHING that we could sell them?” etc.

What if we started the design process by putting ourselves on the side of the prospective customer? We should ask the following types of questions:

• Who is my ideal customer?
• What emotional need or fear does my product appeal to?
• What images would connect with my audience (your logo or a photo of the product may not be the best)
• What are the benefits of using your product?
• What action do I want the reader to take next?
• Why should they purchase my product instead of a competitor’s one?
• What issues are most important when a customer is considering purchasing this type of product?
• What questions will a potential purchaser have (you don’t always have to answer them)

Once we understand our product/campaign from the customer’s perspective then we can actually start designing. When we approach design from a customer-centered perspective (rather than a seller or product centered perspective) we ALWAYS come up with a different flyer than we are requested to create – but the customer is always happier with the result!

Now – in case you’re wondering:

What’s the SECOND most important part of a flyer?

THE HEADLINE!

This should grab attention and make people want to read the flyer. It can have an additional purpose of filtering out your non-target market. You can be direct, humorous, scary or even sarcastic – as long as the result is that the right people linger for more.

It’s human nature to be more interested in avoiding paid than striving for pleasure, so a good headline is usually one that focus’s on the fear you will relieve rather than the gain they will obtain (although anything promising riches tends to get noticed).

For a free review of your flyer please contact us at Copy Express. We’ll give you a few quick reactions and tell you what works and what doesn’t work. For a small fee we can give you a written and more thorough critique. We can also design or overhaul your flyers for you. Call us on 04-5688-773 today.