Free Beginner’s Guide: How To Make Flyers for Your Business?

Last updated on October 29th, 2021

Flyers are one of the oldest but affordable means of advertisements. All you need to do is draft your idea or message in a creative way, print it and handover to the passerby. Nowadays, you can even create them digitally. But designing a flyer is no more the prerogative of a professional designer. Even a small business owner or marketer can create impressive a flyer by using flyer making tools. However, some basics of creating engaging flyer designs should be followed strictly.

Like all other advertisement materials, flyers must be designed in such a way that it helps to make your business get noticed. Generally, the span of getting people’s attention is very short, therefore, your flyer design should help to catch their eye and drive them to your business.

Why Flyers Are Important To Businesses?

Most businesses follow traditional ways of marketing rather than online. Such businesses depend on flyers to reach out to people. But why they are popular advertisement materials?

Small businesses, especially those starting new in the market, take a flyer as a cost-effective way to announce the launch of products or services or discounts, etc. to the people.

Flyers are also used to share news, events and promotions. All you need to do is to print the flyer, and then, stand and deliver randomly to whoever passes by in a crowded place.

Like, you must have noticed PizzaHut or Dominos promoting their latest offers to each person passing through their outlets.

Moreover, they are versatile pieces of marketing. You can distribute them to people during on the sidelines of an event or festivals.

But these leaflets also find a place on the counter at crowded local shops such as coffee shops where people frequent. Marketers even hang them on the doorknob to grab attention.

Also, besides printed, digital flyers are equally popular for marketing. Your small business can lower its marketing cost further by sending them via emails to the subscribers. Additionally, they can share eye-catching flyer designs on social media as well for a greater reach.

Flyers are amongst the most effective method when it comes to promoting a brand in streets.

All you need to do is to take your flyer where people or your audience go. You can drop these leaflets through doors at homes. To entice people, insert your them in a publication with a deal or coupon.

The Stats Say….

“The increasing use of a flyer is evident also from various surveys. According to a study, they are amongst the favorite marketing strategy for small to medium businesses because of its low budget.

A survey has revealed that in the USA, 79% of small to medium businesses use flyers and other such low-cost material to promote brands.”

However, a flyer can work well for your business promotion only if their design is unique and impressive. But small business owners are no longer dependent on expensive professional designers to create these marketing materials.

Instead, with a little practice, even such new small business people can use flyer makers to design their own flyers as per their needs. But they need to follow some basics of designs. This guide will help you create unique flyer designs.

Adhere To These Basics When Designing Your Flyers

01. Know Why You Need A Flyer

The benefits of using flyer design are many. But you need to figure out how it’s going to help your business. Why it’s important to use the leaflets as your medium to market and advertise your business?

For instance, some business owners may say that cost-cutting is their primary goal for using them. In that case, the emphasis will be on to keep the design and printing costs to a bare minimum.

If the cost is not an issue since you can splurge on marketing, then you may think of spending more on hiring a highly experienced flyer designer.

Similarly, if your intention is to increase the volume of website traffic or the number of social media fans through your flyer campaign, then hiring a flyer designer would be best for you.

And, if driving customer attention may not be your aim behind designing your flyer, then you can look for various ways to – how to create a flyer and make your design. For example, you may be looking for flyer designs that have some FAQs answered for customers about a product or service.

Such a flyer will record the additional information that customers want about a product or service. Its design will be entirely different from the other ones.

Therefore, you should have that one specific purpose in mind behind designing of flyers for your business. When the motive is clear, it helps a lot in creating the design from that perspective. You can even create such leaflets using leaflet maker tool within in minutes.

02. Research Your Target Audience

Before you proceed any further in creating your flyer for business, know who are your target customers. A market is a vast place with a variety of people coming from a wide range of backgrounds to buy products or services. But not all of them are looking for what you are offering in the market.

The fact is that only a smaller section of the population may actually be looking for your products or services. Moreover, they buy things based on their financial, cultural, educational, social, and other backgrounds.

Therefore, finding your target audience is the most important measure you must take when thinking about how to make a flyer. Targeting your customers is all about selling products or services to a specific set of people who need your products.

A target market is the specific group of customers who find your products useful. They are the ones who will grab your market message.

These specific consumers are united by common behaviors, demographics, and characteristics. After you know your ideal customer, you can then design a flyer keeping your audience in mind.But do extensive market research to pinpoint those customers.

You should define your target group precisely. Start researching with broad categories such as millennials or single dads. Then, pick the one right category of customers and then for many subcategories until you finally identify your customer persona.

Here Is How You Should Research The Target Customers

i. Get data that you have about your existing customers.

ii. Analyze the data from your website and social media traffic.

iii. Find out who is your competitors’ target audience.

iv. Know the value of your products or services.

v. Have your target market statement to keep the research on the right track.

Remember that you will pick images, colors, typefaces, and other elements for flyers based on your ideal customer’s backgrounds.

03. Use A Flyer Maker Tool

Since you are a small business owner, you must be looking to cut the cost of creating your multiple flyers. In that case, a free flyer maker comes handy.

But make sure that the flyer maker tool is easy to manage for a new design creator like you. Therefore, use popular free flyer maker tool such as the one offered by Designhill, the leading creative marketplace.

The Designhill flyer maker is an online DIY tool that comes with dozens of new design features that make creating a flyer an easy task for amateurs and even professional designers.

Just add custom texts and elements to the images you picked. Since this tool is based on HTML5 canvas, it helps in creating a flyer instantly. You can also upload your image as a professional flyer template to create a flyer from scratch.

You can access thousands of images and illustrations from the flyer maker tool for free. This helps in saving your time and money in scanning the web for their right images to boost your brand identity. Also, use the tool to create fully customizable flyer designs as per your requirements. You also get full copyright ownership on the design you created.

You Can Design Your Business Flyer In Easy Steps Using The Flyer Maker Tool At Designhill. Just Follow These Steps

i. Click the “Generate Flyer” button to begin with it.

ii. Choose from hundreds of professionally designed layouts.

iii. Upload your own photos or choose from over 1 million stock images.

iv. Fix your images, add stunning filters and edit text.

v. Save and share.

Know also that the Designhill flyer maker tool supports JPEG, PNG, and PDF image file formats.

04. Organize The Details

As a business owner who is using a flyer maker, know that you will incorporate a lot of information in your flyer.

But all the details should be easily accessible while you create a flyer for business. Nothing frustrates a designer more than not getting a piece of information readily during the design process.

For easy access and security, It is advisable to organize the details both in a cloud-based program and your computer.

Take this measure especially when involving a design team to create flyers. To help you out, many programs to sync your desktop to the cloud are available online.

As a good practice, keep the relevant details in a separate folder and give it a title that your team can identify. Then, create more folders inside of the main one.

These Folders Should Hold The Following Information

i. The text or copy that you want to include in the flyer design.

ii. Visuals such as images and icons.

iii. Design drafts that you will be creating many during the design process.

iv. Final files.

Whenever a flyer design idea strikes, you can record that in one of the folders. You can then access details quickly when needed. If you organize the details, you can save a lot of your creative energy and time.

This also helps in keeping your focus on the design work. So, organizing your flyer details is important to keep them handy and reachable.

05. Choose The Right Types Of Flyers

Before creating a flyer, first, choose the right type of flyer for your business promotion. There are plenty of flyer types available to marketers these days.

But not all of them fit for your current marketing needs. So, picking the right flyer type is a crucial step to reaching out to your target audience.

These Are The Common Types Of Flyers

i. Tri-Fold Flyers

Tri-Fold generally come in one sheet but many businesses tri-fold the sheet to categorize the information. But do not mistake them for brochures.

You should pick tri-fold design for businesses such as a restaurant or coffee shop. An advantage of this design is that it helps include a lot of information. You can use restaurant flyer template for creating such flyers as well.

ii. Flyer Ads

Marketers use flyer ads mostly for sale, advertisements, and discounts. The emphasis here is more on promoting a sale. So, the product details, prices, and contact details are highlighted.

iii. Corporate Flyers

This flyer type is specially designed to increase brand awareness. You should use a grid to balance the page elements like logos, photos, products, and contact details in a proportion. Consequently, the flyer design looks clean and simple for better customer engagement.

iv. Image-Centric Flyers

If you are looking forward to organizing a city event for network building, then prefer an image-based flyer to promote the event.

The image centric flyers have a big image that takes the viewer to the event metally. The image fires up the imagination of viewers about what they are going to experience at the event and encourages them to join it.

Also read: Top 20 Flyer Design Ideas For Event Marketing

v. Digital Flyers

Besides print ones, most businesses use digital flyers also to market their brands. These digital counterparts target audiences on mobile devices, tablets, and computers. You can deliver a digital flyer to potential customers by email, social media, and websites instantly to the global audience.

vi. Door Handle Flyers

This flyer has a hole at the top to hang it on the doorknob of shopping areas, business complexes, and even homes. An advantage of such designs is that you can put information in front of your potential customers.

vii. Pamphlets

Pamphlets are also a type of flyers for mass distribution. You can insert them inside newspapers for distribution.

Printed on regular quality paper, pamphlets are ideal solutions for brand awareness at a very low marketing cost. You can also create your own pamphlets using a pamphlet maker tool.

viii. Response Flyers

When the intention is just to let the customers know more about your products or services, create a response flyer. Create response flyers to answer customer’s FAQs, and to give brand details.

By providing them to the customers, you help them make informed buying decisions. Give the flyer inside of a shopping place to target customers who have shown their interest in your product or service.

While picking the right flyer size, you will also be considering the paper thickness, and paper finish. So, keep your budget in mind while choosing the paper size so that the overall cost does not exceed.

06. Know What To Include

A flyer has a lot of details, especially if it is a text-based design. But what precise information should your flyer include to make the marketing material more useful? Remember that the potential customer must get all the important details at a glance. So, place each information based on its merit for the reader.

Here Is What You Should Do

i. Ensure A Catchy Headline

For instance, while using Volunteer flyer templates, an attractive and enticing headline is the key to make the recipient of the flyer read the content to the end. Create a headline that gives the customer a reason to spend time on reading the rest of the content.

Therefore, write something that poses a question before the consumer. Most of the promotional flyers, for instance, have enticing headlines that say, ‘buy one, get one free’.

ii. Incorporate Your Company Logo

Make sure that your company logo is instantly visible at the top corner to catch the eye. But the logo should appear as a clean design that is visible from a good distance.

iii. Use Bullet Points

Do not provide information in a big chunk of text. Readers do not like to put their eyes under stress when going through such a congested text. Instead, distribute your information in bullet points. The consumer can immediately scan the details of a product or service. In this way, the reader can grab the details quickly.

iv. Separate One Detail From The Other

Each set of information should be instantly visible to the customer on your flyer. To ensure that, separate each set of information by creating borders around it. In this way, you can present the information in a more organized and catchy way.

v. Keep The Information Simple

People do not have time to figure out what exactly your flyer wishes to convey. So, present the details of your products or services in the simplest possible way. Later on, you can provide more details on phone or personally when the interested consumer shows interest in buying your products.

vi. Give Contact Details

Make sure that flyers have your company’s contact information. Include your email address, phone number, website, physical shop number, and location, etc in the design. How about creating a tear-of flyer?

Such a flyer design has an attached small slip of paper that have the contact information. People can tear off this paper from the flyer to keep the contact details.

vii. Have Customer Testimonials

A trick to lure customers is to include testimonials from your satisfied customers to win the readers’ trust. Give one or two testimonials that summarise the quality of your offerings in the market.

viii. Do Not Forget A Call To Action

At the bottom of your flyer sheet, write something compelling and enticing to the reader. Such call-to-action encourages customers to try your services or products at least once. In the case of the digital flyer, create the CTA button that looks attractive and unique.

07. Pick The Right Size

The right size of your flyer also matters a lot for brand promotion purpose. A flyer size should ideally be picked based on the amount of information and, text and images you need to deliver. For instance, if you want to show a price list only, then a small flyer size is ideal and a big size is a waste of money.

Similarly, if you have a larger amount of crucial information, then choose the biggest flyer size. Therefore, pick the right size that justifies the amount of details you need to convey.

Flyer designs are available in many sizes.

These Are The Commonly Used Sizes

i. A7 (105 x 74 mm): Use this size when you want to print a lot of them. You can compress your message to a small space.

ii. A6 (148 x 105 mm): Choose this size for a flyer that you can hand out locally in the streets and markets or want to leave stacks in the shops.

iii. A5 (210 x 148 mm): This flyer size is ideal for sales and special events as these can easily fit into a customer’s small bag.

iv. A4 (210 x 297 mm): Prefer this size to deliver information at the sideline of trade shows, conferences, and exhibition.

v. A3 (297 x 420 mm): If you intend to create flyers for indoor placement, then think providing the information in this size.

vi. DL (99 x 210 mm): Give preference to this flyer size to show your product price list and restaurant menus.

08. Use The Right Type Of Paper

The printing paper for flyers comes in a variety of grades and thickness, which is known as grammage. A grammage is the indicates a paper density. Many paper thickness weights are available to the flyer marketers today. Which one of them is the best paper?

Well, that depends on your purpose of creating flyers, and your target customers.

For example, a 135 gsm [ grammage] paper, is ideal for advertisement flyers. These are lightweight sheets of papers, and, therefore, considered mostly for the ease of mass distribution.

But these very thin papers carry enough thickness for good printing. Use this grammage paper when you must keep the costs low.

If you intend to create pamphlets or flyers for tradeshows, then prefer a 170 gsm paper flyer, known also as a business flyer.

Many customers prefer this paper thickness to create a flyer for trade shows. This gsm paper is two times thicker than printing paper. Because of the thickness, the paper gives a professional look to a flyer.

In case you run hospitality or retail business, chose the 250 gsm paper for flyers. This paper is three times thicker than printing paper. The paper looks robust and feels nice. Choose this paper if you are in luxury business.

But are you looking to create a flyer that people do not throw away and instead keep them for their thickness of paper and luxurious feel?

Then 400 gsm paper is an ideal choice. These are the thickest papers and can be compared with the postcard thickness. People generally like to keep such a luxurious paper with them for a long time.

09. Pick The Right Paper Finish

Now that you have chosen the best type of paper for your flyer, it is time to pick the paper finish. Which finish is ideal for your type of flyer to make it look great in print? That depends on the type of content you use to give information.

Here Is How To Choose Paper Finish Based On The Flyer Type

i. Visuals-Based Flyers

If your flyer design is based mostly on visuals and less on text, then use gloss paper finish. This type is ideal to give a shiny finish, which makes images look great and high-quality.

The text content also can be read easily. The gloss of the paper helps in catching the customers’ attention. It makes a lasting good impression of your products or services on customers.

ii. Text-Based Flyers

In case your flyer design consist of more text and lesser visuals, opt for matt finish. This finish is an ideal choice to make your text readable without the distraction created by a shiny reflection. To make the text popup, choose the right colors that look remarkable with a matt finish.

iii. Luxury Visuals

Pick high gloss paper finish to bring your visuals to life. This finish is perfect to give your visuals a touch of luxury and vibrancy.

iv. Scribbling Some Content

Would you like customers to write something on your flyer? For instance, you may ask customers to give their personal information in a flyer, which works as a form.

In that case, you should use the uncoated paper finish on which customers or you can write. This finish is a good choice for your trade show where your salesperson can write a phone number on the flyer paper for the customers.

Now, which paperweight or gsm can go well with these paper finishes? Not every paperweight can be picked for all the above-mentioned finishes. Still, 250 gsm type of paper can be ideally used for all the four finishes.

10. Use Templates Perfectly

The use of flyer templates is common amongst business owners when they want to create a flyer on their own at a very low cost. But even designers use templates to save their time.

Here Is What You Should Ensure When Using Templates To Create Flyers

i. Make an outline of the content you need to include in your flyer design.

ii. Fill the information in the flyer template. Adjust the template for greater or smaller information accordingly to customize the design.

iii. Pay attention to adding or changing the visuals in the template in case the flyer is an image-based design. You should also ensure a good quality of visuals for printing. So, make sure that the DPI is at least 300.

iv. Change the colors and typefaces until you find the ones that suit your brand. Consult your brand’s style guide to pick the right colors. Choose other branding elements like shapes, visuals, and backgrounds.

v. Insert your company logo at the right place on the flyer.

vi. The template also helps you pick the right flyer size as you adjust it for the sizes.

vii. Make sure that you proofread the finalized design to spot errors in the text.

viii. Then, save the design as PDF and with bleed marks for the printer.

11. Remove Clutter From The Design

Your customers do not like to be overwhelmed even when getting your flyer. If they find it a confusing and intimidating design, they are likely to immediately throw it in a nearby dustbin.

Since flyers mostly come in a smaller size, the designer tries to crowd the space with plenty of visuals and text information. It results in the overuse of images and colors.

So, Pay Heed To These Crucial Tips To Eliminate Clutter

i. Keep Only Essential Elements

Make sure that your flyer easily conveys the information. You should eliminate all the additional elements of colors, text, etc that are not required. Even if a tiny element is not that much required, remove it.

If the images you chose are not delivering the message, you should avoid them. Just keep the most important element and information on the flyer. So, less is more here.

ii. Create A Breathing Space

A professional designer knows how to create a vacant space between the two elements even if the flyer size is smaller. Such a negative space soothes the reader’s eyes and keeps customers engage with the flyer content.

iii. Focus On Your Purpose

A better way to eliminate the visual and text clutter is to consider your purpose of flyers. In this way, you will know which element is likely to distract customers.

12. Do Not Use Too Much Uppercase Letters

This is one mistake that most businesses make in creating their designs. They use plenty of uppercase letters to provide information.

Many such flyers have the headlines, subheads and body text as well in uppercase letters. But customers do not appreciate this effort. They may take such a design as amateurish and reflective of low quality products or services.

Instead, use a mix of uppercase and small case letters for a visual contrast. The headline and subheads can be in all uppercase letters. But give the rest of the information in smaller case so that it can be read easily against the capital letter backgrounds.

13. Choose The Right Colors

Colors evoke our emotions. Therefore, use brand colors to convey a message to the target customers. So, your flyers should have the colors that your websites, and other marketing materials already has for consistency.

Another point to note here is that while picking the right colors for flyers, consider if the flyer is for print or digital distribution.

For printable designs, CMYK colors, which stands for “Cyan Magenta Yellow Black”. Most printers use CMYK colors.

For digital flyers, know that most computer screens, mobile screens, TV screens, use the RGB [Red, Green, Brown] colors. These screens use pixels which have red, green, and brown subpixels.

Remember that printers will ask for your flyer design files to be in CMYK. If you have downloaded the RGB file into PDF, convert it to CMYK colorspace before sending it to printing. However, some new printing companies can automatically do the conversion. Still it is best to send them in the CMYK.

14. Consider Difference Between Print And Digital Flyers

Now, here are some technical things to consider. Know that print and digital flyers are not the same. These cannot be substituted for each other. A printed flyer cannot be used as a digital one and vice versa. So, keep the difference between the two in mind.

Print Flyers

i. You are designing a flyer that you will print.

ii. You can insert more information per inch on the paper.

iii. A printer will use CMYK [Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black] colors.

iv. There are 300 dots per inch resolution in a photograph used in a print.

v. These flyers can be stored in EPS, Ai, Ps, JPG, TIFF, and PDF.

Digital Flyers

i. In digital flyers, you give less information per inch as compared to their print counterparts.

ii. To create the screen image of a flyer, your computer screen uses RGB [Red, Green, and Blue] colors only.

iii. For digital, you get only 72 dots per inch. So, make sure that the correct resolution of the photograph is used.

iv. You can store these designs in JPG, PDF, PNG, and GIF.

15. When Sending A Flyer To Print

After you have designed a flyer with all of its aspects well covered, it is now the time to send it to a printer. But do not take this step lightly. You can choose to print using your laser printer. That will surely lower your costs. However, you may be compromising a lot on the printing quality.

So, think of sending your flyers to a professional printer. After all, you put so much effort in creating the design. So, ensure a high quality printing result.

When sending the design to a professional printer, consult the printer before sending any files. The printer will guide you how to provide files in the right way to them.

You should also ask them if they use the kind of paper you want for your flyer. Usually, printers use a thin paper that has a glossy finish. They can suggest the right paper for your type of flyers.

Also, provide them the information regarding the file size and bleed marks. Tell which fonts you used in the design. Share all the other information that you have or they ask for printing your type of flyers.

So, these are the vital tips you must consider to create an impressive flyer design that converts people into customers. After you have finalized the design, check if it is good enough to convey your brand message or fulfill its purpose.

Wrapping Up

Flyers are the most cost-effective marketing means for small businesses. But business owners should carefully create a flyer for their target audience. Many aspects of making a flyer such as researching the target customers, markets, choosing the right type for your brand, using a flyer maker in the right way, picking the right colors, etc must be considered. Even the right flyer size, paper and paper-finish matters in making a lasting impression on customers.

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