Archive for September, 2011

Flyers are perfect for getting a simple message directly to customers and getting them to act. While flyers can be effectively used to build brands and inform customers of latest developments, they are especially good for advertising short-term special offers and creating a spike in interest and orders. This is because the lifespan of a flyer is usually quite short-lived. It is delivered, picked-up, read and processed within a short period of time. However, the presence of an offer or exclusive discount not only encourages immediate action, it increases the chance of the flyer being kept until the time of purchase.

Why include a special offer on your flyer?

Apart from increasing instant response rates (as limited time offers increase sales) and extending the lifespan of flyer, there are other reasons to include a special offer. Even if the offer is not ultimately redeemed, the increased lifespan of the flyer can increase the amount of engagement with the advert and increase brand recognition and the likelihood of a sales taking place in the future. Again, even if the offer is not redeemed the very act of providing a discount gives a strong message that you are conscious of price and always working on behalf of the customer – even if they are interested in a different product/service from that advertised. A good special offer also helps you to measure response rates. Simply by collecting the redeemed offers gives you a metric by which to measure the success and benefits of a campaign – although it should not be the only thing you consider when measuring the ultimate success of a campaign. If possible, try to collect customer details when they redeem the offer as this will help you monitor which group responded best to the discount and can also build up a database for future marketing.

Which is the right special offer to use on your flyer?

A special offer alone is not enough. It has to the be the right offer in order to illicit a response from the target audience. You need to put yourselves in the shoes of your buyer – what are the barriers to you purchasing a product? What would encourage you to spend on an item? Here are some examples.

Straight discount or exclusive price.
A simple percentage discount or exclusive price is great as long as it is not too exclusive to a very select product, comes with too many terms, or is not sufficient to drop the price below that of a well known competitor. In this age of discounts, a 5% or 10% off is often not enough to impress a customer so it can pay to be more creative with what you offer.

Exclusive package.
Packaging up products/services for an exclusive price is an excellent way to create an original offer on your flyer design, which catches the attention and makes shopping easier for your customer. It can also be tuned to events or time of the year – ‘All you need for your Summer BBQ’, ‘Winter Warmer Package’ . . . Just make sure that the products selected are naturally complementary.

Free Gift.
Giving your customer a free gift is a great way to show them how much you appreciate their business. However be careful in selecting the freebie. It must be something desirable, universal to everyone and of a good quality – not just a way to shift a bad selling item which you have too much of.

Free Samples.
Try before you buy. Being open about customers trialing a new product/service before purchase is great – especially when you can get them hooked on it easily or you are trying to push something new. However free samples often need to be supported with further discounts and advertising to make sure customers return to where it came from to repurchase. You might also need to control the samples to make sure that customers cannot survive on samples alone.

New Customer Discount.
A loyal repeat customer can be worth their weight in gold – so it can be worth sacrificing profit or even losing money on that important first sale. Think about the chances of return custom and life-time value of a customer before being overly generous on new customers. Also be aware that being so generous to new customers can be off-putting to those who are already loyal to you but are not often rewarded. They may well become disloyal in pursuit of someone else’s new customer discount. New customer discounts are also great to encourage people to sample a product/service they may be nervous or uncertain about.

Discount Tied to Spend
Spend £100 and get 10% discount. These types of offers are loved by businesses because they can actually generate money by talking customers up, rather than losing revenue. Just be careful how this fits in with your product/service selection and pricing. If you have a low margin item at £105 – you could end up with lots of sales and no profit.

Free Delivery
The cost of delivery is one extra that a customer hates – as it is often not budgeted for beforehand and is unknown until time to pay. Therefore removing the delivery cost can instantly remove a psychological barrier to purchasing – especially online.

Flyer Design Company – Add Design are graphic designers based in Suffolk offering a full selection of graphic design services to customers throughout the UK and worldwide.

In itself, having a logo is not the same thing as having a brand for a company. Although the logo is an important part, a brand is something much greater than just an icon. It includes the colours, the style, and the personality of the company. The aim of a good brand; to differentiate your company from others in the same marketplace and to represent qualities which your target market will find innately appealing. All other things being equal, a well branded company is much more likely to succeed in winning customers that a businesses with a weak or confused brand.

Here is a simple example to illustrate the point. Take two identical pairs of shorts with an identical price and put them in the same shop. Now if you add the Nike logo to one of them, you will find sales of the Nike pair will far outstrip the other. This is not just because of the logo, it is for what the logo represents to the buyer (higher quality, better engineering, better materials), and what the buyer believes the logo will represent to others when the shorts are worn (that s/he is wealthier, more professional, trendier etc.)

Creating a brand is not just for large companies, it is also vital for smaller businesses – especially if they are operating in a crowded marketplace. By becoming recognisable to customers and reinforcing positive values, the chances of winning new business and attracting repeat custom is greatly increased.

Creating a new brand for small & medium sized companies.

Many new businesses ask us to help them create a brand. It often starts with a logo design, but then takes the key logo qualities and expands them to a distinctive look, feel and tone of voice which ties together all the promotional material. Although every branding project is slightly different depending on the individual demands of the customer, here are the typical elements of a branding project.

Business Logo Design

The logo design will be the absolute cornerstone of a brand. It will determine the shapes, colours and characteristics which will then be expanded across all the company’s promotional material. All our logo design packages start with the creation of a strong design brief. By understanding as much as we can about the business and the target customers, we can ensure that the concepts we create will be suitable for the way the company needs to engage with its audience.
However, although we can advise, it is always our client who chooses the logo concept from our selection of ideas which they would like to take forward in development. While it is very important that the brand will appeal to target customers, it also has to be a logo design which the client themselves likes, believes in and is proud to use to represent themselves.

Business Stationery Design

The business stationery is often the first opportunity we have to expand the chosen logo into a wider design which will come to characterise the overall brand. The company letterheads, compliment slips and business cards do not allow much space or potential for text, but they all start as plain white sheets so allow plenty of space for the colours and shapes which will come to represent the brand. In terms of style, it is often the stationery which forms the bridge between the logo design and the broader design of brochures, flyers and other promotional material.

The stationery is also the time to think about a ‘tag line’ – a short and simple statement which tells potential customers instantly about what you do. The choice of words in describing your business can be as important as any element of the design in forming a brand.

Marketing Material

Now that the logo and colour schemes are largely determined, it is time to start selling the brand and the business to potential customers. In engaging new clients and establishing a brand, the choice of marketing material to use can be just as important as the message and design itself. If the brand is intended to be young, funky and fresh – then the choice of traditional A5 flyers might not be right for the brand. Likewise, if you need to convey values of trust, stability and tradition then choosing unusual marketing approaches can do more harm than good.

Alongside the choice of format, the design, the message and the tone of the text for your marketing material will all ultimately contribute to the brand. On each piece of marketing, it is important to consider all of these elements together as part of a greater whole. They should all be working together to create a strong message and an effective piece of marketing. Remember that a great brand is not all about strict rules on what should and shouldn’t be done. It is about a spirit and recognition which holds everything together.

Add Design can assist you in all aspects of developing an effective company brand. From professional logo design, to business stationery design, flyers and leaflets and business brochures and catalogues, we offer a full range of cost effective graphic design services.

We design promotional leaflets for all kinds of businesses and purposes – from launching new products to hitting customers with exclusive discounts. However, one use of leaflets which always provides our graphic designers with a unique challenge is the creation of menus and price lists. Menus have to be logically layed-out and easy to read but in most cases they also have to be effective in building the brand and encouraging sales. A fine balance therefore has to be struck between information and design. If you let the design elements get out of control then your menu can be difficult to read and displeasing to the eye. If information overrules then it can be dry and not engaging.

Here are our leaflet graphic design tips for creating an effective promotional menus or pricelist.

Selecting the right leaflet type

We offer a large selection of leaflet types – from a single fold (A4 folded to A5 size – 4 pages), up to four folds (10 pages). These come in all different sizes from 110mm square up to A4 size. It is worth considering which leaflet design option will match the information and your budget the best. Having the correct amount of information on each panel is essential to make sure the leaflet design doesn’t look crammed, or too spacious. Many customers choose to send us the information first, so we can advise on the best size and shape for the job.

Get the essence of the brand

With so much information to include on your leaflet, there is often limited space for design. Therefore it is important to capture the essence of the brand in the space available. This will make sure that a customer instantly recognises who the menu or price list belongs to. Using designs which incorporate the logo design, or the corporate colours, or photographs of the premises instantly tells the customer who you are without impeding too much on the information. The graphic design also wants to ‘hold together’ all the pages of information under the same brand – so even if the services or products differ from page to page, there is a common thread holding the entire leaflet together.

The right amount of information

Think carefully about your audience and the amount of information they need to make an educated decision. If, for example, you are an Indian Restaurant then a short description of each dish might be essential to help people decide, or perhaps a ‘hotness’ scale to make sure that your customer gets a product they are happy with. Likewise, for a beauty salon stating the important differences between treatments is likely to guide a reader’s decision. Numerous studies have shown that too much choice is actually off-putting to potential customers who will decide not to buy rather than make a purchase they are uncertain about.

Using headings and sub-headings.

It is essential to divide your information up logically using headings. This allows readers to instantly find the area which interests them, and also breaks up the wall of information – making the leaflet less daunting to engage with. Always consider your audience when choosing how to divide your information. Do you clients typically shop by brandname, product type, price, age/gender, specification.

Use pictures, logos and brandnames

Drawing people to picking up and reading a menu or pricelist can be difficult when there is only a page of text. Using well chosen small pictures, recognisable logos and brandnames within the information is a great way to draw people in. If I drive a BMW and see the BMW logo on a page (no matter how small) then I am unconsciously drawn to it as I will feel it has relevance. Consider what names, logos and pictures would be best at pulling your target audiences attention and use them to divide up the information.

Leaflet Design – Add Design specialise in leaflet design, flyer design, brochure design, logo design and business stationery design. Visit our web site to view our range of competitively priced, graphic design packages which include bespoke design work, high quality printing and UK delivery. We also deliver to European and international addresses for a small additional fee.