The fifth commandment of marketing: You will not use cut and paste techniques in the style of Blue Peter
5. You will not use Blue Peter-style cut-and-paste techniques for flyers.
As a kid, I marveled at the skill of Peter Duncan, Caron Keating, and Yvette Fielding, learning how to grow sun flowers, cook pancakes, and build a Tracy Island out of cling wrap, toilet paper rolls, and empty wash bottles. But unfortunately these skills are not helping me in my current marketing career. To my dismay, when I started working in the industry, I soon found that clients and prospects weren’t particularly impressed with my glitter glue and laminating skills.
When creating effective marketing materials, you need to remember that your audience will not be as generous as your mother. By following a few simple rules, your guarantee will get people talking and hopefully acting the way you want them to.
When you’re creating your material, you need to remember that you have a limited amount of time to grab someone’s attention. The average amount of attention your flyer will get is five seconds, unless you instantly engage with the reader. It has also been discovered, after some research with a fancy camera kit, that the human eye never looks at the top of a page first; it always jumps two-thirds down, so make sure your strongest message is there.
Any correspondence sent from your company should look as professional as possible. I know this sounds like a given, but unfortunately many people feel that it is more important to send something than to spend the time the literature deserves. A good piece of marketing material will follow your company’s brand guidelines, style guide, include relevant images that reflect business activities, and provide important summary information. The literature should provide enough information to make the prospect want to request more information, provide easy-to-use contact details, and a call to action. A call to action is an instruction to the reader, it should encourage them to call you, send you an email or visit your website for more information.
When deciding on the look of your brochure, you want to make sure it ties in with any other literature your company has to give a cohesive feel, and also make sure there are no elements that distract the reader from the key message, such as an outline. bright colors or an inappropriate image. You have to remember who you’re targeting: if you want to speak to professional bodies, your literature needs to have a corporate feel, and if you want to speak to students, you need to make sure you don’t come across as too stuffy!
I must go now, as I am at a crucial stage in the construction of my Tardis Birdbox, the PVA glue seems to have dried, but I hope I have been of some help.
Rebeca