How to Maximize Your Flyer’s Copywriting
Continuing along the subject of my last post about creating an effective flyer. To create a flyer with full impact, the design and the copywriting need to work cohesively to create an effective marketing tool. Although the visual design might be the attention getter of the viewer, designers who don’t pay attention to the text on a flyer are missing out on a valuable opportunity. How can you maximize your flyer’s copywriting to produce an overall design that's even more compelling? Let’s go over several methods:
1. Develop a Content Strategy
Before you start placing your copy into your flyer design, it’s wise to do some strategizing. What information is essential? What’s nice to have if you end up with extra room? What would just be taking up valuable space unnecessarily? Giving some time to decide your copywriting ideas and identify your essential pieces of information will pay dividends by getting eyes on your design. Because, as flyers go, less is usually more. The objective is to first grab the attention of your audience, then tell them what they need to know in a straightforward way that’s easy to see and understand — so you don’t want your flyer looking so busy or information-packed that it overwhelms viewers.
Bonus Tip: Still confused about what information to place into your flyer? Rip a page from Journalism 101 and begin by answering five simple questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why?
This flyer for a music event does just that, stripping down its content to only the essentials: the date, location, bands performing, time, and cost.
2. Organize & Prioritize
Once you determine what information is essential to include in the design, it’s time to organize it in a way that’s easy to view. This idea is often referred to as typographic hierarchy, which, in this context, is simply arranging the textual parts of your flyer in such a way that viewers know, at a glance, what information is most important and where to find additional information.
Your can organize and highlight your flyer’s copy in many different ways. Some options include:
font size
font weight and style (bold, italic, etc.)
bullet points
visual cues (underlining, arrows, ribbons/banners, etc.)
text boxes or blocks of color
proximity (placing related items closer together)
alignment
Bonus Tip: Typographic hierarchy is all about organizing your most important information. So whatever the most important piece of text is on your flyer — perhaps an event title, a company name, or a promotion or discount — it should generally be the largest in size and/or have the most visual weight. And since we read from left to right and top to bottom, placing it near the top of your layout will make that key content more visible.
3. Make the Purpose Clear
Even though we’ve mentioned how versatile flyers are, each design will have a specific purpose or message. Maybe your organization is putting on a free concert for the community and you want to get the word out. Whatever it is, make that highly visible — don’t force viewers to scour some fine print to find the main message of your flyer. The more clearly you say through your copywriting (and the less work your audience has to do to find your message), the more likely you’ll be to get a good response.
Bonus Tip: Using your flyer to offer your audience some kind of incentive will only boost your chances of achieving your goals. Words like “free,” “discount,” or “X% off” are like magnets; use them in a prominent place on your flyer to help attract your audience.
In closing, remember that your tips for maximizing your flyer's copywriting are to: develop a content strategy, organize and prioritize, and make the purpose clear. These guidelines are simple rules to use, but also can be expounded upon and even sometimes broken to extend one's creative boundaries. Practicing these simple step continually have helped me through my years as a designer, and I am sure they will help you as well.
Thank you for reading!
For more pointers, check out my other posts on design such as"How to Create an Effective Flyer" and more.
Want more on this topic?
It is my hope my blog post has been a helpful resource and will give you the guidelines you need to create a successful flyer. Also, be sure to look through design websites such as Canva. It offers even more examples of creative designs that showcase 50 flyers and explains why they work so well.
Credit: Written and Updated by Jonathan Irving of JI Designs LLC on 01/16/21. Some of this post was inspired by Canva.