The SimpleFlier
(How to use a simple
flier as a great promotional tool.)
Outside of the World-Wide Web, there aren't a lot of marketing tools that cost only pennies, can be created or customized almost instantly, and can impart a marketing message to people on the move. So, the flier may be in a class by itself. It's a marketing tool that can be done with nearly zero investment in high-technology.
I have a particular soft spot for fliers, because they were the first marketing tool I used when I started my first sales business many years ago. It was more than a dozen years before I finally made it into the Yellow Pages! and... I still use them today.
At their simplest, fliers can be just a few words hand-written with a marking pen (or a crayon!) At their most complex, with professional typesetting & design and four-color printing (and, obviously, with significant costs in both time and money).
In most cases, you'll be able to do a very serviceable flier on your computer in a word processor or page layout program, and a laser or inkjet printer. If the message is simple, it might only take five or ten minutes to design & write the flier, lay it out and print the "master copy.".
Simple fliers like these are very versatile. They can be posted on bulletin boards and store windows, slipped under doors or onto door handles, distributed to passers-by, or mailed. If you think about it, you can probably think of an easy 100 more ways too.
THUMB-RIDER'S GUIDE TO GREAT FLIERS
You might think there aren't any marketing lessons to be learned on a hitchhiking trip—and you'd be wrong!
In 1956, as a 18 year-old scrawny kid, I spent the summer hitching across the US. I traveled all over, selling my hand-crafted jewelry as I went, and seeing this great country... I learned that I had to market myself to people speeding by on the highway. Why should they want to interrupt their trip to spend some time with that scraggly-looking kid standing out on the shoulder of the road?
One of the ways I accomplished this was by creating hand-made signs that could be easily read at highway speeds. I had black and red markers, and cardboard was easy to find. I kept the message simple, often just one or two words. I made the letters as large as possible, often ten to twelve inches high—and I outlined the black letters, inside and out, with red to make them even more visible.
In short, I made flier headlines.
Similarly, if you're trying to catch people's attention as they're walking by, you need to have a headline that's big, clear, and visible. It has to attract attention both through its message, and the way that message is displayed. You may not need a two-color, foot-high headline that people can read at highway speeds, but you might need a two-inch headline that can be read easily at three to five miles an hour, as people walk by in a hurry. (Hint: keep the number of words to under a dozen or so... people will not take the time to read more than this as they pass by.)
There were other marketing lessons in that hitchhiking trip, as well.
Target marketing, for instance. I learned quickly that if I was several hundred miles from my destination, I wasn't likely to get a ride straight through, and if my sign had the far away destination, I'd be out there a very long time. I soon understood that if I made a sign for the next major city or junction of another highway, say, 100-150 miles away, the odds greatly increased that either I'd get a ride at least that far, or someone would take me a hundred miles or so, and they could feel like they were a real help. And for even more precise targeting, on local roads where speeds were slower, I had a small sign with a hand-draw picture of someone in the truck-bed of a pickup truck and the letters "OK!" Since a lot of people in the West and Midwest drove pickup trucks, I got a lot of rides I wouldn't have otherwise gotten, including some occasions where other thumber-riders were ahead of me, and the trucks just passed them by, but stopped to let me in...
Understand, I don't recommend hitchhiking. I'm a lot older and much more careful now, and conditions are different today. But back then, it was the best way I could find to see the country, make a little money, and it helped formulate the concepts that led me to comprehend affordable, effective marketing strategies and materials. And I'm not the least bit sorry I had that experience.
Another lesson: When I was somewhere and needing some additional cash, I would make a modest-sized sign advertising that I was selling "genuine hand-crafted sterling-silver jewelry." I found that with my sign and lots of passersby, was all I needed to earn the cash to continue on my trip.
Great marketing lessons all!
Ways to make YOUR flier stand out from the crowded masses.
There are lots of ways to make a flier stand out on a crowded bulletin board or otherwise increase its effectiveness, and most of those ways don't cost much.
Some ideas:
Include a leave-behind: a few tear-off's or a stack of business cards in a pocket. That way people can act later instead of having to remember to write down the info (tip: don't just include a phone number on the tear-off; also include a few words to remind the prospect of the offer)
Use colored paper or specialty paper with an imprinted image: (appropriate to your offer) you'd be amazed at the variety of custom papers you can get at the better copy shops (or, if you're running a significant quantity, from the likes of Quill or Paper Direct and many others.)
Add spot color: (there are color photocopy machines) remember those handmade two-color hitchhiking signs I talked about?
Try an unusual shape: for instance, if you cut a sheet of paper into two triangles, you have two fliers: one pointing up and one pointing down.
Use an appropriate special display typeface: I used to teach a college class called "Public Speaking for the Terrified"; To promote the class, I used a headline typeface called 'Igloo Laser', dripping with icicles on my fliers.
Hang the flier at an unusual angle: this gets noticed, catching the eye as somehow different.
Make a border: try mounting the flier on a slightly larger piece of paper of a different color. (if it's good enough for Ansel Adams, it's sure is good enough for me!)
There are many more ways that a creative mind like yours can come up with too... use your imagination, and put to use, this most effective and least expensive tool for the business person.
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