How to Improve Your Promotional Flyers

You want to promote an upcoming event, so you create a flyer that you think will do the job—something that not simply informs but promotes, and the flyer fails to do so. Has this happened to you?

Recently a friend gave me a flyer promoting an upcoming event that she and some of her friends had organized. The good news was that a flyer existed, and at least one could see that the event was coming up.

The bad news, unfortunately, was that the flyer didn’t do much else. It didn’t say how much the event cost, or who was putting it on. It gave a location, but it was unclear whether the address was a house or an office building. (If the event was to be held in an office building, and the meeting was after hours, what about any steps to sign in with security?) It gave only a vague idea of what to expect.

A flyer is an example of a document that is so easy to create, everybody does—and that can be an issue. A poorly-created flyer is just as bad as one that never gets distributed.

The reader doesn’t know what’s happening, or why he or she would want to participate in the event being advertised.

Follow these tips to make your flyers more effective:

• Make sure your flyer answers the basic questions of who, what, where, when, why, and how.
• Cite the benefits someone gets from attending your event.
• Provide other pertinent information (RSVP information, costs (if any), dealing with security/parking issues, and so on).
• Provide a map of the location if possible.
• Include the name and information for the contact person.
• Include a web site URL, if any.

Consider these tips the next time you create a flyer.