Guide To Leaflets!

What is a leaflet?

A leaflet is a small glossy advertisement in the form of a booklet. It usually has a few pages to it. Not as many as a book but not as few as a flyer.

Who are they aimed at?
The best way to write a leaflet is so that nobody feels left out who you would want to come to the place it’s about. This includes kids who would have to use ‘pester power’ to ask parents to take them. Keep language simple but not so simple that the adult audience feels talked down to. Keep things clean. Try to get a tone of where you’re writing about in the leaflet itself.

Of course some places are more grown-up. For those, use more grown-up language & pass them out like flyers at the appropriate places (night clubs outside of unis for example). Don’t leave these scattered about in mixed age group spaces please!

When should they be distributed?

Most places that flyers are about are in 2 groups: majority in summer (tourist destinations), some others at around Christmas time. So if you have a small business that can only afford to produce a few flyers, think about if it’s a small theatre which shows pantos or if it’s an outdoor space which it’s fun to go to in the summer hols!

As your business takes off, the best thing is to distribute a new leaflet every season. Maybe even think about ‘off peak’ times as well. Appeal to adults or pre-schoolers when kids are at school? Half-term deals? Consider minor holidays too, like harvest time & Easter.

Where are they distributed?

In appropriate places, at hotels and at tourist information centres. It might seem to be very cheeky to drop these off at a rival business, but really consider whether it is a rival business or one which can go hand-in-hand with your own. If it’s the second one, maybe ask if you can swap leaflets! Maybe someone on holiday will want to go to a pool one day, a seal sanctuary the next, an aquarium after that. You can also decide to all club together & make a ‘welcome to our town’ leaflet!

They can also be left on buses.

Hotels are a good place to leave them as people who are on holiday will be new to the area & not sure what is available (apart from the beach). British seaside towns need a ‘back up plan’ in case of typically unpredictable weather!

Why Do People Collect Them?

People collect leaflets to plan holidays & day trips around. People collect leaflets of places they have been so that they can make scrap books, add them to their albums & remember that trip they took! Dreamers & artists might even collect ones of places they never even went to, your venue could become their daydream!

How To Make a Leaflet?
Get out your camera & take pictures of people enjoying your establishment (ask permission first!). Then go to your office’s PC and write up a description of the place! Scan in the photographs so you have copies of them on your page then print it all out onto glossy pages. Fold this like a booklet or an overly-elaborate Christmas card (the kind granny still sends!)