In a world dominated by social media and TV ads, printed materials such as marketing leaflets are often overlooked and branded as old-fashioned or ineffective.
However, using leaflets to market your business or product has many advantages. When done correctly, leaflets are visually appealing and contain helpful information about your product or service.
In this blog, we look at the advantages and disadvantages of leaflets for advertising.
The Advantages of Leaflets
They’re Cost-Effective
Posting leaflets through people’s doors is a popular way to promote your brand because it’s cost-effective.
Digital alternatives, such as paid ads, can cost thousands of pounds per month and carry the extra risk of not returning on your investment.
Leaflets are significantly cheaper to produce than investing in a digital marketing strategy and don’t cost as much to distribute to potential customers — especially when using offset printing for large printing quantities (where ink is transferred to a rubber cylinder before printing onto the paper as it passes through).
The ability to design your leaflets for free on a computer and have them printed using a Web2print service eliminates the need to buy expensive printers, reducing the cost even further.
They Feature a Lot of Information
Unlike digital marketing, there are no word count or character limit restrictions with leaflets. You can fill leaflets with as much information as you need within a visually pleasing layout.
A leaflet can include information about the product, service or business you’re advertising, a company logo, contact information and images.
When designing your leaflet, consider including only necessary information and finding the right balance between adding the needed information and not making the leaflet text-heavy.
The text should be to the point and bullet-pointed with headers, making it easier to read. Visit our dedicated blog on some of the most beautifully designed leaflets to get your creative juices flowing.
They’re Visually Pleasing
A leaflet needs to grab the attention of its readers by being colourful, including images and having eye-catching headers.
Leaflets can come in a range of shapes and sizes and don’t always have to be a traditional square or rectangle. This flexibility can influence the layout of your content and create a leaflet that’s easy to read and to the point.
They’re Easy To Read
During the leaflet design process, many marketers only add essential information for potential customers to know about the business or product.
The text must also hook the reader, so it should be clear and in an easy-to-read font.
As a leaflet is made to attract consumers and make them interested in the business or product, it should be visual and straight to the point.
You Can Target Specific Demographics
When distributing leaflets, the most common way is posting them through letterboxes or handing them out in busy areas.
This strategy is a great and cost-effective way to target your local demographics. Even digital marketing may not be able to target everyone locally.
You can distribute leaflets in areas with a higher percentage of your target market. For example, if you're opening a new shop, visiting a shopping centre and distributing leaflets will quickly hit your ideal shopper demographic. Or, you could post leaflets to certain postcodes.
The Disadvantages of Leaflets
They’re Often Discarded
Leaflets need long-term impact as many consumers may read the leaflet but won’t keep it.
This quick turnaround means that while they may still become a customer, they won't have anything to remind them of your product or service, so you must keep them coming back through great customer service and other marketing methods.
To get around being discarded, you should ensure your leaflets pique a person’s interest. Grab the reader’s attention — this is becoming easier as physical marketing materials are rarer.
We’ve highlighted 10 ways to make your marketing leaflets relevant right here.
They Don’t Have A Long Term Impact
Some people can see leaflets as a waste of time as they’ll usually be advertising something that’s not relevant to them.
However, this only tends to happen to leaflets of low value or poor targeting.
79% of people keep, pass along or glance over leaflets and between 1-2% respond. While this might not sound like a large number, when you consider the affordability of leaflet distribution, it results in a good ROI for your campaigns.
They Are Environmental Concerns
In an era where environmental sustainability is a growing concern, excessive paper use for leaflet advertising can contribute to a negative brand perception.
However, print marketing can have a positive impact on the environment thanks to carbon printing and paper being a recyclable source.
For example, if a printer uses Carbon Balanced Paper, the average CO2 created during the entire paper production and mill delivery has been offset.
To Round-Up...
The advantages and disadvantages of using leaflets as a marketing tool show us that they are still effective and will be utilised for many years.
Design and thorough planning will allow you to create an effective leaflet, combatting the risk of being discarded.
Leaflets have been used as a marketing tool for many years, and if you design a great leaflet, you’ll reap the benefits.
As leaflets aren’t expensive to produce and are easy to distribute, they’re a great way to promote your business or product.
The print quality will help you stand out against other companies using leaflets as their marketing tool. If you're wondering which is the best print type to use for your leaflets, our free eBook will help...
