Take a trip down memory lane with me. Remember the first time you viewed your home? It was a magical experience, wasn’t it? No doubt you had a list of reasons why the home would make the perfect place to live, things that you rattled off to your friends and family in excited, breathless sentences.
Now, of course, you just want be rid of the damn thing! But wait; you need to get back in touch with what turned you on about your house in the first place, the things that fired you up, raised your blood pressure and made you stay awake at night. Why? So you can sell that sizzle to the next buyer.
Here are nine tips that will help you create a powerful flyer that blows the doors off your competition.
1- Create an engaging headline. A headline is what will grab a buyer by the coattails and drag them into the content of your flyer. Make sure that your headline is engaging and you will be 90 percent of the way to creating a successful flyer.
2- Less is more. A buyer who is given too much information will disregard the entire advertisement. So, narrow your story down to the home’s best selling points. If you keep it short and simple, buyers will be far more likely to read the entire flyer and take action by calling you.
3- Include multiple photos. Buyers want to see multiple photos. They want to see more of the home, not less.
4- Include contact information. Make it easy for buyers to take that next step by including accurate and easy-to-find contact information. This includes a daytime phone number and email address.
5- Use full color. Buyers respond to color. Plus, it’s far easier to highlight the contrast information using different colors. This is backed up by a study conducted by Joan Meyers-Levy and Laura A. Peacchio in the Journal of Consumer Research. They found that consumers were far more responsive to color advertising , especially when doing a quick review for information.
6- Use a professional layout. Do a Google search for downloadable flyer templates. These professionally created layouts will dramatically improve your flyer’s appeal and avoid the homemade mistakes that are so easy to make.
7- Use font styles sparingly. Be careful of using multiple font styles in one flyer. According to graphic design experts, you should follow these simple rules:
- Don’t use more than three or four fonts on any one page.
- Don’t change the font in midsentence.
- For printed fonts, good choices are Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, Lucinda Sans, Trebuchet or Verdana.
8- Use the right font size. If you make the font a flyer too small, it can be hard to read. With the exception of the headline, a 12- to 14-point font should be the right size for most flyers.
9- Use proper grammar and spelling. Nothing distracts a buyer faster than poor spelling or bad grammar. Even the best word-processing programs can miss common grammar and spelling mistakes, especially on a flyer layout. Wise sellers have their flyers proofread before printing.
Building a high-quality flyer is critically important to any seller’s successful marketing campaign.
Marc Padilla has been in the real estate business for over a decade and is currently consulting agents at Bayside Condos in New York City.