As a supplier, you likely invest a lot of time and money into photography, catalog design and product advertisements to make sure your products sell. Your collection of product images, catalogs and flyers are used for marketing online and in person, and the design of these materials can impact how well your products stand out.

Flyers are used by distributors in multiple ways, like in their social media posts, on their website, in email marketing campaigns, for printed distribution, and more. They are essentially the “foot in the door” a distributor needs to sell your products, which is why great design is so important. Flyers are especially great for distributors, as they can promote your products based on specific:

• Collections – new, trending, womens, etc.
• Features – highlights of unique product features
• Categories – drinkware, pens, apparel, etc.
• Themes – beach, school, sports, etc.
• Seasons – spring, summer, holidays, breast cancer awareness, etc.
• Vertical markets – real estate, education, healthcare, etc.
• Price points – items under $5, ideas over $25, etc.
• Specials or clearance items

These benefit both you and the distributor, and can be a great supplement to your breakout catalogs. However, a poorly designed flyer (i.e. a flyer that has too much information, has confusing fonts, or doesn’t have the distributor’s information) can make it harder for a distributor to actually sell your products.

That’s why we’ve created this resource for suppliers, so you can design flyers that distributors can actually sell with.

Top Tips for Promotional Product Flyer Design

If you’re new to flyer design, or you realize that your current flyers could use some improvement, focusing on basic design can go a long way. When you’re creating a new flyer, it’s important to remember:

• Clean and simple designs will match any branding. Since your distributors will be using your flyers, you want to make sure the design is not too specific to your company. Flyers that include strong brand elements, makes it hard for your distributors to customize as their own.
• Less is more. Sometimes suppliers clutter their flyers with as many products and descriptions as possible. Avoid overdoing it by creating a series of flyers rather than trying to cram everything into one.

• Flyers should be 1 to 4 pages. End buyers will be able to easily pick out the products they want if they’re not overwhelmed with choices.
• Use big fonts and big images. Most flyers will be viewed online, so using optimized elements will improve the experience on desktop and mobile.
• Use a maximum of two fonts. Too many fonts is distracting for the buyer and can look unprofessional. Keep in mind that your font selection may not match a distributor’s brand either, so stick to simple, popular fonts.
• Don’t use too many colors. A more neutral color palette is easier for a distributor to work with.
• Include an expiration date. This helps distributors update their materials and prevents sales on outdated products or pricing.

Your flyers do not have to be complex or include all of your products. Instead, focus on simplicity and what you really want end buyers to see. From there, it’s important to make sure your distributors look as professional as possible.

Keep the End User in Mind

When making flyers, remember that distributors are reusing your flyers to sell to the end user; your flyers aren’t just selling products to the distributor. To make it easier for a distributor to sell your products, a flyer should be able to entice both distributor and end user.

To accomplish this, it helps to design a flyer that:

• Has a white background and white space for the distributor’s logo. If a distributor has to add their logo on a background that clashes with their colors or the flyer’s pattern, it may look unprofessional. Leaving white space for the distributor logo makes the logo look intentional, as if the distributor did the design themselves.
• Has space for the distributor’s messaging and information. This can be near the white logo space, or on the bottom as a footer to the design.
• Makes pricing easily customizable. Some distributors prefer no pricing and others prefer the entire quantity break table. You can create a flyer that works for everyone. If you choose to include pricing, make sure it is on a white background. This way, the distributor can use ZOOMcustom to hide it if they want. You may also want to consider excluding the price table and instead using phrases like “As low as….”
• Use end user pricing (avoid net pricing). Distributors want to share your flyers with customers and do not want to present net pricing.
• Exclude price discount codes or keep them very discreet. If you do include codes, place them on a white background so that distributors can hide the codes with ZOOMcustom.
• Avoid language that an end user won’t understand. Terms like “EQP” or “End Column Pricing” won’t make sense to the end user, and it may make it difficult for the distributor to customize as their own. Additionally some distributors would prefer to mark up the pricing rather than sell at EQP.
• Exclude company-identifying information such as industry numbers, contact information, website links, email addresses, etc.

If you work with a specific set of distributors, it’s a good idea to listen to their feedback or even ask if your flyers should include/exclude any other elements. Once you’ve got your design down, you can market your flyer far and wide.

ZOOMcustom for Flyers

When you create a beautifully designed flyer, it gives distributors a better way to sell your products. Increase your online flyer distribution and make it easier for distributors to find and customize them by uploading flyers to ZOOMcustom. Using ZOOMcustom, you can:

• Increase your distribution by giving distributors online access to your customizable flyers. When you upload a flyer to ZOOMcustom, it’s added to ZOOMcatalog (www.zoomcatalog.com/personalize#list/flyers), our partner sites, and the weekly “New Catalogs and Flyers” distributor email we send out each week – all resulting in a much wider reach.
• Easily update and schedule flyers for use now and in the future. You can even schedule your flyers to “go live” on specific dates to avoid any premature or expired sales.

• Create a unique “Customize Now” link to use in your marketing campaigns. Let distributors quickly click to customize your flyer from different places such as email blasts and social media posts.

• Add a ZOOMcustom portal to your website. This allows distributors to access customize your flyers and catalogs straight from your website, so distributors can find your marketing tools and materials easily.
• Add flyers to your website with the ZOOMcatalog API. With the API you can automatically populate your flyers on your website, with options to show a preview, download PDF and customize, while keeping your website look and feel.

ZOOMcustom also makes live easier for everyone, including:

Sales representatives – Your sales reps can make flyers while speaking with a customer or when a distributor expresses an interest in a specific product. This way, your sales team can actively engage in a potential lead by easily creating a custom flyer. And don’t worry; we host webinars to train your sales team on flyer design.

Your marketing team – Anyone on your team can now customize flyers for distributors, freeing up your designers and marketing team.

Distributors – Distributors can customize your flyers quickly and easily with their logo, images, text, shapes and more. They can also download their new flyers in any format they need, from a link to a PDF to a PNG image. We can even show them how to add the flyers into MailChimp or Constant Contact for their email campaigns.

National partners – ZOOMcatalog has many partners who use ZOOMcustom flyers, including national buying groups and regional associations. If you are a member of any of these partner companies or organizations, your flyers will automatically be included in our custom tools. Click here to see the growing ZOOMcatalog partner list.

With better design and customizability, you can help your distributors sell more than ever. You also make it easier to work with new distributors.

Let Everyone Know About Your Flyers

Now that you’ve taken the time to design a great flyer, you should make sure it gets used! If you use ZOOMcustom, you can give distributors access to your customizable flyer by including the link in:

• Social media posts
• Email marketing
• Email signatures
• Your website copy
• Blog posts
• Print collateral
• And more!

Also make sure to market your customizable flyers with:

• Multi-line representatives who can link to your customizable flyer on their websites
• Sales representatives who can mention customizable flyers on sales calls, or use the tool themselves to customize flyers and catalogs for potential new distribution leads.
• Other printed collateral, such as catalogs or price sheets (Include a line that says “To customize our flyers with your logo, visit our website”)

Summary

Creating well-designed flyers that include the best information about your products makes a distributor’s job easy. By using white space design, a distributor can then optimize your already-great flyer to fit their specific branding. From there, ZOOMcustom can give your flyers new life, making it easy to access and customize your flyers now and in the future.

All of this will translate to happier distributors and higher sales for you – and it all starts with a few basic design principles.