A brochure is one of the most important marketing materials of any business. While your business card is an introduction to your business, a brochure is a summary of your operation and offerings. A brochure is an opportunity to promote your credentials, products and services in a favorable light while not confusing the reader with too much information. It's a very delicate line and it takes time to find the correct balance. dont expect to create your brochure in one sitting. Your brochure must motivate your prospect to want more. A bad brochure will lose a prospect for life. You get one chance to make a lasting impression, make it a good one.
Hiring a professional designer is worth every penny. A good designer will spend a lot of time making sure that your brochure contains the necessary elements, is attractive and attention getting, has the correct layout and is press ready. You may also want to hire a professional copywriter. Creating informative and professional yet brief copy is not easy, it's an art.
Set your goals. What do you want your brochure to accomplish and who is your target audience? The goal of a brochure is not to close the sale. Is the purpose of your brochure to advertise and market or to educate and inform? The two are completly different.
The brochure designed to advertise and market will have a cathy prase, headline, and or graphic on thr front to grab your prospect's attention. This type of brochure is designed to spend all its time, on public display, exposed to as much of your target market as possible. It will contain lots of white space and short thoughts rather than long paragraphs. It contains a "call to action" that requires or asks the customer to make a phone call, come on down, clip a coupon, mail a reply card or some other action that puts you and the customer in contact. This brochure is the appetizer of your business. Something to tickle the pallet but still leave them hungry.
A brochure designed to educate and inform is like the main course. This brochure is designed for the customer who has learned of your company and has requested more information. He/she may have seen your marketing brochure described above. Unlike that brochure this one can be crammed with information. Customers who request information want to know everything. They become insatiable for product knowledge. No matter what you send, it may not be enough to satisfy some customers.
This style of brochure should never be used in display racks or laid out for the curious passerby. A casual customer who is unfamiliar with your business will be "turned off" by the thought of wadding through this mountain of information just to see what you do.
If they lose interest your brochure is that much closer to the trash can, this is where good graphics and/or photos are esssential. Your prospect's time is very valuable and you should be honored that he or she is taking the time to review your material. How would you feel if you wasted valuable time reading a brochure that in the end didn't interest, educate, or benefit you? you would probably feel robbed of your time. Chances are you would never do business with that company. In today's busy world not much will upset you more than someone wasting your time.
Even though our name is Full Color Resources and we love lots of color, your brochure should not contain more than two colors (excluding photos). Your goal is to educate, peak interest, not dazzle and confuse. Never use more than two fonts with a minimum size of 12 pts. Use bold and italics sparingly. Unless you are selling graphic design services, keep your design fairly basic. Refer to our blog post The Psychology of Color.
Do your homework, collect brochures from as many competitors as possible. Review each one several times. What attracts and interests you and what doesn't. Chances are if the competitive brochures contain things that do not interest you, they are not going to interest your prospects either.
As mentioned earlier, hire a professional designer and/or copywriter, you do not want to take a chance on sending a prospect a bad brochure, you're not going to get a second chance. A good brochure will pay for itself in no time.
Take just 5 minutes to discover if your brochure design will pass the trash test. Score your brochure with a + or -.
5:00 Appeal to Emotions: The old adage in marketing is that consumers buy based on emotions and justify with logic. Does your brochure design strike an emotional chord with your prospects? Appeal to the heart of your markets emotion by connecting with their pains or desires.
4:00 Be Professional: Is your brochure design professional or cheap? Adding poor quality graphics or clip art quickly downgrades the brochure. Use good quality photos, images, and graphics to avoid the trash.
3:40 Be Personal: A winning brochure design connects personally with your audience. If your brochure spends more time talking about how great your small business is versus life from the customer's perspective, it will more than likely end in the trash.
3:00 Achieve Readability: Your brochure design should be pleasing to the eye and include bullet points, arrows, boxes or any other graphics to improve the readability of your marketing piece.
2:30 Speak the Language: An effective brochure design will speak in the customer's language. It's vital to remove any technical language your customer doesn't understand. The simpler your communications are, the easier to connect with your target market.
2:00 Lead with Benefits: A sure bet to have your brochure trashed is by feature dumping throughout the text or copy. Customers don't care if your series 700 widget has a multi-function control panel. Grab your target market's emotion by selling the benefits such as time savings, enhanced productivity, or any other powerful benefit.
1:20 Have a Single Message: It's tempting for the inexperienced brochure writer to want to include as much information as possible in the copy of the brochure. However, using your brochure to close the sale by packing it with a barge of messages only confuses your market and ensures your marketing dollars end up in the trash. Focus your brochure on delivering on a clear, compelling message.
0:50 Focus on a Product or Service: Your brochure is likely to be trashed if it reads more like a catalogue than being focused on a single service or product you offer. The more choices you offer your prospects, the greater the chance you will confuse and lose them.
0:20 Make an Action Call: Your brochure should direct the customer to take a specific action such as a phone call for more information or to visit your website. If your brochure lacks a call to action, you can be sure it's heading for the trash can.
0:00 Add Your Score: Now add up the +'s and -'s. If you have more than 3 -'s your brochure is heading for the garbage can and it's time for a makeover.
Avoid the common mistake to pack your brochure with endless information and lack of focus. Spend the same amount of effort in designing and writing your brochure as any other function in your small business. If your skills are lacking outsourcing can improve your odds of winning the business of your prospective customers.
Trash test courtesy of About.com
To download a brochure template please click here. If you have and questions or need help please contact us, we'll be glad to help.