10 Easy Tricks To Make Business Brochures Effective

What will make your business brochures more effective?

The following are 10 powerful techniques that will improve the look and effectiveness of the sales literature you provide your customers.

Brochures have been used by businesses to sell products for decades, yet most brochures designed for business are ineffective.

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Every piece of sales literature a small business sends out leaves an impression on your prospects. Your sales literature either gives the impression of competence and professionalism or it leaves the impression of a small-time operation and possible incompetence. Your prospects and customers will make a value judgment about your business based simply on what they see. If they have in hand a nice full color, professionally designed brochure from your competition and your brochure that was designed by your wife on Microsoft Publisher or PowerPoint, which one do you think will give a better first impression?

So, what can you do to make your business brochure stand out and more importantly make it effective? By effective, I mean the result of selling your products and services. The following are eleven important tricks of creating powerful sales literature and brochures:

1. Create from the reader’s point-of-view. Before you sit down and slap together a brochure, spend some time to look at the end user. Who are you trying to influence with the brochure? Why would they want to buy your product? What is in it for them to have your product? What are the problems your product or service can solve for them? In the end, people have an interest in your product based on what they need and want. If you are not sure exactly what they want, ask them the above questions and find out.

2. Plan your brochure so that it communicates to the reader. Before you can communicate to the reader, you have to get their attention. This can be done with graphics & the wording of the brochure. Then ask yourself what will create interest with your reader? What can you say that will make them desire your product and finally how do you what them to respond?

3. Avoid being cliché. Keep the focus on how your product helps the prospect. If you have some feature about your business always tie it to a benefit that the prospect will get from using your product. Avoid saying things like “conveniently located”, “in business for 50 years” and for god’s sake, do not put a photo of your building on the cover of the brochure, unless some how your building is of some benefit to the reader. Most people do not care, which leads me to my next point.

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4. Everyone listens to one radio station, WII-FM. Another acronym for WHAT’S IN IT – FOR ME. Your customers and prospects aren’t really interested in your company or products. They are interested in the benefits they will receive from owning your products. To get their attention, your brochure should focus on the benefits they will enjoy by making a purchase from you. Here is an example to illustrate this point; last year Home Depot sold one million ¼-inch drill bits. None of the people who bought these ¼-inch drill bits wanted to buy a drill bit. They all wanted a ¼ hole. They bought the benefit of having a ¼ drill bit.

5. The headline you choose is the single most important element of your brochure. When the average person sees a piece of promo, a postcard, brochure, the reader takes less than 2 seconds to glance at the cover of a brochure and decide whether or not it is worth it to read the rest of the brochure. The purpose of your headline is to grab attention and to create enough of a mystery that the reader desires for more information. If your headline or graphics on the cover of your brochure are boring, few recipients will bother opening it.

6. Continue to use benefit-oriented subheadings inside your brochure. Our society has ADD and people tend to quickly scan over promo materials. So once you’ve gotten the brochure recipient to open the brochure, the next thing they’ll do is quickly scan the subheadings inside the brochure. Use these inside subheadings to hold their attention, and move them through the copy.

7. Call-to-action is the second most important element of your brochure. You have to tell them what you want them to do after reading the brochure. After you interest the reader in what you sell, you have to direct them to take the next step. Tell them exactly what they need to do to acquire your product. Do not just assume they’ll look for your phone number and call or search out your website.

8. The third most important element of your brochure – the buy now offer. Unless it is an emergency, people are procrastinators. If you do not offer them an incentive to call you now, they will throw your brochure in a pile to get to later. A buy now can be as simple as an extra discount, a bonus offer or some sort of giveaway. IMPORTANT: always include and expiration date for your offer. You don’t want to give them forever to respond, you want the business now. So tell them what’s in it for them to buy from you now.

9. Do not make it difficult to respond. Your business name, phone number and website URL should be listed in several places on your brochure. I suggest having your phone number somewhere on every page of your brochure. Smart phones will account for 75% of web traffic in the next three years so it is a good idea to include a QR code that takes people directly to your product page or product reviews. The majority of buyers today will go online and check the reputation of a business or check reviews for product quality before they buy. Using a QR code to link to a review site or to link to a social media page will help your buyer make his decision.

10. Hire a professional to design your brochure. Graphic design is not as easy as you think. Graphic design is a specific skill set that involves mastery of combining several elements and techniques. Eye trail, color balance, combining fonts with graphic elements to compelling headlines and call-to-action buttons that all come together to create the finished product of a full color brochure that will make your business look like it’s in the Fortune 500.

You have invested time to pull the elements of your brochure together. Do not waste it because you do not have the specific skill sets and design software to put it over the top in professionalism and effectiveness.

Is it time to update your sales and marketing literature? Make the first impression prospects have of your company a good one. Mind blowing sales material will have a positive effect on your sales give us a call at 727-536-4173.