10 Ways to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Brochure

What will make your small business’s brochure more effective?

The following are 10 powerful techniques that will help you improve the look and the effectiveness of your business’s sales brochure and marketing material that you give your customers.

Brochures have been used by businesses to sell products and services for decades, yet most brochures that are designed for business use are ineffective. Why is that?

1. The purpose of the brochure is forgotten and the design proceeds haphazardly.

The purpose of any brochure is to guide the reader/buyer towards the decision to buy or to validate his decision to buy.

2. The second reason a small business brochure fails is the business owner wants to have a brochure with a laundry list of everything they offer or use too many product features with no benefits.

The purpose is usually overlooked and the brochure is laden with too much copy.

Resist the urge to laundry list everything your company does in one brochure.

3. Not enough graphics or graphics that do not support the message. Graphics are photos and design elements that always should support the message of your brochure.

People will always look at a photo first and read the copy second.

4. Always present your product in light of the problem that it solves. People buy benefits of your product or service for emotional reasons. The bigger the ticket item you are selling the more benefits you need to sell it.

Each product has its own benefits that address a specific need or problem the customer wants to solve.

5.  Hire a graphic designer to design your brochure. A designer has more tools for designing a brochure than you would have. The money you pay will be returned in sales.

Tip: if you hire a graphic designer always get the raw digital design files and store them where you can find them later. You will need them in the future when you get the brochure reprinted and want to make changes.

Your printer will need the files to make changes.

6. Create the brochure with the reader’s point of view in mind. Before you sit down and slap together a brochure, spend some time looking 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.

7.  Do not be boring. The easiest way to be boring is to load your brochure up with clichés. Write the copy for your brochure so that it is entertaining and easy to read. Nobody likes to read a textbook.

Avoid saying things like “conveniently located”, “in business for 50 years” and do not put a photo of your building on the cover of the brochure, unless somehow your building is of some benefit to the reader.

8. Survey the draft of your brochure by showing it to a few of your customers.

I said show to your customers, not Sally your bookkeeper or Jim your salesman “because he works with customers and knows”.

The only person’s point of view that matters is your customer’s:

• What caught their eye first?
• What decision about the product or service did they make?
• Is there anything they did not understand?

9. Do not use industry terms unless you explain what it is or means. The quickest way to turn off your reader is to present a term they will not understand because they are not in your business.

Never assume the reader knows. You want the reader to buy your product or service and people do not buy things that they are confused about or do not understand. Present it in plain English without talking down to the reader.

10. Do not forget the call to action. Ask them to respond. Make it easy for them to respond.

These are the basics of designing a brochure but not everything you should know. The actuality of designing a brochure has its own rules I have outlined in our other blog articles.

If you need help designing a brochure for your business please give us a call. We are here to help.