Why would you need or want a professionally designed and printed booklet for your business? One the biggest missed marketing opportunities by most businesses are booklets. For one, the price for printing booklets for a business has come way, way down. There was a time when one needed to buy several thousand copies of a booklet to get the price per booklet down. Now, with our full color digital presses it is very affordable to get 50, 500 or 1000+ booklets printed.
Many people look at booklets for a business as simply just for selling products, yet in service industries there is a huge opportunity to use a booklet. Still, why would you need a booklet for your small business?
Well, one of the biggest reasons is in the way your customers make buying decisions. When considering to buy or use a product or service, consumers will tend to compare your business to something that is already familiar to them.
- How is it similar to something already known to them?
- How is it different to something already known to them?
The similarities and differences your prospects and customers compare you to are almost always your competition’s products and services. There are few marketing materials that allow you to fully demonstrate and position your products and services better than a brochure or booklet. A professionally designed and printed booklet gives you a tool to control and direct the natural thinking process of your customers.
To create an effective booklet you have to interest, educate, and sell, but you should do so with a marketing point of view. It is very similar to a pyramid with three separate, but equally important sides. If too much emphasis is put on the sell side, the booklet will be quickly scanned and trashed. If you put too much emphasis on interest it will be a nice piece that does not sell anything. And the same with too much emphasis on the educate side, the piece will be boring and not sell anything. So it is a balance act.
The secret to creating an effective booklet is giving your customers something valuable in exchange for their time. You want the reader to find your professionally printed booklet to be relevant, interesting, informative and most importantly, useful to them.
If you’re not sure where to start and what to write about, browse the following booklet topic ideas for inspiration:
The How-To Booklet
Booklets that detail how to do something are popular with many customers, no matter what industry you’re in. How-to booklets are a great way to position your company as the experts in a field and above or better than a competitive product or service.
Look at what knowledge gaps exist for your customers. For example and automotive repair shop distributes a booklet titled, “20 Simple Ways To Keep Your Car Running For 200,000+ Miles.”
A veterinary might create a booklet titled “How To Train Your Dog In One Hour.”
The Avoid Pain – Why You Should Booklet
Studies have shown that people will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. The “why you should” booklet does not stop at telling your prospects how to do something, but why they should do it in the first place.
For example a heating & air conditioning company might want to distribute a booklet titled “Why You Should Get Regular A/C Tune-Ups.” It would highlight the cost of breakdown and replacement and how seasonal tune-ups will keep your A/C unit running for years. To really drive the point home you would include horror stories of customers who did not sign up for regular maintenance and how their A/C unit failed on a 100-degree day, and cost them $1800 to fix. This could have been avoided with regular maintenance and why you should invest $100 now for a maintenance contract.
Secrets You Should Know Booklet
This type of booklet is a great way to position yourself against competitors. It especially is useful in industries that have a lot of competition, some of whom are unsavory characters. The construction and building trades would use this type of booklet to highlight traps, costs, and quality degrades unethical competitors use, and how to spot and avoid them. This is also a great tool for explaining why your service cost more than your competition and could help you sell your quality and workmanship.
The I-Made-The-Right-Decision Booklet
This type of booklet is the second part of the avoid pain and gain pleasure formula above. You show how owning or having your product or service creates pleasure for the buyer. This booklet is an extremely valuable tool to validate the customer’s buying decision. Include as many customer success stories as you can. Ideally you would present a common objection or fear in buying your type product or service then explain using customer testimonials what they found and how buying your product or service was the right decision.
This type of booklet is extremely effective with big-ticket items or with products with a long contract period that has a potential for buyers remorse.
Need Ideas? Click Here To Get Free Samples!
The Problem-and-Solution Booklet
You present a problem your customers are trying to solve, demonstrate how you solved the problem and validate the decision they customer is about to make. The demonstration is easily done by using customer success stories explaining the problem, customer considerations and how they solved the problem by using your company. This type of booklet can be very effective.
It could be as simple as why mold grows in basements and what you can do to get rid of it. You promote your product or service and explain how your customers can use it to solve their problems.
The Tips-To-Improve-Your-Life Booklet
This type of booklet can be used to position you as the authority in your industry and is a great tool. A HVAC company would create a booklet titled, “7 Ways To Save $1000 a Year On Your Energy Bill,” or a chiropractor can create a booklet titled, “3 Tips To Avoid Back Pain.” This is a type of booklet that is a 2nd cousin to the problem-and solution-booklet.
I think you can see that there are many types of booklets that you can utilize for your company. Are any of them suited to your industry? Do you really need a booklet? To answer that question look at what problems you are having in your sales cycle. Are you experiencing:
- Creditability issues.
- Quality concerns.
- Price issues.
- Competitive issues.
If you are having any of the above problems, a booklet can certainly help you. Wilson Printing’s designers can help you create the perfect booklet to help you close more business. If you would like some examples of booklets click here and we will send you samples along with a $100 coupon you can use toward graphic design.
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