Brochures
Do the soft-sell and layout it all it in a well-designed brochure. Discover the most essential elements of a good brochure design and explore brochure design makeovers. Find tips and tricks covering copywriting, page layout, font selection, graphics use, paper choices, and folding for brochure design.
Five Types of Brochures
When was the last time you bought something on a whim? We’ve all been the victim of the impulse buy but, for the most part, we’re informed consumers.
Brochures usually come into play so you can make a smart buying decision. As someone selling a product or service, knowing what type of brochure you need to advertise your products and services is critical to turning your potential customers into paying customers.
Leave-Behinds
This type of brochure is named for the brochures you leave behind after meeting a potential customer. Write this type of brochure with a complete description of your product and its benefits.
Summarize your sales pitch to echo the one you just gave. Keep your words forever in their brain – or at least long enough to get them to buy your product.
Point-of-Sale
These are best described as the type you might encounter while standing in line at the bank. You notice a rack of brochures and it just so happens they’re conveniently located right there for you to enjoy.
You didn’t know you could get free checking if you bought a Certificate of Deposit. You take a brochure. You’ll read about it later. Point-of-Sale.
Write a catchy headline and make sure you have a nice visual to work with the headline. Your goal is to get potential customers to see your brochure, be curious enough to pick it up and, even more important, keep it.
Respond to Inquiries
When people ask about your product, they’re obviously interested. Sending this type of brochure is for a qualified buyer.
They’re qualified because they’re much more likely to buy than someone who hasn’t contacted you. Since they’ve already expressed interest, write this brochure to take your prospect to the next step: the buying process. Hammer home all of your sales points and pack your brochure with facts to convince them they can’t live without your product.
Direct Mail
This is the type of brochure you include with your direct mail package. You know the sales letter sells but a brochure used with direct mail contains photos, your product’s sales points and even technical features.
Sales Support Tool
Sales support is very similar to leave-behinds. The difference is, this type of brochure can be used as a selling aid.
Your salesperson uses them to guide them through their sales pitch. They have larger pages, larger photos and larger headlines.
Now that you know the types of brochures, figure out where they fit into the buying process for you. That way, you’ll not only know the type of brochure you need, but how to write it as well.
Five Essentials for Planning an Effective Brochure
Brochures can be a company’s best friend. They can work in conjunction with your other sales literature. Or alone.
The first step to creating an effective brochure begins with the planning. These five essentials show you exactly what you need to do before writing the first word of your brochure:
1. Know Your Brochure’s Function in the Buying Process
Your product, the market, even your approach to how you want to make the sale are all major factors in how you write your brochure. Determine where your brochure functions in the buying process:
- Leave-Behinds – Named for the type of brochure you leave behind after meeting a potential customer.
- Point-of-sale – The type of brochure you may pick up while waiting in line at the bank.
- Respond to Inquiries – Someone asks about a specific product and you drop a brochure in the mail to them to follow up.
- Direct Mail – Your sales letter sells but you can also include your brochure into your direct mail package.
- Sales Support Tool – Similar to leave-behinds but you use this type as a selling aid through a sales pitch.
2. Know If Your Brochure Stands Alone
Some companies have one brochure for one product and that’s it. Others use their brochure in combination with other advertising mediums (commercials, print ads, direct mail, etc.). If you’re writing a brochure to be used with other forms of advertising, your content will be determined by the ad campaign.
For example, you’ve written the perfect direct mail package. Your sales letter covers the reasons your prospect has to buy your product now.
Don’t follow up your direct mail masterpiece with a repetitious brochure. You’ve already convinced your potential customer that you have a great product. Now show them the benefits and features your product offers.
3. Know Your Audience
You’ve already determined where your brochure fits into the buying process. Don’t forget to target that particular audience.
Decide what type of information this audience needs and write your brochure accordingly. You wouldn’t want to write a respond to inquiry brochure the same way you’d write a sales support brochure.
4. Organizing Your Selling Points
Think of your brochure as a book. It tells a story about your product/service.
Your brochure should have a beginning, middle and an end. And just like a book, most people will look at the front cover, back cover, maybe even flip through the pages to see if it’s worth reading.
How you determine the organization of your selling points depends on #3 – Know Your Audience. Once you’ve determined who’s going to read your brochure, then you choose the approach that will best fit these readers.
For example, say you own a car dealership. You might want to write a helpful brochure like, “10 Things to Look for When Buying a Car.” Now you can go into detail of what a customer should look for and how your company can help in the buying process.
This adds credibility to your company and the fact that you have this type of brochure could make the difference in whether you get the sale or your competitor does. After all, you were the one that wrote a helpful brochure your customer needed and used.
5. Complete, Accurate and Thorough Information
Before you start hammering away at the copy in your brochure, take the time to really think about the information you want to include. Open up most brochures and you’ll find lots of words. That’s because brochures need to contain as much information as possible to get your potential customer to the next step – the purchase.
Someone who is interested in your product will read every word of your brochure. However, your prospect will feed their paper shredder if you’re not providing them with useful information – or worse – your copy is dull.
Creating a Powerful Brochure
You know how to plan your brochure. You even know the five types of brochures. Now it’s time to dive into the creation process.
Promises, Promises…Right on the Cover
How many times have you been at one of those display racks with tons of brochures about tourist attractions? What made you pick up certain brochures and leave others?
The cover.
You have to put a strong selling message on the cover. Promise your readers a benefit or reward for getting them to flip open your brochure. Hopefully they’ll read it, but they’ll at least look at the pictures. Either way, no selling message = no motivation to open the brochure.
Easy on the Eyes
The last thing you’d want to read is a newspaper with pages and pages of text. Not broken up. Just strictly text with no visuals and no breaks.
Pretty hard to read. Right?
Think of your brochure in the same terms. Short sections broken up with a headline and a subhead invite your potential customer to read on instead of scaring them away.
Even if they don’t read your entire brochure, they get the gist by browsing through it. But make sure to write headlines and subheads that explain that particular copy block. Again, this is important for a number of reasons but especially if your reader is just glancing at your brochure.
Vivacious Visuals
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. So why not tell your brochure’s story with visuals? But not just any old picture will do.
You need visuals that will show the reader how your product works. People pictures work best as long as these people are demonstrating how your product is used.
Even artwork such as drawings, maps and graphs are beneficial as long as they illustrate the product or its benefits.
You can use a wide variety of visuals such as photos of the product, people using the product and/or photos of your company’s headquarters. You can also use a map to show where your company is located, tables listing the various products with their features and/or proof of performance graphs to present factual information about your product.
Next Step: The Buying Process
You’ve already figured out where your brochure fits into the buying process from Five Essentials for Planning a Brochure. Now you have to turn that potential customer into a paying customer. Your closing message has to be powerful.
Too many times brochures fail to be effective because they don’t contain one vital piece of information: A call to action. You have to tell your potential customers that they have to act now/call now/buy now.
No matter what you are looking for (a telephone call for more information or an on-the-spot sale), you have to let people know what you want them to do. Always ask for their order but at least ask for their call for more information.
The Vitals
There’s another vital piece of info that seems so obvious, yet in the creation process it’s sometimes left out. Your contact information.
Make sure you include your company name, logo, address, telephone number, fax, Email, Web address. Anything that will help the consumer get in touch with you easily.
If you have an additional line be sure to include that as well. So many prospects may be calling that your main line is busy.
Give directions to your location in your brochure if you have a business customers can come to. Make it easy on them too.
If you’re located next to a landmark of some sort, tell them that too. That way, they have a mental picture of your whereabouts.
Other factors to consider for your brochure might be prices, store hours, instructions for placing orders by mail, phone or on the Internet and product guarantees.
Effective for the Long Run
Make your brochure worth keeping. Give them a reason to hang on to that brochure – even if they decide not to call or buy right now.
For example, let’s say you have a dynamite brochure about your company’s travel packages. Your travel agency offers a getaway to the Bahamas in May and June but in July and August you offer a package to Hawaii.
While your potential customer may be very interested in your travel packages, they’re not ready to think about vacation because they’re still trying to pay off Christmas debts.
But they decide to save your brochure. After all, your travel agency offers packages all year long and they might just decide to take a week off in June. So they’re interested. Just not right now.
Brochures can really help boost your company’s sales…both now and in the future. Use these tips now and you’ll get the most out of your brochure in the long-term.
Source: http://advertising.about.com/od/brochures
