In the increasingly saturated world of digital marketing, brochures can be a powerful way to tell a story about your product or service. Imagine having marketing collateral that you can distribute at events, send to your target customers’ homes, leave at a shop or office lobby, or include in product deliveries. Brochures are so adaptable you can use them for almost any campaign, regardless of whether you have a business-to-customer or business-to-business company.
And this versatility makes brochures highly cost effective. You can write and design them once and use them for months or even years.
Brochures also let you present your content in a highly visual way – from using glossy product photos and infographics to setting the tone with colours and fonts. And as printed material, they offer a tactile experience. Readers can smell and feel a brochure, and read it anywhere they want.
But like any other marketing tool, your brochure must be able to catch your readers’ attention and encourage them to read and keep it. So how can you make your material really stand out?
Here are some tips to keep in mind.
Understand your customer and purpose
Know the customers you’re targeting and have a clear purpose for creating a brochure. Do you simply want to introduce your business or capabilities to a new market? Or are you trying to generate leads for a product or service? If so, how can this product or service benefit your target customers? What problem can it solve? And why should customers choose your solution?
Use your answers to create material that would persuade customers to do business with you. INSEAD’s Certification for Directors brochure offers a good example of how you can capture your target readers’ interest by clearly identifying key benefits to them.
Source: INSEAD Certification for Directors brochure
Keep it clean and focused
A brochure gives you more room to convince your readers about your company, product or service. But avoid overwhelming them with information.
If your purpose is to generate leads, then focus on the benefits of your product or service and why your readers should care. There’s no need to go into great detail about product features – you can provide a link where readers can find more information. And if you must include technical details, think if you can present them in a chart or illustration.
To keep your brochure content as brief as possible, go for short paragraphs and sentences. And list items in bullet points or put them in a sidebar, like this page from a Deloitte Southeast Asia corporate brochure.
Source: Deloitte’s Southeast Asia corporate brochure
Write it well
For your brochure to be effective, it needs to have a strong, consistent voice. It must speak to your target customers with clarity. Importantly, your content must be useful and credible, such as this page from management consulting firm LCP Global’s Breakthrough Alignment brochure. It identifies practical concepts and clearly explains and supports them.
Source: LCP Global’s Breakthrough Alignment brochure
Once you have your text ready, don’t send it straightaway for design and printing. Get it edited and proofread to make sure there are no grammatical, punctuation, spelling and other errors – which can mean the difference between a good and great brochure.
Use great visuals
Design is essential for any brochure, so create yours in a way that people would want to take and keep it. Use appealing visuals, great fonts and quality paper stock. Impress with infographics that outline key benefits and include professional photos of your actual products or services. But remember to create the biggest impact with your cover, just like Deloitte did by using a photo of spices and seeds to represent its diverse markets for its Southeast Asia corporate brochure.
Source: Deloitte’s Southeast Asia corporate brochure
Creating a brochure is a good opportunity to present your business in a unique and impressive way. So think of how telling the story of your product or service can reflect your brand or business personality.
Give readers a reason to keep it
You want your target customers to not just read your brochure but also keep it. So give them a reason to do that. If you’re a technology company, perhaps you can offer cybersecurity tips or advice on how to make safe video conferencing calls. Or consider giving general investing tips if you’re in wealth or investment management.
Nudge your readers to act
Finally, make sure your brochure nudges your readers to do something. Do you want them to visit your website? Or would you like them to call your sales consultant? Whatever it is, end your brochure by asking your readers to take the next step, as LCP Global did in its Breakthrough Alignment brochure:
Source: LCP Global’s Breakthrough Alignment brochure
To make your brochure even more versatile, why not make it digital? It will help you reach a wider audience and engage customers through interactive material. With many software tools now available, you can easily flip your brochure from PDF to digital. Just explore which solution works for you.
A brochure can be a key marketing tool for your business. Invest in it and work with writers and editors who understand the power of persuasive marketing content. Talk to us at Editor Group to find out how we can help you develop effective brochures that truly stand out.
