Blueprinting a Better Marketing Brochure

If you need to get some marketing materials into the hands of your prospects and existing clients, a brochure is an excellent option. However, because they are very visible, you need to be particularly careful that you are doing more harm than good to your reputation with a substandard brochure.

Fortunately, there are a some best practices that you may follow to create a better brochure that represents your company, and your solutions, well.

Step One: The Why, and The What

Naturally, your brochure needs to talk about something. Its purpose is to provide your readership with valuable insights and compelling information that proves your solution will best fulfill their needs.

Consider who your brochure is going to be directed towards. What are some of their concerns that your solutions can address? Ask around and find out what kind of information these people are looking for, and be sure to include it in your materials. Once you’ve collected the results of your investigation, you may move on to the next step: writing the copy.

Step Two: Crafting Your Copy

Due to the constraints that a brochure places on your writing, finding the words that will be most impactful will require strategy. Therefore, you should be sure to plan ahead and make sure you are able to communicate your most important points concisely.

Speaking of being concise, you should also make sure that you select your words carefully. If given the choice between using “breviloquent” and “short,” use “short.” You aren’t going to earn any extra points for your vocabulary, and you might even lose a few readers. Keep it simple.

Like any other piece of marketing content, you should make sure that you are encouraging the reader to take the next step with a call-to-action, whether it's to visit your website or to reach out to you directly. Once your copy is ready, you can start to design your brochure to prepare it for production.

Step Three: Design and Production

This step is equally as important as creating the right copy--after all, if your design pulls attention away from your copy, you aren’t able to communicate your value. On the other hand, you are more likely to generate an impression with a dynamic and engaging design than you are with a plain brochure.

Of course, you also need to consider what your brochure is to be printed on as well. It’s pretty surprising how strong of an impression the feel of a brochure can have on the reader’s opinion of

the information it contains. To establish yourself as a professional that focuses on quality, your brochure should be printed on thick, strong, high-quality paper to inspire that association.

Your brochure should also match the branding that the rest of your business persona uses. If your website uses a certain font and color scheme, your brochures should match. Just like on your website, you should use what has been proven to work well and is associated with your company’s brand. This should be your first priority as your brochure is put together.

Finally, your brochure should include some high-quality images--again, if their use fits in with the rest of your company’s marketing. These images need to be both relevant to the topic of the brochure, as well as engaging to look at. If you decide to utilize stock photography in your brochure, try to select images that may not be immediately recognizable as a stock image. Once you’ve completed these steps, your brochure will be ready to represent you.

Creating a brochure can be a very rewarding activity, as it allows you to distribute an impression-generating piece of marketing material that your target will carry with them. You just have to make sure that it makes those impressions.

We can help with that. If you’re interested in finding out what your brochure would look like if we handled it for you, reach out to us.