Affinity Marketing and Communications

Twelve Do’s and Don’ts for Crafting a Brochure That’s Remembered

It doesn’t matter what your industry, whether you’re a custom injection plastic molding maker or an airplane charter Chicago provider, downloadable brochures are essential for your small business marketing. Not only do “brochures let you showcase your business—your products or services and your purpose,” as Sarah Jacobsson Purewall of PCWorld points out, but they’re also a key resource for targeting clients offline. The fact is, as many as “21% of Americans have never visited a website, sent an email or used a search engine,” says Lorraine Thompson at MarketCopywriter Blog. “Many more use the Internet infrequently. For these consumers, online browsing requires dusting off and booting a PC and conjuring correct search terms.”

Unfortunately, simply knowing the potential value of a brochure isn’t enough to make sure it’s effective—in fact, 99% of small businesses still do them wrong! Why is this? What are the keys to effective brochure design? How can you turn yours into a powerful marketing tool?

Below, check out these 12 do’s and don’ts for creating a small business brochure that’s truly useful.

OVERALL

DO Think Strategically. A brochure that communicates effectively doesn’t happen by accident—it requires planning and foresight. So to start the design process, ask yourself, how do we want people to use the brochure? What do we want them to DO after they read it? What do we want them to REMEMBER? Your brochure should have a specific purpose, whether that’s:

    Informational: To give when clients ask about your company or product

    Supplemental: To leave with clients after a meting or sales pitch

    Point of Sale: Available for clients to read in waiting room or in line

    Direct Mail: Sent to prospects as part of mail marketing campaign

    Sales Support: To aid in sales pitch or presentation

DO Focus Your Goals. A brochure with too many goals—say, to sell people on the company, sell people on the products, describe features, give details of huge product lines, etc.—comes across as confusing and unmemorable. Pushing too many messages is the surest way to communicate none. Choose instead to target the purpose of your brochure one just one, maybe two, goals.

DO Identify Your Target Audience. Who is your brochure for? What tone and style would appeal to them? It’s vital that you know whom you’re writing to because, as an article from Top Design Mag instructs, you want to “use an appropriate language for the target audience and give them exactly what they want to know. If for example the brochure is dedicated to children, [it] is not recommended to use a very complicated vocabulary or a trivial font. Try to send the message through images and colors.”

DESIGN

DON’T Be Hard to Follow. Poor layouts and overdone designs can make your brochure hard to read and information hard to prioritize. Help potential clients see what’s important by structuring your information in a clean, organized layout that doesn’t overdo images, graphics, text or detail. Through balanced components, you can help clarify your message and communicate better to readers.

DO Select High-Quality Graphics. Nothing makes it harder to take a company seriously than amateurish graphics. Give your brochure a professional edge with high-quality, attractive images and graphics—and if you’re stuck for sources, check out royalty-free images from Fotolia!

DON’T Combine Too Many Fonts. Cluttering your brochure with too many fonts will muddy your message. Stick to one or two fonts—three at most—in order to keep your content clear. And when selecting those fonts, look for options that are simple: the kind that feel easy on the eyes, that don’t make it hard to make out letters and aren’t so quirky or creative that they would distract the reader.

DO Be Selective about Colors. Just like combining too many graphics or fonts will complicate your brochure, so too an overuse of colors can create a look that’s unprofessional, hard to follow and confusing. While using color is good, try to stick to two or three colors for your main color scheme, with slight variations to each.

CONTENT

DO Write a Meaningful Headline. “On average, five times as many people will read your headline as will read your body copy,” says Andrew Pritchard of Inspire Consulting. “Therefore your headline had better say something meaningful.” The headline should grab your readers’ attention and direct them to your main point. That way, even if the headline were the only thing a reader noticed, he or she would still get the gist of what you’re communicating.

DON’T Be Too Wordy. Here’s the truth: nobody’s going to read huge chunks of text in a brochure. Wordiness not only is hard on the eyes—it’s hard on the short attention spans and fast-moving lifestyles of today’s consumers. Simplify your content to be concise and easy to understand so that readers can grasp your message quickly.

DON’T Get Too Technical. A brochure is not a manual and it shouldn’t have the technical detail or in-depth instruction that a manual would. Avoid flooding readers with too much info and try instead to give a big-picture view.

DO Provide Valuable Contact Info. Because a brochure is longer than a business card, it gives you the opportunity to provide contacts with more than your phone number and email address—as Sarah Jacobsson Purewal suggests at PC World, “Instead of including only your usual social media handles for Twitter and Facebook, for instance, consider adding a link to your Yelp page.”

DO Include a Call to Action. Your call to action should make it easy and enticing for the reader to fulfill your goals for them—whether that means calling to set up an appointment, visiting your website, placing an order or subscribing to your newsletter. As Melissa Croweis says at Entrepreneur.com, “Don’t assume your audience will be moved to contact you or purchase your product or services after they read your well-crafted brochure.” The call to action is the extra push that, for many readers, makes the difference between simply reading your brochure and acting upon it.