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Simple Tips for Creating a Brochure

Brochures are essential sales and marketing tools.

Even in today's increasingly digital world, printed collateral such as brochures and catalogs play a vital role in marketing your products and services. And although you may be doing more and more online marketing, no small business should go totally paperless just yet.

So how do you create a brochure? Whether you're doing it yourself or hiring some outside help, here are some tips to help you create a winning brochure from the first printing.

Planning Your Brochure

What is your message? What is your main point? What do you want readers to walk away with? What action should they take? Creating a brochure is easier if you never forget what your purpose is.

Identify your target audience and speak directly to them. Never try to address everyone. “Everyone” is not a target audience.

Always include a compelling call-to-action. Make your call-to-action enticing, simple, and (if possible) utterly risk-free. The response you desire should be as painless as possible for your reader.

You don’t have to get it “right” the first time. Your plan should allow for the testing of different elements in the brochure (such as headlines, pictures, calls-to-action, etc.) to see what works.

The first thing to test is your main headline. Next you should test your subheadings and your call-to-action. Test different pictures and captions. Finally, test changes in your body copy.

Don't plan to print massive quantities of your “version one” brochure. Start with a small print-run so that you can do some testing. Only print large quantities of a brochure once you know it works. Try to avoid printing more than a six-month supply of brochures so that you can continue to make improvements.

Getting Your Brochure Started

Avoid “perfection paralysis.” Just start writing. Don’t try to be perfect right from the first draft. A passable effort today is usually better than near-perfect next month. You can always come back and perfect it later.

Say to yourself, “I won’t use the first four paragraphs I write, but I’ll write them anyway and see where they lead. Maybe by the fifth paragraph I’ll have something worth keeping.”

If you’re stuck writing your opening, then skip it and start writing in the middle.

Pretend you’re being interviewed about why your product or service has been such a runaway success. Answer questions such as “where did the inspiration for this service come from?” or “why do you think it has been so popular?”

Pretend you’re writing to friends about it. Enthusiastically explain to them why it’s so great.

Writing Your Brochure

Always include a meaningful headline. Your headline should clearly communicate the message you want your reader to take away. Your headline should contain your main point so that even if the reader reads nothing else, they will get the gist of what you are about.

Don’t try to be funny, cute, clever, or abstract with your headline. Don’t expect a reader to read your body copy simply to ‘get’ the joke or cleverness in the headline. They won’t. They will only read if your headline interests them sufficiently.

On average, five times as many people will read your headline as will read your body copy. Therefore your headline had better say something meaningful.

Don’t feel compelled to keep your headline short. Long headlines (even headlines of 15 words or more) can be very effective.

Tell the whole story in your writing. Be concise, but tell the whole story. Your writing can never be too long, only too boring.

Write your body copy in plain English. Pretend you’re explaining your message to a friend. Use the simplest language possible. Avoid jargon. Never use pompous, highfalutin language. Never write in “marketingese.”

Keep your opening paragraph short. It should be three lines or less. Longer opening paragraphs tend to frighten readers away.

Use terse, pithy copy. Avoid long sentences.

Use subheadings liberally. Subheads break up long copy and help draw a reader through the text. Ideally, a reader should be able to get a good grasp of your message by reading only the headings and subheadings.

The style of the writing should not draw attention to itself. Avoid flowery, overly-stylized writing.

Brochure Design

Content is more important than design. Nobody has ever bought anything solely because an ad or brochure looked good.

Design, however, is not unimportant. Lay out your brochure neatly, cleanly, and professionally. The design should draw the reader in and ease the process of reading. The design, however, should never draw attention to itself and it should never make your brochure even slightly harder to read.

Avoid the temptation to place your company name and logo front-and-center on your brochure. Your headline should dominate the front of the brochure. Your name and logo should be prominent, but not dominant. Place it at the bottom of the front cover.

Use pictures that have meaning. Always include a caption under the picture.

A drop cap in the opening paragraph can help to draw the reader into the copy.

Use an absolute maximum of three different fonts throughout. Any more starts to become “font soup.”

Need Help with Your Brochure?

Inspire Consulting can help your business create a winning brochure. If you need some assistance implementing any of these suggestions, contact us today.