Marketing brochures are one of the key elements in order to promote your product and/or services to consumers; to attract potential buyers or manufacturers that might want to license or buy your invention.  

This article is designed to give you an overview of some of the key considerations in developing a successful marketing brochure. Printing and distributing on and off line marketing brochures can do wonders for your bottom line. 

A well-designed, well-written marketing brochure design is an opportunity to capture the attention of prospective clients and win them with an effective positioning statement, differentiating your products and services from those of the competition.

There are 3 major elements of a successful brochure:

1. Visual
2. Content
3. Readability

 1. Visual Element
Pictures
People usually remember 10% of what they hear, 30% of what they read and 50% of what they see. Because your brochure cannot speak (yet!) you will have to rely on the other 60%. Let’s start with the biggest number – the 50% of what they see.

Make sure you have your imagery all planned out:

• Strong and colorful pictures that sets the tone for the brochure’s theme (large photos always work better than small ones) 

Here’s an example of the CPA Firm “Kennedy & Coe, LLC”

• Also – if you want to really emphasize the awesome product or service you have don’t shy away from creating unique manipulated photos. The more shocking they are the more people will remember you and your company.

Here’s an example of such photo manipulation for “Komatsu”

For more on design read the book “How to Design Cool Stuff”

Text

From a visual point of view – text matters; as in color, size and font.

Here are some general pointers:

• Adapt the text to the general theme of the brochure
• Use fonts that are easy on the eye
• Headlines should stand out from regular text either through color, size or font style
• The headlines should also be Calls to Action
• More on the readability section…

2. Content Element

You may know your business best but unless you make a living writing copy for brochures, leave this important task to the professionals. I am not referring here to the designer of the brochure but a writer who can take notes from you and then create a compressed piece of text that can entice people into buying whatever is that you are selling.

Let the professional do their job, but point out what you think it’s important for the brochure and what should stand out the most (i.e. a feature of a service, testimonials about your professionalism, etc.). This would be a good time to point out that including testimonials in your brochure is a must.

One last thing – make sure your designer connects with your writer and the 2 of them are communicating. There is nothing more distracting on a brochure than “hanged” text (copy that starts from one panel of the brochure and ends on the next panel).

Here are some examples of good design & copy (Design by Satori – Brochure Portfolio)

3. Readability Element

As mentioned above, under the “Visual” section, it is very important to create “Calls to Action” that stand out and the human eye is attracted to them. Of course if they are poorly design they will stand out on their own.

Again, the relationship between the designer and the writer is crucial because the decision of what the headlines should look like and what it should say to the viewer is very important.

Marketing brochures are tools most businesses employ because they have the weight and portability of a postcard, combined with four times the amount of design real estate space. 

When designing your marketing brochures, always step back and ask yourself if you would keep this brochure after glancing at it.  If your marketing brochure distribution is low that means the design, quality or both have lots of room for improvement. It is also a sign that you don’t care that much about your business or your customers.

If you’d take one thing from this article – please consider this: Whenever you decide to create a brochure for you or your company – call the professionals. Check out their portfolio and remember that a web designer is not necessarily a print designer. There are major differences between the 2 mediums and you should seek the talent of the ones who are best of what they do. You’ll clients and your business will thank you for that.

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• It’s All About The Customer (defactomind.com)
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 Claudiu Geanta is a successful online business owner and founder of Design by Satori Inc. & ProIncome Marketing, LLC. He teaches businesses how to build an optimum online presence. He is also and accomplished web designer and photographer. You can follow him on twitter.

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