Brochure Design – Marketing’s Unsung Hero

Brochure Design is surely the forgotten standard-bearer in the world of marketing and advertising.

In this day and age of worldwide webs and information superhighways, where websites, e-marketing, and TV are seen as the sure-fire methods of getting your message out there, it’s easy to forget how effective the humble brochure can still be.

Once the lynchpin of a corporate marketing campaign, recent years have seen the brochure passed over in favour of internet marketing and websites.

But ask yourself this: Is a website really the path my company wants to go down?

If you’re serious about having a website to promote your company then before you make any commitment you should be aware of the maintenance and upkeep that it will need, as well as the internet marketing required to promote it. It’s never a case of simply publishing a website and expecting the traffic to find you. Add to this the fact that a decent website with a good design and sleek programming won’t come cheap, and you’ve really got to be serious about ongoing promotion if you want a reasonable ROI.

Brochures, however, are relatively cheaper to get designed, printed, and distributed, offering a far greater cost-efficiency.

It can be said that they offer the purest form of advertising away from the billboard, as they are generally succinct in their use of words, yet always eye-catching in the brochure design. This draws a potential customer or client directly to the message you’re looking to convey without diluting it or allowing them to become lost amongst the assorted pages of a similarly targeted website.

The brochure is also far easier to market than a website, at a fraction of the cost. They can be handed out, left with clients, laid out for passing trade to pick up and browse, and there’s no fear of the less than tech-savvy encountering problems.

Everybody knows how to operate a leaflet or brochure.

At the end of the day it is still true that the greater proportion of people out there like something they can get their hands on. Something they can leaf through at their leisure whilst waiting for a bus, sitting in a cafe, enjoying a well-deserved break, or at home lying in bed. The brochure offers the ultimate ease of accessibility and its success in connecting the right sort of customer (the one ready to spend money) with the products or services your company offers has been proven throughout the history of marketing.

Obviously the final call comes down to the individual needs and budget of a company. But in these modern times when everybody is looking to the internet for their marketing campaign, it always pays to consider the cheaper alternatives out there that still do the business. It is these often dismissed standard-bearers, such as the brochure, that have the track record ready to back-up the results.

Nick James writes for Essence Design. They are a UK design agency providing brochure design as well as all other forms of print marketing. And yes, they do web design too.

By: Nicholas James

Full Color Brochure Advantages

A brochure can be a great promotional tool, whether it is for is a real estate listing, a trade show handout, a data sheet, or another application. The most professional and eye-catching brochures are usually those that are full color.

Full color brochure printing usually means standard four-color printing, and is now offered at almost every brochure printing company. Four-color printing is also referred to as standard color printing and employs cyan (blue), magenta, yellow, and black inks, often abbreviated to “CMYK.” Most computer software programs will convert any text or image to CMYK, and this is usually a requirement of printers.

Brochure printing companies will usually provide a clear explanation of the four-color process. Most high quality, full color commercial printing is done on offset presses using this four-color build process. These four colors are used to create or build the many color shades seen in a brilliant, full color printed brochure.

Color can be tricky, because what you see on your computer screen is called RGB color; it is a different color model than the four-color process. Frequently there is a wide variation in monitor technologies and calibration, and colors will be similar, but not exactly the same. Make sure you communicate to your printing service what color you need to see in the final product. If you print a sample color brochure on your inkjet or laser printer, there may be some variation from the color produced from your printer to the offset lithographic presses.

One of the many advantages of the four-color process is that computer-controlled inking and chemical mixing systems provide color consistency. Automatic color and register control maintains consistent quality, making four-color process the most popular printing choice.

When an exact color match is essential, a spot color of specially mixed ink is used in printing. These specially mixed inks are called pantone colors. You can find color books showing thousands of pantone colors and get an exact match. Spot colors are used most frequently for one- and two-color jobs and when an exact color needs to be produced every time. Full color brochure printing is easy and affordable; so let your imagination soar.

Brochure Printing Info provides detailed information about cheap, color, and full color brochure printing services, and advice on finding a brochure printing company and quote. Brochure Printing Info is the sister site of Laser Toner Web.

By: Max Bellamy

Finding the Right Brochure Printing Company

A brochure can be a great promotional tool, whether it is for is a real estate listing, a trade show handout, a data sheet, or some other application, but sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Brochure printing companies can provide their expertise as well as a wide range of printing and marketing services.

Most brochure printing companies do other types of printing as well. The range of services available within a company that prints brochures is quite broad. The process of finding the right company that meets the requirements of your job is an easy step-by-step process.

First, carefully consider your budget. Then assess the job you have in mind, whether you prefer full color or a single color, whether you prefer offset printing or digital printing, print run, type of fold, paper and shipping. Following these basic guidelines should help make finding the right brochure printing company a simple and painless task.

Before you enlist the aid of a customer service representative at a printing company, you can look at online templates or fill out a questionnaire that will help assess the cost of a job and the services that brochure printing company provide. This makes it easier to shop around and get the best deal without feeling obligated to go with a particular company.

Most brochure printing companies will provide an experienced estimator who will help you to determine the proper paper, inks, coatings, bindery and distribution for your brochure project. It is worth it to check to see if this service is offered, as it will save you time and trouble. It also usually produces an accurate quote, thereby insuring the best quality at the best possible price.

The services offered at brochure printing companies will usually exceed your brochure printing needs; most brochure printing companies will also offer other printing, bindery and mailing services. Beyond that, there are brochure printing companies that will also assist you in your brochure design, recommend marketing strategies, write brochure content for you, and offer other marketing tools. Finding and learning about brochure printing companies and their services is an educational endeavor no matter how small or complicated the brochure, and the rewards can be substantial.

Brochure Printing Info provides detailed information about cheap, color, and full color brochure printing services, and advice on finding a brochure printing company and quote. Brochure Printing Info is the sister site of Laser Toner Web.

By: Max Bellamy

Are Your Brochures Hurting Sales?

When companies introduce new products and services, everyone is
excited and upbeat – especially the sales force. They have a new
reason to go back to old customers, a chance to knock out
competitors and the potential to have a great year selling.

Yet all too often, things don’t quite work out as planned and
sales come in slower than everyone projected. The tension rises.
Marketing and Sales start pointing fingers, blaming each other
for the lackluster results.

Sound familiar? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this
happen in my years as a consultant. Lots of factors are involved,
but today we’re going to look at one that salespeople have total
control over.

Recently I worked with a company who had just introduced a new
technology product. It was way ahead of the competition and had
a strong value proposition. I spent a day out in the field with
one of their salespeople to get a better understanding of their
sales process.

He was a real nice guy. He’d been with the company for thirteen
years and always done a decent job. We had an appointment with a
good prospect – someone he had called on before, but never done
business with. The sales rep’s plan was to leverage this meeting
into a full-blown needs analysis.

Everything started out fine, but within 10 minutes he was heading
into deep trouble. It all started when he mentioned his
excitement with their new product. The buyer asked some techie
questions that the sales rep understood. They talked some more.
Then, the buyer asked the near-fatal question, “Do you have a
brochure?”

Now you’re probably thinking that’s a good sign – that this guy
was interested and the sales rep was doing a great job. Well,
that’s just what the sales rep thought too.

He quickly pulled one from his briefcase and laid it on the desk
between them. The buyer leaned forward and started reading. “Can
it do this?” he asked, referring to a specific capability. “How
about that? What speed? How does it connect?” The barrage of
questions continued for what seemed like an eternity to me.

The sales rep was getting even more excited. He pointed out other
features they’d stressed at the launch meeting, highlighting how
much better they were than what else was on the market. The
buyer’s head was nodding, as if in agreement.

I knew things were going downhill, but couldn’t do anything to
stop them. I was only there to observe. At last, the killer
question emerged: “How much does it cost?”

The sales rep, trying to deflect it, explained that a full
assessment was needed to configure the system properly. He
suggested that as the next step, but the damage was already done.

“You’d be wasting your time,” the buyer said. “There’s no way we
can spend that kind of money right now. Besides, it can’t …” He
proceeded to pick apart some minor detail about the system.

The sales rep looked puzzled, not understanding why this
qualified buyer would so quickly reject the new product -
especially when it had such a financially attractive value
proposition. He was never able to get the meeting back on track.
We left with no follow-up planned.

You know what the problem was?

It was that darn brochure! By bringing it out so early, the
sales rep lost control of the sale process. He didn’t uncover any
problems, difficulties or dissatisfaction with the current
system. He didn’t explore any business ramifications or find any
pay-offs for making a change. No wonder the buyer said it was
too expensive.

Worse thing is, the sales rep dug his own grave; everything that
happened was totally preventable.

LESSONS LEARNED

1. The untimely use of brochures and other marketing collateral
quickly derails even the best sales efforts with highly qualified
prospects.

2. If your sales process requires multiple calls and involves a
variety of decision makers, keep your new product or service
brochures in the car on the first call.

3. Use early sales calls to focus on the customer, their goals,
processes, challenges, issues, bottlenecks and needs.

4. Save your brochures till later – you may never even need to
use them!

Jill Konrath, President of Selling to Big Companies, helps small
businesses win big contracts in the corporate market.

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level. Go to http://www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com . ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jill Konrath is founder of SellingtoBigCompanies.com, a web
resource that helps small businesses win big contracts in the
corporate market. To learn more about how to get your foot in the door, create
urgent needs for your services and develop profitable long-term
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10 Ways to Spice Up Your Brochures

Businesses rely on brochures as their front line in communicating their products or services. Yet according to Shannon Cherry, APR, many find them not as successful because they underestimate the skills and resources necessary to publish attractive and effective materials.

“Most people forget a brochure is important because it represents you to the world and reflects your image,” says Cherry, president of Cherry Communications, a public relations and marketing firm that helps businesses, entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations be heard.

“But the best brochures do more than impress,”  she says. “Effective copy and design can intrigue, inform, convince and capture customer business just as an effective salesperson does. Brochure effectiveness is linked to an audience-appropriate marketing strategy that drives the design process.”

Cherry shares the following top ten list of hints can help your brochure put its best foot forward:

1. Keep headlines short. According to studies, headlines with fewer than ten words get more readership.

2. Focus your headline on your target audience. Show a picture of your target group and make sure the headline has the groups description in it. For example: If you are targeting moms, uses a headline like, “Moms Know Best.”

3. Keep text lines at a comfortable length. Body copy lines should never be shorter than the font size or longer than double the font size.

4. Keep paragraphs – especially lead paragraphs – short. Perhaps even one sentence.

5. Use graphical dingbats including bullets, hyphens, and asterisks, to break up text.

6. Use captions to draw the reader in. Next to the cover, captions are the most read items in a brochure.

7. Set captions in a different style.

8. Avoid typographic overkill by using too many CAPS, italics and bolds.

9. Stick to no more than three different fonts in a brochure.

10. If you use photos with people in them, make sure their heads are at least the size of a dime.

Shannon Cherry, APR, MA helps businesses, entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations to be heard. She’s a marketing communications and public relations expert with more than 15 years experience and the owner of Cherry Communications. Subscribe today for Be Heard! a FREE biweekly ezine and get the FREE special report: ‘Get Set For Success: Creative, Low-Cost Marketing Tips to Help You be Heard.’ Go to: http://www.cherrycommunications.com

Travel and Vacation Brochures

By: Mart Gil Abareta

At present, the use of brochures has become more complex. They are not only used as marketing and business brochures, they are also known as effective travel brochures. Travel and similar agencies have realized the importance of these advertising materials in communicating with possible customers. However, it’s not as easy as that because they only become truly effective when they are conceptualized and designed properly.

Whenever you want to spend a long-time vacation, you’ll definitely need travel brochures to help you decide on where to go. Through these brochures, you’ll get a glimpse of your dream vacation spot and you’ll get much excited especially if it’s a full color, glossy travel brochure. It will be uninteresting for somebody to have a great time on vacation if he’ll be looking at a travel brochure of low quality.

Travel brochures have really become an essential marketing tool for travel agencies. Having an attractive and compelling brochure can bring in more customers especially in this kind of business. One has to focus on coming up with an interesting and professional-looking brochure in order to achieve the main reason why it was actually created. It is advisable to include pictures of famous tourist destinations to add more excitement and enthusiasm to possible vacationers. Remember that photographs add life to travel brochures.

With the continuous demand for excellent quality travel brochures, printing services on this type of brochure has been widely offered both by local and online printing companies. When it comes to designs, there are mainly several options. Many printers offer design services as well, they just design your travel brochures from ready-made templates. However, you can also send your personalized designs for these brochures. It will just depend on your taste and style on how the travel brochure will finally look like.

Indeed, if you want to make a long-lasting good impression on your clients and draw in more and more clients, you have to focus on creating more informational and more engaging travel brochures. Take note that these marketing tools are a great way to present to your clients what’s in stored for them once they avail your vacation packages. You have to keep in mind that how you market is just as important as what you market because it is always a challenge for business people to make their business stand out among its colleagues.

Sales-generating Brochure Copyqriting Tips

by Karon Thackston © 2003
http://www.copywritingcourse.com

Brochures have held an important place in marketing plans for longer than most of us can remember. There is no doubt that they have the ability to generate sales and increase revenues. Why then do so many of them fail?

There are several aspects of copywriting for brochures that amateur writers don’t consider. It’s those things that make or break the success of your efforts.

For the sake of generalization, let’s think about creating a six-panel brochure. (Also called a tri-fold brochure among other things.) This is created from an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper that is then folded twice. There are three panels on the front and three on the backside of the original sheet.

The Cover

As if it wasn’t obvious, the cover is the most important panel in your brochure. Both the images and words need to grab the reader’s attention and pull him or her in. It has to be compelling enough to (a) strike an emotional chord, (b) make the customer want to pick up the brochure, and (c) make the reader want to know what’s inside.

So, why then do so many people simply put their company name and a picture of their building (or something equally as boring) on this – the most important of all panels?

I generally leave the writing of the cover as the last element in my brochure-writing project. Once I’ve finished the rest of the copy, I read back over it at a leisurely pace. Then I stop to think. If I were asked to summarize the information in this brochure in 10 seconds, what would I say? If I had to name the single biggest benefit the customer will receive from this information, what would it be?

Those are excellent ways to generate covers for brochures. A few examples are below. These are brochures that I’ve seen around town that made me reach for them and want to know what was inside.

Plastic kitchen set. Dollhouse. Dollhouse furniture. Pink tricycle. $427.66. Your checking account balance. $302.86. Get what you need when you need it. This was for a cash advance service. This particular brochure was printed before the Christmas holidays so it had special appeal to lots of people.

Over 3,000 babies died last year alone due to improper safety seat installations. Be SURE your child is safe! Obviously, this was for a child safety seat inspection checkup.

These make an emotional appeal, get the readers’ attention, and make them want to know more.

Inside Panel Headlines

These are just as important to the process as the cover headline. Capture the true value of the information in each section and provide it to the reader within the headline.

Information Panels

For most brochures, making a sale on the spot is not the objective. Driving traffic to a phone center or Web site is. Therefore provide the most impressive product/service information on the inside panels in order to help accomplish this goal.

In addition to the information about your products/services, incorporate calls-to-action like:

Call today for full details.

Visit our Web site to see the complete color selection.

Customer service specialists are waiting for your call.

Once you understand the goals of your brochure, incorporate compelling headlines, and include a cover section that generates interest, you are more likely to see success from your brochure.

Are Your Brochures Worth the Paper They’re Printed On?

By: Lisa Packer

Brochures are one of the oldest marketing weapons in the business arsenal. And for good reason. A well done brochure lends an air of credibility while laying out a persuasive sales message. It conveys a lot of information and moves the customer along in the sales process. When it’s done right.

When done wrong, a brochure is an exercise in futility. It bores the reader and makes a beeline to the round file. It’s a waste of time, effort, and landfill space.

So how can you make sure yours are done right?

First of all, stay out of the “we.” Believe it or not, telling your prospect what you think is so great about yourself only impresses you. And it’s not about you. A good brochure, like any other marketing message, is all about what your product or service does for your customer. Every word should be about her, and how what you are offering benefits her.

Next, don’t let Sgt. Friday write for you. “Just the facts” doesn’t sell things. People make buying decisions on emotion, so you have to connect with their hearts. Find out what feelings will resonate with your prospects and evoke them. Get their juices flowing and stir them to desire what you have to offer.

Never waste valuable real estate. The most important panel of your entire brochure is the cover. It’s also the most often wasted. The front of your brochure has to interest your prospect enough to get them to open it up and look inside.

Putting your company name and a photo of your building there is about like using prime beachfront property for a landfill. Yes, it has to go somewhere. So put it in the back, where people who are looking for it can find it, but leave the spotlight to more glamorous tenants.

Start of with an attention-grabbing, benefit laden headline, and a graphic that supports it. Perhaps offer a few bullet points that expand the headline benefit, or introduce a few secondary ones. A line or two of copy at most and you’re off to a good start.

While you should strive for a conversational tone, make sure there are no spelling or glaring grammatical mistakes. It’s a fine line to walk, but you want to sound like you’re having a conversation without sounding like you don’t know the language.

Focus on your customer, connect with her heart, and make the most of your valuable real estate. Then, your brochures will be worth more than the paper they’re printed on. They’ll be worth their weight in gold

Brochure Printing Services with Full Color

By: Jinky C. Mesias

Colors affect us in every way and in everything. However, using colors in some business endeavors are very expensive. Full color printing services doesn’t come cheap. That is why the search for inexpensive but quality full color printing is a great consideration when planning for any promotional venture.

The internet has opened up various opportunities especially in terms of affordable printing services. A great number of online printing providers offer high-quality prints for a fraction of the cost given by local print shops. There are online full color printing providers that offer low prices especially for bulk printing projects. Aside from that sending of print projects online is also very easy since most online printers just require that the digital artwork files be send to them. The customers are likewise provided with various options on how they would want their projects to be printed and when they want to receive the finished printouts. And so for brochure projects as well as for similar bulk projects an online printing services provider would be the best choice.

The search for inexpensive full color printing provider is just a step in developing brochures that will effectively promote your business. Another step is the determination of the brochure design. The brochure design would depend on the purpose for which the brochures are created. The design should depict the company or the business in the most creative manner possible. It has to be made attractive in order to entice customers to read the contents of the brochures.

The brochure act as the company’s representative that is why it is vital that the design be made with great thought to every detail including the colors as well as the images to be use in the brochure. The brochure also functions as reinforcement to the actual presentation to be held by a company. Not only that, a well made brochure would be treasured and kept by customers as remembrance for companies past events.

Brochures are great advertising tools since it provide the business and its product with a strong representation that seems to create a lasting mark in the minds of customers. And to further ensure that your brochures will have such impact it is very important to search for quality printer. The quality of the printer use to print the brochure has an adverse effect on the print output. So be sure to use only dependable color printers to print your brochures.

How to manufacture professional looking brochures

Brochures are for displaying services. They are also for selling an idea or service. If these purposes are put into a list, then it would be endless. The numerous ways and intentions why people have and use brochures. No matter what the reason for these brochures, the main thing is that it should be kept readable, interesting and very functional in order to become effective. It should be able to get the peoples’ attention long enough for them to read what is inside, and remain useful for them to come back for more in the future.

How can you grab the attention of the readers with just these pieces of papers?

By making your brochures look professional not only in its appearance but also in the designs, the way it is written and printed. To make them appear this way, there are considerations to think about. What are these?

Doing it with questions. Nothing like a question with an impact to grab the attention of even those who may have just sneaked a peak unto these prints. With the right question, even those who do not have the initial intention of reading them may be too aroused with curiosity to see what it is about. And maybe to have the answer to the question that they saw. A style that works most of the time is asking a question not even related to what the brochure is about. Or asking the opposite of what the implication is about. Knowing the question that will work perfectly would mean perfect attention grabbing and perfect results in your favor.

Type matters. It is the thing that people will read in your brochures so typography should be thought of and done properly. You would not want your readers to judge you as an amateur from the way you have done your writing. Or giving them the impression that the services you offer may have that same careless and irresponsible quality. Writing out words that are seldom used or incomprehensive will not work either. Some may not be able to grasp what it is you are trying to say or may not have no idea whatsoever basing from the words that you are using. Just the basic understandable words that are also professional will do just fine.

Making brochures appear professional not only reflects back to you. It also implies the time and effort you spent on checking from the most important to the least important details. To sum it all up, these brochures should cater to the different kinds of people who might chance upon them and take interest.

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About The Author

Florie Lyn Masarate got a flair for reading and writing when she got her first subscription of the school newsletter in kindergarten. She had her first article published on that same newsletter in the third grade.

florielynmasarate@yahoo.com