6 Things to Consider for Effective Brochure Writing

Brochures can significantly overhaul your marketing strategy. Or do the opposite and completely tank your progress.

To appreciate the true impact of brochure design, we need an understanding of its life cycle. Here’s how it typically goes: The client takes your brochure, finds it useful enough to retain it instead of discarding it, and then pass it off to other potential customers. The sales cycle continues long after you’ve released the brochure into the market.

It’s like word-of-mouth marketing, only better.

But finding a visual layout, the right dose of images, and content that truly resonate with your audience is harder than it looks. Brochure design isn’t just about fancy visuals and artwork – if only it were as simple as slapping on graphics and calling it a day. Rather, brochure designers have a challenging task ahead of them: namely, getting into the prospective audience’s mind and extracting their pain points.

Then, they should translate the brochure design to corroborate with those pain points.

This requires an understanding of the subtle nuances over each visual element and how it resonates with the audience’s thought process. From the choice of font type you use to the visual elements you deploy – there are a lot of moving parts that have to be carefully considered at each stage.

While every brochure designing process is unique, there are 6 things that are common to them all.

Define and Measure Your Marketing Objectives 

Many businesses think design first and objective second. However, effective brochure design requires the opposite strategy – you have to define your brochure’s objectives first and then work towards a design.

This, of course, requires a careful understanding of your customers. Why would they want to buy your product? What’s the most important feature for them? What is the most important problem you aim to solve? You’ll need the answer to these critical questions before going through with brochure designs.

Applying the AIDA Model to Brochures 

Here’s a nice acronym to help you judge the effectiveness of your brochure: AIDA, short for attention, interest, desire, and action. To be truly effective, your brochure has to catch the audience’s attention, retain it long enough so that they continue to read, and foster the desire to follow through with your call-to-action, whether it’s scheduling a consultation, visiting your website, or completing a survey.

Does your brochure have all four elements?

Keeping the Brochure Concise is Key

You require an entirely unique content strategy for this one since you’re dealing with limited space. For starters, you’re not writing a research thesis or an essay. Brochures should not be overloaded with technical jargon (unless your audiences are familiar with these) and must not contain giant walls of text.

Always remember the visuals in your brochures ‘buy’ your audience’s attention for a few crucial seconds only. Use that time wisely; otherwise, it will quickly run out. This is only possible by making your point clear from the get-go.

Picking the Best Paper for Your Brochure

The choice of paper you use can influence your audience’s perception of your company. As a general rule, a brochure with thicker paper stock and a glossier coating will send more positive vibes than one with a thinner stock.

And here’s the most important part: the paper stock should be selected with durability in mind. Heavier stocks will last longer than lighter ones. Using a layer of coating protects your brochure from abrasions and smudges, while also making the colors more vibrant and brighter.

To sum up, do not cheap out on the type of paper and coating used for your brochure.

Don’t know which brochure paper and coating type to use? Try to get in touch with brochure designing services who do this for a living.

Use Images That are Relevant to Your Clients

Your would-be customers will want to see a picture of the product you’re selling or images or the emotions they will feel once they use your service. It is extremely important for these visuals to be high-quality, high-resolution, crisp, and authentic. Don’t worry if you don’t have your own pictures; you can always use stock photos.

If you have the budget, we highly recommend squeezing out an extra hundred dollars or two to hire a photographer. You can easily find someone on Fiverr to do this for you. Or you could do this part yourself.

Point being, images are the most essential component of your brochure. Do not rush them.

You Need a Call-to-Action

The call-to-action is a no-brainer at this point. Even though your customers probably already know what you expect of them (to either buy your product or schedule a consultation), a Call-to-Action serves as a powerful psychological cue that gives them enough motivation to follow through with your goals. In order to make CTAs work for you, you’ll have to make them prominent and visible in the brochure.

We suggest using powerful visual cues and bigger fonts with plenty of negative space to make them stand out. The CTA has to be extremely specific. For a better response, we recommend adding a few incentives for your readers; this includes coupons, discounts, and other exclusive promotions.

So what is your overall strategy for effective brochure designing? Do share your thoughts in the comment section below.