Why You Need a Marketing Brochure
There are many reasons why most businesses today have some form of marketing brochure produced. For many businesses their brochures are an integral part of their business growth. With any marketing initiative, having the right strategy for your material will increase your chances in getting a good result. Using repetition throughout all your marketing material is often the key. Communicating a consistent message on your website, brochures, catalogue, business card and any other communication tool you produce is important however their should be a slightly different angle for each piece depending on its intended purpose.
Brochure design is extremely flexible and allows you the creative freedom to send your message in a unique way. It can also be artistic and aesthetically pleasing to the eye while providing essential information to the prospect or customer. In the information age we live in Brochure Design is a great communication tool, when done well.
A well-designed brochure is often the first point of contact with your prospects, introducing them to your brand. For this reason it is fairly common for businesses to have a range of marketing brochures to target various niche areas they can service. Marketing brochures can also help educate current customers about other services your business can provide that they may not be aware of. This is a common problem with a very simple solution, the humble marketing brochure. You can use brochures as a direct mail piece to educate your database of customers and prospects while keeping your brand front of mind. Just because someone on your database doesn’t need your products or services now doesn’t mean they will not in the future. Email marketing is often used for this purpose however it is not always the best solution. Email marketing overwhelms many people and it can cause more harm that good to your business. Sending a direct-mail marketing brochure is often received more positively that email since it doesn’t interrupt the prospect like emails can. You can also send marketing brochures to anyone you like. This is not the case with emails, which is governed by spam laws.
The right message on your marketing brochure should take your prospects to the next stage of the buying decision. Getting your brochure in front of the right people is an important part of the process and increases the likeliness of your marketing brochure being noticed.
Marketing brochures do not require big budgets and award winning creative designs to be successful, however the design is very important in communicating the right message to your prospects and customers. When considering having a brochure designed, consider:
· your niche market
· where it fits within your entire sales process
· how does it fit with other marketing material
· what do the prospects and customers already understand about your business
· what further information about your business would benefit your prospects
· what is the best way of getting the brochure in front of the right kind of people
Good brochure design is all about strategic thinking and using what you have to its full potential. Many small businesses starting out try to do their own brochure design and soon discover it can be a difficult task. Having a poorly designed brochure is far more expensive than having a professionally designed marketing brochure that gets results. Consider the potential business lost due to a poor message communicated through a poor brochure design. What if you produce a brochure that you design and print yourself on your inkjet printer? You spend 8 hours on it and it costs $100 in paper and ink. Your gain no business from this brochure and maybe you have even deterred prospects because you have left them with a poor lasting impression. Do you consider this an expensive brochure? Now lets look at the flip side, you get a professionally designed brochure. You spend half an hour organizing it and $900 getting it designed and printed. Even if you only win three customer who spends a few hundred dollars each with you, would you consider this expensive?
‘Cheap’ marketing that produces a poor result is very expensive while investing better in your marketing material should be an asset to your business. Because of the importance of marketing brochure design, you must be very carefully who you use to produce your material. Brochure design is a very competitive area of design and is just one piece of the marketing puzzle and often poses unique challenges for business owners. A good designer can take a visual communication problem in your marketing brochure and produce a solution to that problem. As business owners we can sometimes get too close to our own projects and miss opportunities a creative thinker can identify quickly.
When you consider the price of other traditional advertising and marketing techniques, the costs involved can be out of reach for many small business owners. Brochure design is a cost effective solution that helps many small business owners reach the low hanging fruit in their businesses and improve immediate cash-flow. Brochures are often an important element of a small businesses marketing plan.
When selecting a graphic designer to create your next brochure, make sire it is designed according to your individual specifications and the business objective. This doesn’t need to be an expensive process, just a thoughtful intentional one.
What’s your experience been with brochure design? Got a questions? Need some feedback? Let us know in the comments section below.
