How to create the perfect brochure to promote your business

Brochures are a wonderful marketing and promotional tool.  Often underestimated in effectiveness and underappreciated, the printing a brochure as a means of communicating and promoting your business is a fantastic idea, however there are many misconceptions as to exactly how an effective printed brochure should be designed and what content should be put in it.  Here I will take a moment to outline common mistakes and how to structure your brochure to maximize your return on investment and not have to print your brochure more than you need to as a result of silly mistakes.

One of the most debated topics is that of length.  In many areas of society we believe that bigger is better, but this is one case where it certainly is not.  Your clients have little time, just like you, therefore they don’t have time to sit down and churn through every single word of a dense printed brochure.  You client wants a quick snapshot of your message and a good feel for your business, so your brochure should be designed in such a way that your message is succinct, powerful and emotionally captivating.  Often people will only quickly flick through your brochure so it’s important that you adhere to this simple guideline if you you want your message to have any impact whatsoever and not waste your brochure printing budget.

The next thing to consider is negative space.  If there is one thing that I would like to convey to all my clients it’s that you don’t need to fill every single inch of space available! Carefully planned negative space (areas of your brochure where there is no content or imagery) is just as valuable as carefully placed content.  It can make such an impact on the overall feel and professionalism of your printed brochure.  Look at big companies like Apple for example.  Their marketing messages are often so simple, so visual, and so full of negative space.  Negative space allows the reader to focus their attention on the actual product or message, and not get caught up in unnecessary “waffle”.

Finally, something else to consider is how exactly does your printed brochure fit in with your overall marketing campaign or marketing effort? Simply printing a brochure and distributing it is not enough.  Your brochure printing should be part of an overall campaign and should be used as an aid or a tool which accompanies some other form of communication such as telephone sales (to follow up the brochure) or some other type of follow up communication.  Consider all these things and your next brochure printing task will have the best chance of success.