Designing for Success: Top 10 Elements of Effective Brochure Design
A well designed brochure will stack the “sales” deck in you favour and drive deeper profit returns. When you are selling, you want your prospect to see as much compelling and relevant information as possible, to both provide critical product/service information and to support your sales process.
Brochures come in many shapes and forms, with some aimed at marketing, some at selling and a number which are a hybrid and sit in between. Regardless of the use, there are 10 elements which need to be considered to make your brochure an effective profit making tool;
Purpose
Consider how will it be used, where will it be used and by whom. Is the brochure simply to convey information, trigger an enquiry or sell a concept? Be very clear on the purpose of the brochure, as this will dictate a different approach for many of the items below.
Audience
Defining your target audience enables the focused delivery of content and compelling advertising copy. The audience may be defined by many factors, including; demographic, industry, need, issue/problem or geographic. If you have different target audiences, then it may be more effective to have a customised brochure for each.
Presentation
This relates to how the brochure will be presented to the reader. Consider how it will be delivered; will it incorporate any explanation or introduction, will it be with an affiliate or by one of your staff, or will it simply be delivered cold by mail? All of these elements will influence the content, title and design.
Creativity & Design
The visual elements of the brochure are very important, as they; catch the eye, speak to the quality of your material and can, enhance the effectiveness of the brochure and how it is used. We always use professional designers to add the design flare, but layout the content with our clients. Referencing the purpose and presentation elements, we may include checklists, graphs, images, testimonials and tests etc, as well as simple written information in the design.
Headline or Title
Great copywriters claim the bulk of the value of the copy is in the headline or title. Brochures are very similar, as you need to immediately engage your audience to encourage them to read on. Without a strong title, many readers will never get past the front cover.
Core Content
Remembering the points above around purpose, audience and presentation, the core content must speak in the right language and talk to the audiences problems, issues or need. It is better to speak to 3 KEY points rather than cover every bit of knowledge or product information that you have. If you have a lot of data to convey – consider options such as infographics or graphs. Engage a copywriter to assist with the written content if you are not confident in this area.
Make it Valuable
People hold onto brochures where they perceive value. Value may be driven by research, data, key information, diagrams or customisation. The more value you can inject into your brochure – the longer it’s shelf life with your prospects, and the more likely they will aid in a sale. A customisable brochure can form a valuable part of the sales process.*
Call to Action
Providing quality information and simply relying on your prospect to take the next step is high risk, so it’s recommended to clearly guide them. Calls to action can be as simple as; check this, call us, complete this test, allow us to review…., or make an appointment now etc. Make the call to action clear and easy to complete.
Branding
Key contact information, email, web and phone. Its important you make it as easy as possible for your prospects to contact you via your preferred contact method. Branding of the brochure should align to your web site and an other collateral so that the reader only sees consistency throughout.
Quality
The design is naturally a part of this, but the quality includes the type of brochure, the print and print techniques used, and of course the quality/weight of the print stock. The quality of the presentation of your brochure needs to align to your purpose, brand and product value.
<With all of the above elements considered, you have the framework for a great brochure.
Due to the costs associate with design, copywriting and printing etc, you must ensure that you plan the brochure out correctly up-front. The production volume will naturally depend on how the brochure will be used, however we normally recommend that a brochure should not have a shelf life of more than 1-2 years. It is generally better to go for a smaller volume which are all used at a higher unit price, than to have thousands of unused or obsolete brochures which simply allowed a small scale discount.
To learn more about how you can use an effective brochure to drive profit in your business, contact us at www.scsperformance.com.au We can provide additional detail on how to construct a brochure, but also, how to use it for greatest effect.
* Contact us if you wish to know more about how you do this.
