Small Business Resource Power Point Series Getting the most from Brochures

A Quality Product How your brochures look makes a strong statement about your company. You therefore need to use good quality paper, clear and engaging photos, and interesting text. All this makes for an expensive product, so consider the following rules to ensure maximum effect.

Concentrate On Your Customers Focus your brochure on a specific group of people, specifically those who will be most likely to purchase your product or service. If you are selling fishing equipment, put a picture of a fisherman on the cover, and include the word ‘fishing’ in the headline. This will get the interest of your targeted group and avoid wasting the brochure on uninterested readers.

Pictures Photos or pictures catch the eye, but be careful not to use too many, or your brochure will look muddled. On the cover use only one large picture or photo, this is much more effective at generating interest than several smaller pictures. Everyone reads captions, so put one under every picture!

Remember Me! Put your captions in a different font, in italics and slightly smaller than the main text to improve readability. What specifically do you want your customer to remember from your brochure? Try putting this text in quotation marks, it’ll make it stand out and be more memorable.

Show Your Product At Work A photo of your product in use will be more effective than the product sitting boringly on a shelf by itself! Showing a person hauling a huge fish out of the river using your brilliant new rod will inspire your customers, and increase their desire to buy.

Make It Easy To Read Use a font that is easy on the eyes and big enough to read. 12-point is the standard size for print, and the main text in your brochure should not be any smaller than this. If your customer has to strain to read your brochure they will soon lose interest!

Headlines Don’t use more than 10 words in your headlines. Likewise keep paragraphs short, especially the first one – ideally less than 12 words. Long headlines or paragraphs can look intimidating, remember your brochure must be inviting and easy to read!

Bullets, Italics, and Bold. Utilise bullet points, hyphens, italics and bold text to emphasise points and draw the readers eye. But beware! Overusing these highlighters will mean the readers eyes will be drawn all over the place, your brochure will become difficult to read, and will be abandoned!

Charts The golden rule of ‘easy to read’ applies just as much to charts as to text. Use bar charts rather than pie charts as they are simple to understand. Pie charts may look sophisticated but do not lend themselves to easy interpretation.

Be Contactable You want your customers to contact you so make sure your contact details are clear and obvious! Try using icons to highlight your phone and fax number. The normal place for contact details is on the back of the brochure, people are creatures of habit so that is where they’ll look for them – oblige them!

In Conclusion  Use excellent quality photos and pictures  Keep headlines and paragraphs short  Text should be interesting and stimulating to read  Ensure contact details are obvious  Make it easy to read

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