10 Easy Ways To Make Your Sales Brochures Effective

Here’s How You Can Create a Captivating Sales Brochure

If one were to go back in time, they’d see that sales aren’t a concept as modern as it has been known to become.  Our ancestors engaged in the barter system, which although seems too primitive by today’s standards, is worth taking note of. Besides, you can’t move forward without knowing where you came from, can you?

In the present day, firms partner with brochures design service companies give out sales brochures which are digitized glimpses about the company, what they do, their services and products, and all the other essential elements that must be included to entice the customer.

Unfortunately, given the surplus of distractions on the internet, they can get ignored quite often, if not be badly done.

Assuming that you need help with the same, I have written down a few points that might be of great help to you in the long run.

Pro-tip for small businesses

But before we get into those, here’s a little tip for entrepreneurial and small businesses who are on the lookout for some help.

For a business this size, it goes without saying that for some, hiring an in-house content and design team for sales brochures will pack quite the punch on finances. But, it shouldn’t have to be that way.

The current market is brimming with outsourcing firms that have remunerative brochure design services. They are guaranteed to provide all the support you need, for the fraction of the cost of an in-house team.  Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it?

Now, for the how-tos…

Know your audience enough

A sales brochure will not be effective if you don’t know who you are selling to and understand what they need.

What is your UVP (Unique Value Proposition) that is going to set you up for success against your competitors? Does your product/service resolve specific issues that your customers face every day? Once you get to know all of these, making a sales brochure will be no less than a piece of cake.

Let the front cover speak for itself

Unless you are dabbling in some custom brochures design service support as mentioned above, you might not know of all the details that make a sales brochure work.

The cover is what the customer views the very first time. Hence, if it isn’t too attractive, then they might not proceed to read the rest of the content. So, how can you avoid this?

• Use an image relevant to the target audience. For instance, if you are looking at the youth, don’t use images that scream ‘serious business’ or ‘corporate’
• The image could contain a caption below, which creatively describes the message in not more than 12 words (this rule isn’t set in stone, but it would be better if you considered it for the sake of brevity)

Language

No, language and content are not the same things. Think of language as the engine and content as the wheels of a vehicle. The engine gives the power, but the wheels make things move.

You can’t have one without the other, and a vehicle cannot move forward if either one of them is missing.

So, when it comes to sales, make sure that you are talking To the customer and not At them. What does that mean? For example:  Try saying – “Considering how important you are to us, we have customized our services to give you exactly what you are looking for” Instead of, “We at ABC, hold our customers in high regard and have hence devised suitable services to augment their success”.

You see how passive and rigid the second sentence is? That is exactly what you must steer away from.

Storytelling works wonders

If you google sales brochures, you’d see that most of them are more or less a monstrosity of regurgitated information that is bland, dry, and obvious.

This comes from the misconception that business language has to be stoic, serious, and too formal for its own good. Agreed, but it can also bring your sales from a 10 to a -1.

To make a sales brochure stand out, you have to make it sound human. Because that is who you are selling to. And what do humans crave (amongst other things)? Stories.  By stories I don’t mean the quintessential “Born in 1956, ABC has been a pioneer in bringing Xyz to the forefront…”.

Storytelling instead must delve deep into some right-brained power to tell the customer how you resolved a certain problem and provided fruitful results to a customer. Or something along those lines.

Content

Words are important, but what kind? This can be applied in conjunction with the previous two pointers. Yes, formality is important, but too much of it can give the impression of undergoing a root canal.

The trick is to maintain middle ground between the two.

Take this blog, for instance, it isn’t too creative in a way that makes it look distasteful, neither is it too corporate that makes it bland and boring.

The content aspect of the brochure must be devoid of too much technical jargon that the customer might find hard to follow. It must highlight the scarcity of your product and how having it in their lives will help them.

Keep it short and simple wherever necessary and make good use of bullet points instead of long text-heavy paragraphs. This will aid the eyes to target those specific points and pay attention to them over the other.

Even if you do choose to dabble in the custom Sales Brochures design service sphere, you must specify the kind of content you are looking for instead of leaving the writer to his/her own devices.

Focus on your benefits

Tell your customer how your product/service can help them instead of what it does.

Put yourself in their shoes, how many times have you gone out to buy something looking at a string of features over that which has benefits mentioned on it? If industrial sources are to be believed, it’s the latter.

The same works for your customers as well.

The most common mistake marketers do is to separate their prospects from themselves. This does more harm than good. Customers are no different than them. They are people with lives, families, friends, businesses, and problems just like anybody else.

Hence, this boils down to what you can provide for them that they don’t already have. Or if they do have it, what can you do differently?

Readability Centric Design

Just as the content does, the design too should aid the customer process the information mentioned in the brochures.  I have come across several, that use a dark font over a dark background or others that have fonts too thin to deduce.

Save the eye strain for your customers and follow these:

• A dark background should have a much lighter text over it
• Avoid using funky color schemes to keep it professional and to seem less distracting to the audience
• Ensure that your fonts are bold enough to be seen but not too bold to be too obvious
• Subheadings and headings must be either in a different color of the same color family as the rest of the text or bolder
• Maintain spacing between paragraphs, sentences, and words to ensure better readability

CTA

A brochure isn’t complete without an apt CTA, since doing so defeats the purpose of having one.

What would you want your audience to do after reading through your brochure? Request for a consultation? Subscribe to your newsletter? Call or email you using the contact details mentioned below?

While doing so, you don’t have to make it sound too desperate. Rather keep it cordial and civil like how you would ask a friend to do business with you.

A CTA must also be effective in driving a customer to take action instantly. Give them an offer they can’t refuse. You could do so, by giving them discounts and special deals on your products and services, for a limited time, etc.

Be Accessible

Sometimes it so happens that customers would want to get to know your firm a little better before reaching out. They would do so by going over your social media accounts to get a brief idea of if your business is suitable to their desires.

Hence, do make sure that you have clearly linked your Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or Instagram handles.

Use Images Sparingly

Though images are imperative to accompany the content and give it more visual definition, it is also very easy to go overboard with them.

Typically, images are used in the front cover, body, and back covers. But they can also be peppered under various sections to either separate them, like graphs, statistics, and more. they must be appropriate to your business as well.

Putting your business on the map in an overcrowded market is primal to its sustenance. Sales brochures will help you do just that. But to outsource brochure design services might also be a very good option since it will save time, operational costs, and stress. Hopefully, these tips have been helpful to you, and if anything I hope that you have at least one takeaway.