While no one can disregard the power of online marketing in today’s digital world, some old school advertising mediums are still alive and active. For example, brochures continue to work as a convenient and competent way to get your business across your target audience. Their ability to stick around for a while is truly beneficial, whether you’re using them as maps, recipes, guides to certain places or events, or even informational tools for certain activities.
Unlike you, your business brochure can be in several places at the same time to influence your present as well as potential customers. Just like an effective brochure design acts as the voice for your brand’s products and services, a low-quality brochure design can chase away your potential customers.
Why choosing the right brochure design can do wonders for your business
An attractive, well-designed brochure sends a subtle, positive message about your brand to your audience. When they see a good branding design, they automatically presume that your business is reliable, professional, and committed to quality. If you’re considering investing in professional brochure design, you need to first understand the advantages of this traditional print media.
- Can hold lots of information in a limited space
When you use a brochure as one of your advertising tools, you can actually cover a lot of information in a small space unlike other print mediums like leaflets or postcards. Whether you intend to narrate your business story or include product details, you have sufficient space to get your message across. One of the best things about brochures is that you can provide your business’ contact details and coupons or discounts on a physical thing (typically paper), which encourages the audience to take immediate action.
What’s more, you can also include the abridged version of your business website in the brochure, which will further draw your prospective customers’ interest and allow them to go through it at their time of convenience.
- Facilitates powerful interaction with your customers
A brochure is a single or multi-page folded document that people can see, touch, read, and even pass on to others. Since they can be easily kept in one’s pocket, handbag or wallet, there’s a strong possibility for people using the information to their benefit instead of leaving the website and forgetting your brand completely. Having a leaflet physically in front of you has a stronger influence on your mind than a random advertisement that you might see on the TV or internet.
Additionally, brochures are easy to access. All you have to do is take it out of your handbag or drawer if you want to re-read the details or pass it over to a friend. On the contrary, an advertisement on a web platform may be difficult to revisit or rewind.
For example, there are many events or seminars, where stalls are put up for various businesses, colleges, and universities. When people visit your stall, most of them are interested in what you sell, provide or promote. A brochure is typically used as a take away that offers a lot of information in a visually appealing way. For all of us who have experienced it, there’s a strange happiness in opening a freshly distributed brochure and smelling that ink-on-paper.
Quick tip: Use intuitive content that inspires the consumers to use your business as a solution. Say, “When is the right time to get a new kitchen countertop” or “How a great haircut can change your entire look”. The readers can refer to these guides to know when a product or service is necessary, and no matter whether they make a purchase or not, they’ll thank you for your valuable advice. This, over time, will increase your loyal customer base.
- Offers versatile design and easy distribution
Although there’s no fixed size or format to print a business brochure, they’re usually compact and handy. This makes them easy to carry and distribute among the common people. Another big advantage of these print advertising materials is that you’re free to distribute them as you like. You can either distribute them randomly in different locations (near as well as far) or at a local fair, seminar, social event, or marketplace, where you might find your target audience. This’ll allow you to convey accurate and useful information about your brand to more customers at the same time and hence, increase its exposure.
You may also want to give away small gifts (key rings, bookmarks or pens with your brand name on it) along with the brochures to attract people to your business. Chances are they’ll keep both the gift and the brochure, and learn about your brand later on. Even if they don’t make a purchase, they’re sure to show the free merchandise to their friends and mention your name to them, who may be interested in your products or services. This effective marketing strategy helps you reach out to several new customers and even earn some revenue.
Additionally, there are many modern organizations that prefer to go paperless and use digital brochures instead. If you’re one of them, you can request a professional design agency like DesignBro to design e-brochure. As any other e-learning material, these brochures can be sent to the existing and prospective customers in the form of emails and Fax. You can even share it on your social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. This is also an excellent way to boost your website traffic and fast-track your business growth.
- Builds unrivaled trust
Consumers are usually skeptical by nature. Before making a purchase, they want to be 100 percent sure about the seller they are buying from. Hence, as a seller, it’s important to win the trust of your prospective customers. While a strong online presence definitely helps you establish a positive relationship with your customers, a brochure lays the first foundation for a good rapport with the same people. Professional and attractive brochure designs with quality content and printing add authenticity, credibility, and exposure to a brand.
An effective business brochure gives the perception that your brand is:
- trustworthy, and takes their job seriously
- here to strive and survive for a long time
- serious about their clients’ interests
While this process is a little complicated and requires the help of a seasoned graphic designer, the results are definitely worth it. Work only with an experienced design agency like DesignBro to achieve the desired outcome.
Make sure that the message on your brochure design is clear, crisp and concise so that the readers can easily identify with your business and products/services.
- Facilitates targeted marketing
A well-designed brochure is capable of accomplishing more things than one can imagine. Although they are essentially thin booklets containing details about your business, they have more promoting capacity than a full-size billboard. Aside from your product or service details, and brand values, also add testimonials and a call-to-action phrase. What’s more, unlike online ads that pop up unexpectedly and disappear almost instantly, brochures are a physical illustration of the ad with a message for a specific audience.
For example, if you’re selling organic baby products, your brochure design should target parents of young children and not all parents in general. Remember, if you’re marketing your products or services to everyone, you’re not marketing to anyone. Make sure you’re not wasting your time and money promoting your business to the wrong people. With a little research on your target audience, along with a custom brochure design, you can attain potentially huge customers that give you business.
- Helps save money
Let’s state the obvious – businesses exist to make more money than they invest. When it comes to marketing, running TV, newspaper, and radio campaigns can cost you thousands of dollars. Plus, nobody cares to remember the business contact number shown on the TV screens once the ad is over. Even some digital marketing techniques like PPC can cost you hundreds of dollars per month, and you have to continue paying it as long as you want to get huge traffic and new leads.
Thankfully, a well-designed brochure can cover more information than a 30-second television ad, and that too within your budget. What’s more, ordering them in bulk can further reduce the cost. Many companies that use mail advertising or take part in trade shows order brochures in bulk.
A great brochure design appeals to the non-technical audience as well.
Meet Samantha. She studies law and loves everything vintage. She has a laptop, a smartphone, and an internet connection, but rarely uses them. She loves using handwritten notes for communication, and prefers reading the newspaper over scrolling her smartphone to get the latest news. What’s more, she has no Facebook and WhatsApp account. Strange, but such people do exist.
When it comes to business, it’s just not enough to cater to your online audience. It’s equally important to keep the needs of the non-technical audience in mind. And it’s exactly these people that would love holding a paper brochure in their hand, feel its texture, and keep it handy for immediate or even future reference.
Popular brochure design ideas for your business
- Gate fold
In this type of brochure, the paper is divided into three asymmetrical panels, and the side panels measure half of the central panel’s width. As the name indicates, these side panels fold to look like a gate, with its standard size being 8.5” x 11”. This brochure type goes perfectly with single product depictions, recipes, restaurant menus, heavy-graphic designs, and designs with wide angles like landscape and architectural images.
One unique thing about this brochure is its internal folding that makes it quite compact and convenient to carry around. The customary 8 fold structure is sufficient to describe your products or services, alongside complementary images.
- Bi-fold
Often referred to as the Half Fold brochure, a Bi-fold brochure consists of one or multiple sheets of paper folded into two halves, with the fold line being vertical to the longest part of the sheets. Here, the folding creates four panels from a single sheet of paper, i.e. back cover, front cover and dual internal pages wherein you can give details about your brand, and its products or services. The standard size of this half-fold brochure is 8.5” x 11”.
There is also another edition of this Bi-Fold brochure, known as a booklet. This looks similar to a magazine due to its multiple pages. Bi-fold brochures are best suited for simple product descriptions, social events, city maps, pricing sheets, real estate promotions, and manufacturing product descriptions that are loaded with texts, graphs, and images.
- Tri-Fold
The name, Tri-Fold brochure, holds clues to its pattern where a single sheet of paper is divided into three with the right panel folding under the left panel. Featuring 6 panels, this design is typically used when you need a little extra space to showcase your product or service details. In the standard letter format, there are three sections to work with – outside, within and both zipped. Tri-Fold brochures typically come in 8.5” x 11”size. Other common sizes include 8.5” x 14”, 11” x 17”; and 11” x 25.5”. They are best suited for product presentations, when you want to present different versions of the same product on separate pages.
- Flyers or leaflets
Both flyers and leaflets are single, unfolded pages, usually printed on one side. While a flyer usually focuses on a simple tagline with an attractive design and minimum details, leaflets can be folded to form several pages or sides. The latter also tend to have more text and images. Although they look rather simple, a unique and eye-catching design can make all the difference. A standard A4 size leaflet or flyer is usually recommended for small scale promotions.
You can either hand it out directly to your target audience or place them inside newspapers or magazines. Generally featuring product descriptions or announcements, these flyers or leaflets are one of the most cost-effective ways to reach out to a large number of people.
- Z-Fold
This unique brochure design features a Z-shape, wherein a single sheet of paper is divided into three, with each panel folding on top of the other. Also known as the 3-panel zigzag brochure, it uses two parallel folds to form six panels of equivalent dimensions – three panels on both sides of the paper. Looking almost like a musical device, these brochures have sufficient space to write about your brand and product details. They are also quite convenient to carry around and perfect for user manuals, technical product descriptions, and travel guides among others.
- Folders and Inserts
If you have an upcoming business event, conference or exhibition, folders and insert brochures are a great way to reach out to your target audience and draw them to your brand. “While you can use a conference call service, consider the fact that people still prefer the non-digital methods as well.” Herein, there’s a unique use of folders within the brochure that can be used to place feedback form, gift vouchers or even gifts of some kind. For example, if you deal in cosmetics, you can give away a small pouch of shampoo or moisturizer in the folder.
People will appreciate this token of love, as well as consider your brand for buying cosmetics in future. Remember, it is all about grabbing the customers’ attention and no matter how you do it, the end result will be fruitful. Being useful and convenient, these folders can be configured to match your needs.
Final words on getting a brochure designed
Since brochure designs can do so much for your brand identity and sales, don’t skimp on its design. Invest only in quality branding products to show you care about your organization’s image. Consider seeking help from a renowned design agency like DesignBro to develop eye-pleasing brochure designs that turn prospects into clients.
Businesses accross the world have consulted DesignBro to build their brand with logo, website, packaging design and much more.
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Business Development Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the Media and Digital marketing sector, Passionate about innovation and bringing the future into new business solutions.
