14 ways to make your sales brochures effective

How can you make your sales brochures more effective? How do you write a copy that makes your company's leaflets, brochures and flyers read and that customers respond? Use these 14 brochure writing and design tips to create and improve the sales documentation you provide to customers.

How to create effective sales and marketing brochures.

Image source: Photospin.com

If you are planning to create a sales brochure or brochure to boost the business or advertise a new product or service, you are probably wondering what you can do to ensure a good response.

After all, creating and sending sales brochures represents a significant expense. And, the cost is not the only thing to worry about. Each piece of literature that you send or distribute leaves an impression on your prospects. Leave the wrong impression and you risk losing sales and alienating customers.

So what can you do to make your next sales brochure or booklet a winner? Here are 14 important copy and design tips for successful sales brochures.

1. Understand your client

Before you spend time planning or writing brochures, make sure you understand your client. Why would they want to buy your product? What is the most important thing you can do for them? What is the most important problem that your product or service can solve for them? If you do not know the answers to questions like these, go and ask. Talk to your sellers. Speak to customers Use your answers to help decide what benefits to include in your brochure.

2. Plan your brochure for AIDA

No, that's not your favorite aunt. AIDA is an acronym for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. To be effective, your sales brochure should draw attention, make the prospect interested enough to continue reading, increase your desire for the product or service and have them take a specific action, such as buying now, calling and making a appointment, visit your website, or return a postcard.

3. Do not put a photo of your building on the cover of the sales brochure

Sure, you're proud of the building and the way the company has grown. But your customers do not really care how proud they are of your company or the size of your building. You must design your brochure to show what the customer wants to know, and that is whether your products meet your needs or not. Do not waste the space you must use to sell your products and convince customers to buy now.

4. Use images that are important to your client

Your customer will want to see the product you sell or the images of the results you will get or the emotions you will feel if you use your product or service. Make sure the images are clear and professional looking.

5. Sell, do not say

Your current and potential customers are not really interested in your company or products. They are interested in themselves and / or in their own businesses. To get your attention, your brochure should focus on the benefits you will enjoy when making a purchase.

Think about it. How many people buy a smartphone because they want to carry a phone with them all day, or actually because they plan to use it mainly as a phone? They buy them to stay connected with people and events, to share information with written words, images, to find answers to questions in a hurry and, sometimes, just to show others that they have the latest state-of-the-art device. All this explains why the companies that manufacture smartphones and the service provider that make it possible to use them, focus on the fun that people get by taking pictures, sharing, collaborating and getting a big data allocation every month.

Before writing the copy for your business brochure, make a list of the benefits your customers want to obtain when they purchase your product or service. Use that list of benefits to help you write a copy centered on the client.

6. Use headlines and graphics that interest your audience.

The average reader takes less than 5 seconds to look at the cover of a sales brochure and decide whether to read it or not. If your title or graphics on the cover of your brochure are boring, few recipients will bother to open it.

For example, a photo of people observing a presenter writing on a flipchart about a headline that says "Matching People and Strategy" is likely to get a brochure in the recycling bin. However, a photo that shows a business person giving a thumbs up to a small group of associates and a headline that says "Train your team to get great sales" is likely to receive attention.

7. Make your brochure look professional

Even if your brochure is well written, you will not receive much response if it is poorly designed. Confusing page layouts, too big or too small types, too many different fonts or too many type colors on a page can make a brochure, and your business, look unprofessional. If you are designing your own brochures, you can give your brochures and flyers a professional look by using free design templates. You can find free brochure templates at Office.com, Template.net and at many online printing sites.

8. Use profit-oriented headlines in your brochure.

Once you have gotten the recipient to open the sales brochure, the next thing they will do is leaf through the headlines. Use these internal headlines to get their attention and move them through the copy.

9. Use bullet points to focus on the key features of your product or service

Both consumers and entrepreneurs are pressured by time and have many ads competing for their attention. So they tend to leaf through quickly through the copy. Feature-rich vignettes will help keep you focused on what you offer and guide you to the action you want them to do next.

10. Focus on readability

Do not make it hard for people to read your brochure. The gray type on a white background and the dark type on a dark background are difficult to read. So are the pages that have a lot of text and small letters. Break type blocks with heads and blank spaces.

11. Tell them what you want them to do after reading the copy

After interesting the reader in what he sells, he must take the next step: tell them what they must do to acquire it. Do not just assume that they will look up your phone number and call or visit your website. If you do not tell them what action to take, they may make the wrong decision: call another merchant or service provider instead.

12. Give them a reason to act now.

If you do not urge the reader to act now, and you do not give a reason to do so, your efforts to attract attention, generate interest and desire will be lost. The client will move on to the next thing that catches their attention and will forget you. Some of the most common offers for customers to buy now are special discounts that are only valid before a specific date, a free gift for purchases before a specific date and discounts for purchase on a specific date. Others that do not include discounts or gifts are reminders to buy now because quantities are limited (if they really are) or because prices will increase, etc.

13. Make it easy to answer

Make sure that your business name, phone number and website URL are easily found in the sales brochure or booklet. Add your Facebook, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter Facebook pages, if you have someone who also sees them regularly. Another option to consider is a QR code that takes people to the page of your product or to a page to register in your newsletter.

14. Remove the risk

Once you have accumulated the desire to have what you sell, you could still lose the sale if the customer has any concerns about the purchase he makes. To alleviate the customer's fear, include a money-back guarantee.