How to Create a Powerful Brochure

In order to write effective brochure copy, first you need to answer some general marketing questions:

What does your company do?
What distinguishes you from your competition?
What benefits do you provide for customers?

Now, you might be thinking you have plenty of answers to these questions – no problem! The key, though, is to answer these questions in one-sentence answers. (And not one long, run-on sentence that goes on for days, either!)

Write the answers to these questions down somewhere and reference them every time you start to write a custom brochure. Your company brochures need to all have the same basic information – the answers to the above questions. But then the brochure design and other copy can change for each brochure. 

Plan before you write
Before you start writing, you need to decide what the purpose of your brochure is and who your target audience is for this particular brochure. Good brochures are targeted to a specific audience and talks directly to that audience, which means you may have multiple brochures to introduce one product.

If you plan on writing many brochures, you may want to invest in Microsoft Publisher 2007 (about $170). You can pick from hundreds of customizable templates or create one from scratch. You can also use Publisher to create flyers, posters, newsletters and many other print materials, which makes it a pretty good deal.

Customers care about benefits, not features
Don’t waste brochure space telling customers all about the great features of your product. Emphasize the benefits they’ll receive by using your product. A cell phone that has a feature of taking pictures is okay. Not too exciting. But a cell phone that allows you to take pictures anywhere you go and stores them forever, that’s a benefit. The benefit is more apt to get people interested – people want to know what they’ll get out of buying your product.

Brochure format
Two brochure formats are most popular: the tri-fold, with six panels for information, or the bi-fold, with four panels. You can view brochure templates and samples online at online printing companies Web sites. Your brochure’s layout can look however you’d like, but here is a brief overview of a basic layout for reference:

Panel 1
Headline
Benefit-oriented sentence or phrase
Picture or graphic
Your company logo

Panels 2–5
Sentences and short paragraphs describing product or service
Repeated and expanded benefits
Picture(s)
Company background
Contact details

Panel 6
Mailing label area
Postage
Corporate logo
Company motto or repeated marketing phrase
Contact details

Again, this is just one version, but this is a common layout most people follow.

Be sure to tout at least one benefit on each panel, whether it’s the same benefit over and over, or different benefits on each panel. You want people to remember your benefits, and people only generally remember about 30% of what they read. This means you must repeat yourself.

So these are the basics to keep in mind as you write your brochures. As long as your brochure is focused and touts benefits instead of features, it’ll be a success.