How To Create An Effective Marketing Brochure

Ronita Mohan

How to Make a Marketing Brochure in Five Simple Steps

A marketer's arsenal includes a host of tools, including the humble, yet effective, brochure. Despite the rise of digital media, physical marketing media, like brochures and flyers, continue to influence customers.

This is because, unlike the digital sphere, which can often be fleeting, printed media is less transient. Once placed in your customer's hand, brochures work better for brand recall, leading to conversions and sales.

Of course, most marketers know that the best marketing plans involve a combination of both print and digital forms.

However, creating effective collaterals is still a hurdle that many marketers face. It isn't simply the design or the message that you need to optimize when creating your brochure—you need to anticipate the reaction of your intended audience.

Creating a brochure from scratch is a difficult task, unless you have graphic design skills or a graphic designer to create it for you.

However, you can use an online brochure maker that simplifies the process of designing a brochure, and can also be highly customised according to your needs.

With that in mind, I will break down in five simple steps how you can create an effective marketing brochure.

1. Understanding the Audience of Your Marketing Brochure

The first step of brochure making begins long before you actually design anything. You need to start by understanding who you are making the brochure for, and tailor your content and imagery accordingly.

To help you understand how to do this, you can look at these suggestions from CandyBar about analysing your customer lifecycle.

The audience you are targeting is directly tied into your company's goals. Use your mission statement to decide on what demographics you should be looking at—gender, age, location, interests, income, and aspirations.

Do in-depth analysis on understanding your audience because if you get this step wrong, you are likely to spend a great deal of time and money creating beautiful brochures that will not appeal to your target market.

For example, a marketing brochure targeting teenagers will look very different from one aimed for older citizens, as you can see from the below example:

Once you have a concrete idea of who you want to target, you also need to decide what you want to target them for. Do you want them to visit your site, buy a product, or sign up for a promotion?

Thinking of your call to action will give your brochure the focus it needs to be a successful marketing tool.

2. Targeting Your Messaging

You will likely be writing the content yourself, unless you are outsourcing it to someone, in which case, this guide about hiring freelance writers should come in handy for you.

Either way, knowing your target audience and your call to action will help inform the kind of copy you write in your brochure.

If you are using a brochure maker, you can search for a template that fits your needs. The template will have marked out sections and topics which act as guidelines for you to create your text.

Brochures generally have front, middle, and back pages, and you need to utilise the space on offer properly so as to hold your reader's attention.

For instance, the front page usually has room for a headline and subheading. These need to be strong, much like writing a headline for an article or press release, so as to arrest your audience's attention, like in the below example:

The middle pages are where the bulk of your content and messaging will be included. You may have a lot of information to share but your reader is unlikely to pay attention to all of it.

Keep your text concise and use headers to give the reader context for what they will be reading. You've done the hard work of getting them interested with a strong headline, don't lose them with verbose copy.

On the backpage, you should include your company's contact details and reinforce your call to action.

Don't make the backpage too busy or your details will be lost. The main portion of your messaging will have been included in the middle pages, so the backpage should have minimal text.

3. Using the Right Imagery in your Marketing Brochure

People have short attention spans, which is why using good images is so important in marketing. Your brochure should have a variety of visuals—photographs, logos, and icons—that bring the text to life without your customer even having to read it.

If you have a product to sell, you should try and take attractive high quality photos of it to include in your brochure, like in the example below:

But if it isn't possible to source high quality images, you could try and use icons that convey the same messages, or use illustrations from the brochure maker tool.

Though it is tempting to use stock photos that align with your company's ethos, it is best not to go down this path. Customers have become far more savvy and can now easily recognise a stock photo.

According to the latest branding statistics, 80% of readers are more likely to follow a brand with authentic content, and no matter how attractive the stock photos you use are, they are not authentic to your brand.

Remember also to make your brand as visible as possible throughout the brochure, as 69% of marketers have found that branded content is more effective than public relations efforts.

But try not to stamp your logo on every page of the brochure. Instead, try to convey your brand personality through a consistent color scheme and icons.

4. Designing Your Brochure

Now that you have your messaging and images in place, you need to customize your brochure design. If you are using a brochure maker, you will already have adapted your text to the constraints of the design.

However, if you are creating the brochure from scratch, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

For instance, you should make sure that your content is centered and away from the edges because brochures are generally folded and you don't want your text being lost in a fold.

See how this design keeps the text away from the edges:

Ensure that the images you are using are consistent. They needn't all be the same size, if you prefer asymmetrical designs, but they should have the look of your brand.

Try not to mix in too many elements or styles—cartoonish icons look better with illustrations than with high quality photographs—as that will look off-putting to the reader.

You also don't want to use too many colors as that will make your brochure look too busy and distracting.

Two or three colors are the maximum that you should use so that your brochure is readable and pleasing to the eye.

5. Adapting Your Brochure Design

Creating a brochure is quite the endeavor but it is ultimately a rewarding one. However, just because you have made the brochure once, doesn't mean you can't adapt it for your changing needs.

If you are using a brochure maker, you will find it very easy to change the current design you have, by changing the colors and text, and by adding in new pictures.

With a few simple tweaks, you can have a brand new brochure with minimal effort, like these brochures that adopt different color schemes.

You can also repurpose your brochure into other media, such as newsletters. You can take sections of your brochure and turn it into social media posts, or email banners. You could also make a digital version of your brochure that customers can download and share on their social networks.

Your design may have started life as a brochure, but it can become so much more with a little imagination.

Conclusion

Brochures are an effective tool and though it may seem like creating them involves a great deal of hard work, with the help of a brochure maker or a graphic designer, you should be able to create a piece of collateral that will make a massive difference to your bottom line.

All images sourced from Venngage.

Ronita Mohan is a content marketer at Venngage, the online infographic, and design platform. Ronita is interested in a variety of topics with regards to digital marketing, visual content, and online engagement, which she enjoys researching and writing about.

Twitter: @Venngage