What is a marketing brochure?
Marketing brochures help companies market their products or services. They’re traditionally single or multi-fold paper-based documents (although with the advent of the digital age, they also come in digital varieties as well) and come in various shapes and sizes (most often resembling a pamphlet or an A4 size piece of paper.)
Marketing brochures come in various fold types, namely: single fold brochures, bi-fold brochure and tri-fold brochures and are used interchangeably with the term pamphlet.
How to design a marketing brochure?
Define the target audience for your marketing brochure
Create thoughtful, targeted messaging for your marketing brochure
Collect unique, meaningful images or illustrations for your marketing brochure
Design the brochure around your copy, images, and branding
Repurpose the same brochure design for different products
1. Define the target audience for your brochure
design
Before you start thinking about what your brochure will look like, you need to figure out a few things about your customers and your goals.
Just like any other marketing material, a marketing brochure should be:
Targeted to a specific segment of your market, and
Aimed at driving some specific metrics.
Whether you segment your market by age, buying cycle, income, location, or lifestyle choices, your brochure’s messaging and imagery should be designed with a specific customer segment in mind. This is where user personas are helpful, they will guide your positioning and messaging.
A home insurance brochure targeting 75-85 year-old homeowners, for example, should look very different than one targeting 25-35 year old female renters:
So your first step in developing a marketing brochure should always be to work out who you’re trying to target. If you think you might want to target more than one customer group, don’t worry! Our brochure templates make it a breeze to repurpose design again and again. Just focus on one target market to start.
Next, identify a single measurable metric that you want your brochure to boost. Ideally you should plan to use your brochure to compel potential customers to complete some specific action, like heading to your store or signing up for your email newsletter. Ultimately, you want to generate leads.
Figuring out what that action will be will help you write more persuasive and helpful copy. A few examples:
You want to book more service consultations. Your brochure should highlight what clients will gain from the consultation and give them the contact information they’d need to book one.
You want to push people to visit your booth at an upcoming trade show. Your brochure might showcase a new product you’ll have on hand at the show, and include a coupon for that product that’s redeemable during that event. Use our handy online coupon maker tool to generate them quickly.
You want to drive people to check out your flashy new online store. Your brochure might feature a promo-code for first time visitors.
In any case, the key to creating a successful marketing brochure is to have a focus. Focus on the wants and needs of a specific segment of your market, and, if possible, on promoting a single action.
2. Create thoughtful, targeted messaging for your marketing brochure
Once you have a clear focus mapped out, you’ll need to write some copy.
The structure of the brochure should guide this copywriting process. That is, you’ll need to figure out what belongs on the front, middle, and back of the brochure, and write accordingly. Check out this 3 fold brochure template for some inspiration:
The front page should have a single clear message
The front page of your brochure needs to grab the attention of your reader. Everything on that page should compel them to turn the page.
That’s obviously easier said than done, but here are a few tried-and-true marketing tactics that might work for you.
The main brochure contents should be concise and skimmable
Moving on from the front page, let’s talk about the main brochure contents.
Assuming you’ve succeeded in catching your readers’ attention, it’s time to give them what they really want–information about your products or services.
To do this, it’s best to write copy that will fit nicely into three sections, each with a header and brief description (a brochure with three sections is known as a tri-fold brochure)
Use headers to state your brand’s offerings up front
Your headers should clearly and concisely state each business offering or product feature, so that readers can see at a glance what you’re promoting.
If possible, frame these offerings based on your customers’ needs and wants. Focus less on what your business does, and more on how your business will give them what they want
Use brief descriptions to backup your headers
Beneath each header, you’ll want to describe the product or service in more detail.
Keep these descriptions as brief and to-the-point as possible. Try to give your readers just enough information to get them interested, and let them use your brochure as a jumping-off point to get to your store or website.
Support your design with charts and graphs when you can
Don’t waste space explaining data, statistics or survey results. Charts and graphs are easier to understand and more pleasing to the eye. They hit your point home and can also save space on your brochure.
The back of the brochure should include extra details like contact information
After you’ve outlined your offerings, make sure you include anything your customer will need to take action, whether it’s an email address to contact you at, directions to your business, or a link to your website.
This bit can come last–you’ve done your convincing, now you can count on your reader to flip to the back of the page to find this information on their own.
3. Collect unique, meaningful images or illustrations for your marketing brochure
With your copy under control, it’s time to collect images to add visual interest to your brochure design.
To ensure your brochure doesn’t feel bare, aim to find:
One image, icon, or illustration per product offering
A feature image, icon, or illustration for your title page (optional)
A few extra images, icons, or illustrations for your ‘about’ and ‘contact’ sections
4. Design the brochure around your copy, images, and branding
It’s all come down to this–creating your marketing brochure.
At this point you should have a copy and images to fill up all six sections of your brochure, front and back. Browse through our beautifully designed brochure templates for one that you like containing a similar amount of copy and visuals
Use solid colors and background images to define each section
Once you have your text and images on your page, you might find your brochure design a little lacking in the excitement department. You can inject some visual interest by adding background colors and images.
Don’t use more than two or three colors
When it comes to color schemes, less is more. My favorite brochure designs tend to feature just one single bold color (occasionally more, but two or three colors at most).
5. Repurpose the same brochure design for different products
Now that you’ve put all of this work into designing a beautiful brochure, get the most out of your design by creating subtle variations for different products.
Conclusion
This might seem like a long process, but knowing how to put together an effective marketing brochure is an essential skill for any small business owner or marketer, and our pre-designed brochure templates make it easy!