Whether you’re an established business, a start-up business, or a non-profit organization contemplating printing a brochure, there are questions you should answer before you get down to the nitty-gritty of writing content and designing the finished piece. In other words, throwing a brochure together on-the-fly rarely creates an effective marketing tool.
What is Your Objective for the Brochure?
Beyond a vague, general sense of there being some necessity in having a brochure printed, what do you hope the brochure will accomplish? What is it’s purpose? Are you a start-up business seeking to provide an introduction and brief overview of your products or services? Are you a non-profit focused on a specific issue you believe needs more in-depth explanation as to its importance or relevance to the public at large? Are you an established business introducing a new product or service offering? Take some time and write down a few goal of what you hope your brochure will accomplish.
Who is Your Target Audience?
Does your business sell a specialized product or service to a niche clientele? Are you a non-profit organization addressing a specific issue or concern? Do you wish to reach customers/clientele of a certain age or as broad an audience as possible? Knowing who your audience is will help you create and prepare content more likely to speak their needs, concerns and/or desires.
How Will the Brochure Reach Your Target Audience?
Will you send the brochure through the mail to a select list of recipients? Will the brochure be provided as a hand-out at a trade show or some other public event/gathering? Is the brochure intended to be included with other marketing materials as a leave-behind after a sales presentation? Will your brochure be included with other brochures in a display rack? Determining how you intend to distribute the brochure can help you decide on an appropriate size or format.
How Do You Want to be Perceived?
The recipients of your brochure will make qualitative assessments about the nature of your business or organization based on its appearance and contents. Does your brochure convey the relative costs and quality of your products or services? Are you reliable and trustworthy? The design and contents of your brochure needs to reinforce your company or organization’s image/brand.
What Format Best Serves the Purpose of the Brochure?
In conjunction with your answers to the target audience and perception questions, the format of the brochure you design and print needs to be conducive to serving its intended purpose. For example, a luxury home builder would want to utilize a format that would feature high quality color photos in a large, multi-panel configuration or multi-page booklet. In essence, the cost of your products/services needs to be reflected in the perceived quality of the printed brochure.
Once you have devoted some time to answering the questions above, then you can move on to the development of content and design of your brochure. In our next post, we’ll offer some suggestions on how to create effective content for your brochure.
If you have any questions about Brochure Printing, give us a call at 330-597-8560. We’re happy to help you get the most out of your printing project.
Photo by Erika Giraud
