Marketing Brochure Design
What is a marketing brochure?
Marketing brochures help companies market their products or services. They are traditionally single- or multi-walled documents on paper (although with the advent of the digital age they also exist in digital form) and come in various shapes and sizes (most often resembling a pamphlet or A4 sheet).
Marketing brochures come in different fold types, namely: single fold brochures, bi-fold brochures (like the one below) and tri-fold brochures and are used interchangeably with the term ‘brochure’.
What is the difference between a brochure and a pamphlet?
A brochure can span several pages, whereas pamphlets are often one-page documents. Brochures are often created with a commercial intent, i.e. to promote your products or services, while pamphlets are created with an informative intent.
Leaflets are unbound, whereas brochures can be several pages long and are therefore supplied bound.
Do you still need a marketing brochure?
The marketing brochure is one of the oldest tricks in the marketing playbook.
While digital strategies dominate modern marketing trends, traditional techniques like the time-honoured sales brochure are not going away.
In fact, physical marketing media may be more effective than ever. One market research firm suggests that physical media is more memorable, persuasive and behavioural than digital media.
Today’s best marketing strategies integrate the digital with the physical, focusing on flyers, brochures and posters as much as websites and social media graphics.
That’s a lot to juggle!
I get it.
That’s why I’ve put together this simple 5-step guide to designing a marketing brochure to show you how to create a marketing brochure from scratch.
How do you design a marketing brochure?
Define the target audience for your marketing brochure.
Create thoughtful, targeted messages for your marketing brochure
Gather unique, powerful images or illustrations for your marketing brochure
Design the brochure around your copy, images and branding
Reuse the same brochure design for different products
- define the target audience for your brochure design
Before you start thinking about how you want your brochure to look, you need to find out a few things about your customers and your goals.
Like any other marketing material, a marketing brochure should be:
Aimed at a specific segment of your market, and
Aim to drive some specific metrics.
Whether you segment your market by age, buying cycle, income, location or lifestyle, the messaging and imagery in your brochure should be targeted to a specific customer segment. This is where user personas are helpful and will guide your positioning and messaging.
For example, a building insurance brochure aimed at 75-85-year-old homeowners should look very different from one aimed at 25-35-year-old female renters:
So your first step in developing a marketing brochure should always be to figure out who you want to target. If you think you want to target more than one customer group, don’t worry! With our brochure templates, it’s a breeze to keep changing the design. To start, simply focus on one target market.
Next, determine a single measurable metric that you want to increase with your brochure. Ideally, you should use your brochure to drive potential customers to take a specific action, such as going into your shop or signing up for your email newsletter. Ultimately, you want to generate leads.
By finding out what that action will be, you can write more persuasive and helpful copy. A few examples:
You want to book more service consultations. Your brochure should highlight what customers will get out of the consultation and give them the contact information they need to book a consultation.
You want to get people to visit your stand at an upcoming trade fair. Your brochure could showcase a new product you are presenting at the show and include a coupon for that product that can be redeemed during the event. Use our handy online coupon maker tool to create these quickly.
You want to get people to check out your eye-catching new online shop. Your brochure could include a promo code for first-time visitors.
Either way, the wrench 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.
- Create thoughtful, targeted messages for your marketing brochure.
Once you have established a clear focus, you need to write copy.
The structure of the brochure should guide the reader. This means you need to work out what belongs on the front, middle and back of the brochure and write accordingly. Take a look at this template for a tri-fold brochure for inspiration:
Let’s go through some strategies for each section in turn.
The cover page should have one clear message
The front page of your brochure must grab the reader’s attention. Everything on that page should make him or her want to keep turning the page.
Of course, this is easier said than done, but here are a few proven marketing tactics that might work for you.
Be clear about how you can meet your customers’ needs:
