The American Heritage Dictionary defines a brochure as ‘a small book or pamphlet, often containing promotional material or product information.’ However, brochures can be large also and their contents may vary depending on the situation. Even in this cyber age, brochures are not out of fashion. Businesspersons still like brochure marketing for the personal touch they carry in communication with clients. Customers or would-be customers can read about the company and its products at their leisure. Brochures are excellent marketing tools that give customers all the relevant information they need before making a purchase. Apart from attracting new customers, a brochure helps a business organization to stay in touch with its existing customers, build loyalty and reinforce credibility.
In order to be effective, a brochure must satisfy certain conditions in terms of both content and design. A hastily prepared brochure without proper planning can serve no real purpose. To create the required effect among customers, a brochure must be attractive-looking and contain all relevant information.
- A brochure is supposed to convey a direct message in a visually attractive manner from a company to its customers. The success or failure of a brochure is determined to a large extent by the quality of information it includes.
- It is human nature to look to some visual cues first. In a brochure, a reader will see the pictures first, and then the headlines, charts and graphs, captions, before finally moving to body text. Therefore, a brochure must be so prepared that a reader can have an idea of the content by just having a look at the pictures and the headlines. The essence of the main points you want to let people know must be conveyed by the headlines and captions. People might lose interest if they are hidden in the jungle of body text.
- Brochures mostly cover three main areas: products of a company, its services, corporate or organizational capabilities of the organization. These can be divided into a number of sections in a logical sequence such as introduction, products, services, features, benefits, applications, specifications, testimonials, FAQ, company history, call to action, mission statement, awards, contact details etc.
- If the cover of the brochure is not attractive enough, customers may be put off even before opening it. Make the cover visually attractive and begin selling on it. List the merits of your products or services on the cover itself. Make your customers open it with some teasing offers like ‘offer valid for a limited period only’ or ‘see inside and save money.’ If you use your logo on the cover, make it smaller so that it doesn’t become the focus.
- After the cover, the introduction section should give a brief account of the company, its products or services, its objectives etc. Products and services sections will contain a brief description of them. The above mentioned sections and those relating to features, benefits, applications, and specifications are included in most brochures for the benefit of customers.
- Including testimonials in a brochure is extremely important. Readers will definitely be influenced and willing to try a product or service when they read those comments made by satisfied users. The user’s permission may sometimes be necessary before you can quote him/her.
- A ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ or ‘FAQ’ section is essential for the success of any brochure. This section should answer common questions a customer is likely to ask regarding your product or service. If your company does quotes, it is better to have a separate questionnaire that the customer can fill out and send to you.
- Remember that if your brochure only says why your company is great, or why your products are the best, people in no time will throw it into the trash bin. To make them keep your brochure longer, you should include general information that would be useful for them. For example, if your company deals in computers, you can include in your brochure a piece of writing entitled “How to improve your computer’s performance.”
- Don’t forget to include what can be called calls to action. Examples of such calls include “Act soon”, “Log on to our website to order now!” or “Contact immediately.” A brochure is effective only if it brings in business to your company. For better results, you can also include your offer and a response mechanism on each page of the brochure.
- Last but not the least, never forget to include your address, phone and fax numbers, website and e-mail at a convenient place in the brochure which is easily visible
Looking for an efficient yet inexpensive marketing strategy to promote your new store? Or are you thinking of an effective way of reaching your neighboring households to promote yourself as a babysitter? Or do you want to inform your customers about the latest updates in the last release of your product? Look no further and get your flyers and catalogs printed. An effective way of both online and offline advertising there are numerous reasons which make flyers and catalogs one of the most popular advertising media. Some reasons which can help you in making a decision to use flyers and catalogs for promoting your product and services can be summarized as :-
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Easy to Create: – Bring out your creative juices and design your own flyers as no one can understand your business needs better then you. Alternatively contact one of the advertising firms which can help you in designing your flyers and catalog which can instantly grab customers’ attention. With the introduction of digital printing and advancement in web technology now it is possible to come up with delightful colorful catalogs with minimum efforts.
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Cost Effective:-If you are an owner of a start up and you are having limited budget , then an effective marketing strategy can be planned by spending some time doing effective research and coming up with flyers and catalog of the products and services being offered by you. The flyers and catalogs will help you in reaching the target audiences with much expenditure on marketing efforts. Printing and distributing flyers and catalogs turn out to be cheaper then placing ads in local newspapers.
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Generate Useful Leads: – Most of the printing agencies and marketing firms have a huge collection of flyers templates. Select a template and content which grabs instant attention of the customer and urges them to visit your business. Flyers and catalogs should lay emphasis on your strengths and list down the benefits which will help customer in making a choice. Also be sure to print your contact numbers and business address on these flyers and catalogs for the customers to contact.
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Easy to distribute: – Flyers and catalogs can be distributed in numerous ways. You can circulate flyers along with newspapers or leave them in a public place or place them on the windscreens of the vehicles in the parking lots. This ease of distribution helps in reaching more target audience.
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Comfort in carrying and sharing information :- Marking your loot on the flyers and catalogs before entering the shopping mall helps in not only reducing your shopping time but also proves to be pocket friendly as it saves you from making unnecessary purchases. If you want to inform your friend about the latest laptop which you have noticed in the electronic shop mailer, simply forward the online catalog to your friends inbox. You can also share printed flyer with your neighbors and friends.
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Share Product Updates: – Flyers and catalogs are also a great way to promote the latest offerings of your store. So if you are introducing the new Britney Spears fragrance in your store or you are the first to introduce the new Sony video game inform the customers by sending them flyers and updated catalogs which are bound to spur your sales.
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Have a Larger Reach:- Catalogs and flyers helps in advertising your products and services to people who have no access or no interest in computers or any other modern way of communication. Also flyers can be circulated in malls, in residential localities, parking lots and various other places thereby publicizing the project in larger audiences.
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Effecting Listing of Product Details: - Catalogs and flyers list down all the product details and specification along with the photographs which makes it easier for the customer in reaching a decision. Catalogs list down all the technical specifications of a product which helps you in making comparison with the similar products currently available in market and you can strike a good deal.
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Promote Business: - Neilson survey revealed that customers receiving online catalogs and flyers are 15% more likely to make a purchase. With more then 92% American households now having access to internet online catalog has become a great way to advertise your services.
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Easy to reproduce: – Last but not the least creating a template of flyers and catalogs can be later used for printing more copies. Also the template can be used to make modification in case of any updates and changes. As you don’t have to start the flyer design process from the scratch use of flyers and catalogs actually help in saving cost, time and efforts.
So enjoy the benefits of this effective media of advertising to promote all your business needs.
Filed under: Printing Help, marketing | Tags: advertising, marketing, print advertising, printing
Historically, companies that continue to run ads during tough economic climates come out ahead of their competitors who stopped advertising when times got rough. Procter & Gamble, Chevrolet and Camel cigarettes were just a few brands that continued advertising though the Great Depression, and came out ahead of their competition. For instance, during the 1920s, Ford outsold Chevys 10 to 1. Chevy continued to advertise and even expanded their advertising budget during the depression, and as a result, in 1931, Chevy was the top-selling car maker, outing Ford. Camel did the same thing – except Camel started out on top before the Depression, but was ousted out of the high spot in cigarette sales by Lucky Strike. Camel increased ad spending during the Depression and took its top spot back in the cigarette category.
Why You Need to Continue Advertising
1. Less competition: With companies scaling back or eliminating their ad budgets, that leaves room for you to get into more markets with less money. Low competition means lower ad costs.
2. People are looking for deals: If you can offer consumers a deal on your products, they will come. People still spend money during a recession (which we still aren’t quite in yet, according to experts), they just don’t spend as much of their money. Of course, those people that are always frugal still have money to spend.
Frugal Advertising Techniques
Flyers: This is an oldie, but a goodie. You can print flyers or brochures with black ink on colored paper to give your flyer some eye-catching punch, while keeping your budget way low. Even color brochure printing isn’t that expensive, and the more you buy, the more money you can save. Try printing flyers with a message that will last you through the holidays so that you can order a large number and continue using them for the next few months. Bulk discount and longetivity sound good to me!
Write a great press release: If you can get the media to do a story about you, whether in your local newspaper or magazine, that’s free advertising right there. It’s even better than running an ad in the publication because people will know that you didn’t pay for the coverage!
Word-of-mouth advertising and referrals: This is one I turn to when times are tough and it works well. Offer an incentive that you can afford to give to current customers who drive new customers your way. Whether it’s one free item or a discount on a service, as long as the referral will end up covering the cost of the free item for your current customer, you’ll build goodwill with current customers and get new ones!
Find an advertising partner: This is a business or person who offers a product or service that complements yours. You can either split ad costs with this person and offer customers a two-for-one type of deal, or you can simply exchange business cards and brochures to set up in each other’s store. Either way, it’s cheap advertising for both of you.
If you need more ideas, you can look up “guerrilla marketing techniques,” which are cheap ways to market your business that rely more on time and imagination than money.
Filed under: marketing | Tags: internet marketing, marketing, marketing plan, online marketing, web marketing
It has been seen that the best website and the best marketing strategies do not always give you the best results. Apart from good content and user friendly navigation, the site needs to be noticed by the target audience. To drive traffic to your website, it needs to be well designed and has to be ranked in a good position in the search engines. Once you are listed in the search engines, you need to make sure that the website communicates with the target audience in a way that they find something relevant on your website if not the actual results.
So does your website communicate relevancy and targeting? Following are the 7 essential elements that needs to be included in a web marketing plan to increase a website’s efficiency:- (more…)
